The reading activities in preparation to workshop 3 & 4, The Learning Outcome Debate introduced new to me concepts about principles of constructive alignment (Biggs 1996), teaching/learning activities and assessment tasks and how such systems enable programme teams to design intended learning outcomes based on a functional model for fair frameworks for assessment. Nicholas Addison in Doubting Outcomes in Higher Education Contexts: from Performativity towards Emergence and Negotiation, states that these systems can be appropriate for some disciplines, in Art & Design education however, given its complexity and multifaceted contexts limit and inhibit students` input, particularly as students move towards self-initiated activities and objectives LOs discourage difference, close potential and homogenise learning identities.
Ipsative Assessment (/ˈɪpsətɪv/; from Latin: ipse, ‘of the self’)
Reasons why learning outcomes are so important, the benefits/opportunities, challenges and limitations of outcome-based learning have started resonating with me but how to best adapt an evidence-informed approach within the UK Professional Standards Framework ‘areas of activity’, ‘core knowledge’ and ‘values’ expected of HE teachers are not explicit to me neither how applicable can be to my local context of teaching. Alan Davies`s document Writing Learning Outcomes and Assessment Criteria in Art and Design outlines the purposes of outcome-led learning in art and design and identifies misconceptions about the purpose and significance of setting learning outcomes and assessment criteria as an opportunity for the students to define the approach they take to learning and clearly understand how and at what level they are expected to achieve these learning outcomes (and ultimately meet the assessment criteria) but also for universities to establish how to move forwards to a learning paradigm which supports autonomous learning.
Davies presents the challenge to articulate learning outcomes promoting both cognitive attributes and measurable achievement within the ambiguous terms associated with art and design such as creativity, imagination and originality. Implications involved with teaching and assessing only those outcomes that can be easily measured by dis-aggregating what is to be understood into more measurable entities, itemising processes and learning in parts; a surface approach that can lead to far too many generated outcomes so the students are not concerned about overall intention but about developing a strategic approach to meet only the basic requirements to pass stages without delving into the most important aspects of the subject of study.
This inevitably compromises a holistic and integrated understanding by the students which is more consistent with a deep approach determined by criterion-referenced and student-centred assessment schemes that encourage students to become more independent as learners, to develop a more sophisticated conception of the discipline they are studying that map onto the world rather being closed and defined in terms of itself. The extent to which as argued by Mark Barrow in the article Assessment and student transformation: linking character and intellect (2006) assessment might incite students to reflect on themselves, on their normality or deviance as an act of ‘deliberate aesthetic and ethical self-forming’ (Bleakley, 2000, p.417), and thus on their progress towards meeting the transformative goals of higher education and towards being expert in their chosen discipline.
So instead of manoeuvring students into correct and functional form of thinking it should be inculcated in the students an attitude of personal inquiry and learning achievement resulting from engagement in not only pre-specified set tasks by programme teams and intended learning outcomes. Davis states, that as students advance through their course they may be responsible for setting their own learning outcomes. These can be referred to as negotiated learning outcomes.
But how the assessment regime in art & design can encourage students to take ownership of their learning and explore the boundaries of their discipline, enabling them to discover for themselves where their values lie in terms of their approach to learning and the nature of their subject? How assessment can give students a structure, not to cling to but to negotiate with?
‘LO systems dismantle the affective relations that underpin the sociality of learning, the give and take of human interaction. Rather, if a degree of trust were opened up to allow teachers to design programmes with the use of open frameworks (e.g. CHAT), learning could be negotiated to meet student motivation, disciplinary imperatives and social need, enabling teachers and learners to assess meaningful activity.” (Addison, 2014)
References
Addison, N. (2014) Doubting learning Outcomes in HE Contexts: From Performativity Towards Emergence and Negotiation, (pp 313–315), International Journal of Art & Design Education. Available at: https://23045626.myblog.arts.ac.uk/files/2024/04/Addison-2014-Doubting-Learning-Outcomes.pdf
Barrow, M. (2006). Assessment and student transformation: linking character and intellect. Studies in Higher Education, 31(3), 357–372. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070600680869
Davies, A. (2022) Writing Learning Outcomes and Assessment Criteria in Art and Design. Available at: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=3967630f5169ed34ca2fa378abca07f977ca7c82
Google/Wikipedia Entry (2024) Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural-historical_activity_theory
Google/Wikipedia Entry (2024) Ipsative. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipsative