I am coming a bit late to this
party, as it has been some days now since Education Secretary Michael Gove
announced his intention to replace the GCSE with an English Baccalaureate
Certificate. Many comments have been
made about this change by people with far more knowledge and expertise than
me. Perhaps the most entertaining,
passionate and yet at the same time clear-sighted comments have come from the
current Children’s Poet Laureate Michael Rosen, who has been blogging at length
about what he calls the ‘GCSE Fraud’, his firm believe that the new
‘O-level’ style qualification will not raise standards, and the fact that Gove is using
highly questionable data to support his claims of a need for change.
I am not a specialist of further or
compulsory education (i.e. GCSEs and A-Levels).
My teaching career has been an exclusively higher education one (i.e. BA
degrees). Teachers in compulsory
education are required to undergo years of specialist training before they are
deemed qualified enough to actually teach,
while frankly I was allowed to lecture a group of students after merely
completing a Masters dissertation about Tristram
Shandy. However, I have taken a keen
interest in higher education teaching as skill and a profession – and from that
perspective I cannot help but be staggered at the changes Gove is proposing,
and since this is my blog and I can write what I like I am going to say why.
The idea of replacing GCSE’s with a
single all-defining exam-based qualification seems to me destined to destroy
thirty years of educational thought which has been attempting to recognise the
total inadequacy of such an approach.
If there is a difference between
our ideas of education now, and our ideas of education thirty years ago, can be
perhaps be theoretically summed up as the absence of behaviourism as an
unquestionably dominant underpinning to all educational practice. Behaviourism as an educational theory supposes
that learning is something which can be seen to take place when our behaviour
changes. In other words, it is not what
we think, it is what we do that demonstrates that we have learned
something. Implicit in such a model is
the belief that learning is something shaped by outside forces. In other words we are made to learn by the
environments in which we function. A
pivotal believe of behaviourist learning is that we learn best by repeating
something over and over again until we can replicate it instinctively. It is easy enough to picture the kind of
education which reflects this classic behaviourist model: a group of children
sat in neat little rows repeating by rote what the teacher says. And of course, what the teacher says is
always right, because it is the teacher that says it. In effect, the student is being asked to
“give back to the lecturer what he or she has previously given to them”
(Ashcroft and Palacio, 2004. p. 26).
In the 1960s cognitivist theories
emerged to challenge the dominance of behaviourist views. Reflecting the increasing understanding of
how the brain functioned, cognitivist education theories attempted to shape a
model of education which reflected better how the brain worked. In practice what this meant was an increasing
view that learning is not something entirely dependent on outside forces, but
dependent as well on internal forces.
The various differences, assumptions and beliefs that each individual
brings with them into a classroom will each effect how they think – and how
they think determines how best they can learn.
The shift from a focus on what happens in the classroom, to
what happens in the mind of the learners, led to a range of new ideas in
education. It led to the realisation that
while some people naturally respond better to visual stimuli, others respond
better to oral stimuli. It led to the
realisation that some people simply learn better through social interaction,
than by sitting still and quiet and just listening. Educators began to accommodate in their
teaching practices an understanding of the basic psychological needs of their
pupils, as defined by groundbreaking theorists like Abraham Maslow and Carl
Rogers.
The new buzz-word in education became
‘differentiation’. Teachers were trained
to be able to teach a classroom of students in a way which did not disadvantage
that boy in the corner who struggled to listen, but had no problems
reading. Not to disadvantage that girl
over there who could only really grasp ideas properly if given the chance to
talk about them. Not to label as a
failure that boy who wrote so badly that everyone thought he was stupid – when
in fact he was merely dyslexic.
Indeed, the focus appeared to be shifting from the imposed
act of teaching to the receptive act
of learning – and learning in a way
which made children actually want to do it.
As Carl Rogers so enthusiastically described, this kind of learning was:
not the lifeless, sterile, futile, quickly forgotten stuff that is crammed in to the mind of the poor helpless individual tied into his seat by ironclad bonds of conformity! I am talking about LEARNING - the insatiable curiosity that drives the adolescent boy to absorb everything he can see or hear or read about gasoline engines in order to improve the efficiency and speed of his 'cruiser'. I am talking about the student who says, "I am discovering, drawing in from the outside, and making that which is drawn in a real part of me." I am talking about any learning in which the experience of the learner progresses along this line: "No, no, that's not what I want"; "Wait! This is closer to what I am interested in, what I need"; "Ah, here it is! Now I'm grasping and comprehending what I need and what I want to know!" Rogers, C. (1983)
Of course, not all these theories were as convincing as each
other, but during this time teachers became educated as specialists in how
children learn – not simply educated as subjects specialists who had the
knowledge and simply had to tell a class what it needed to know. Extensive research was conducted by people
like John Hattie (1999) that appeared to demonstrate clearly that these more
responsive and reflexive approaches were more effective in helping children
learn, and everything appeared to be going well.
For a long time though, educational assessment seemed a long way behind educational practice. After all, what is the point of recognising
that a child learns best visually and then testing their understanding by
making them write an exam for three hours?
Assessment needed to be valid in more ways than one. In higher education Richard Wakeford (1999) suggested
three modes of validity: assessment should be valid in terms of how it changes
behaviour, certainly, but it should also be valid in terms of whether it is
appropriate to those being assessed, and in terms of how meaningfully the
assessment can be measured.
These three ideas of assessment validity appear to have made
it into the official ‘code of practice’ of the QAA (Quality Assurance Agency)
which determines the standards of all higher education in England and Wales. The QAA code of practice on assessment refers
to “validity, equity and reliability” – implying that assessments need to be
relevant, fair to all students, and capable of being fairly measured.
Implicit here is the notion that one method of assessment is
simply never appropriate to all circumstances, which the QAA also acknowledge
by encouraging “innovation and diversity in assessment practices”. The traditional unseen exam, which it appears
is going to be the only method of assessment in Gove’s new English
Baccalaureate Certificate, was discouraged because it often failed to justify
itself in terms of validity.
Certainly there are many who still view the unseen exam as
“the reliable ‘gold standard’” of educational assessment. Sally Brown and Peter Knight make a valid
point when they suggest that while exams may “encourage surface learning … it
has to be said that they also can allow the student who has gained a deeper
understanding of the subject throughout the course to show it” (Brown and
Knight, 1994. p. 67). Another strength
of unseen examinations is that they “cause the student to need to learn, which
is a significant driving force for learning” (Race, 1999. p. 62). The ‘cause’ in this case, may well be abject
fear and terror, but hey – if it makes them learn a lifetime of nervous
disorders is a small price to pay.
Another strong argument in favour of exams is that it is an
effective way to prevent plagiary.
Of course it is hard to argue that exams do not provide an
effective mechanism for limiting the instances of ‘cut and paste’
plagiarism. However, exams do not
prevent cheating altogether: students
with effective memory recall can memorise passages to include in exams, and the
range of stratagems some students may adopt in order to take forbidden
resources into an examination hall with them are arguably no less subtle than
those employed by students in trying to deceive a marker into thinking a
previously published essay is, in fact, their own.
Perhaps more significantly there is an equally strong argument
that exams can be counter-productive in dealing with plagiarism – where a
student copies somebody else’s work in their essays. It is, the argument goes, harder to cheat in
an exam.
I would disagree.
Indeed, I would go further and suggest that exams actively encourage
students to adopt a plagiary mindset. A
large percentage of plagiary cases come from students who resort to it out of
desperation – because they do not understand the things they are supposed to be
learning, they simply copy the work of those that do. Since exams are a forum in which a student is
largely expected to memorise and repeat, it appears to actively discourage
students learning things for themselves in favour of simply memorising stuff.
This is not my main problem with exams though. My main problem is that the arguments in
favour of them seem to focus on simplifying the educational process at the
expense of the standard of learning. To
blanket Gove’s new EBC qualification with a final exam is to impose a mode of
assessment with “little relevance to what was intended in either the
anticipated learning outcomes or the teaching” (Dunn, et al., 2004. p. 17) – an approach which theorists like Paul
Ramsden and David Boud have been fighting against for years.
Phil Race suggests that what unseen written exams actually
measure is nothing more than “the techniques needed to do unseen written
exams!” Race goes on to condemn unseen
written exams for de-motivating students, providing a limited learning
experience, encouraging surface learning approaches and proving “limited or
useless for measuring teamwork, leadership, and are rarely a suitable vehicle
for measuring creativity and lateral thinking” (1999. p. 62-63). In another study, Race points out the impact
of performance-related anxieties attendant on exams. Enquiring of conference delegates what their
worst nightmares about assessment might be, “the majority of them thought of
exams they had sat”. Several specific
examples are given, but it might be worth listing a few here:
§
Making the wrong choice of first question
(exams) – a good start is essential!
§
Exam paper format is different from that
expected. The main topics I studied do
not appear at all in the paper. The fire
alarm goes off!
§
Freezing, mind going blank, realizing afterwards
(and too late) what I ought to have said or written.
§
Fear, panic, not being asked what I had
studied. The awful gut feeling that you
wake up with on the morning of the exam – still remembered several years later.
§
Being so tense that I might pass out, and suffer
the embarrassment of being carried out of the exam room.
§
Finding that I was so strung up, that despite
the fact that I knew how to answer the question, I could not get my hand steady
enough to write the answer.
(Race,
1995. pp. 61-3)
Notice how exams bring with them a range of performative
factors with “little relevance to what was intended in either the anticipated
learning outcomes or the teaching”: anxiety, fear, panic, and tension all
working in such a way that even where the knowledge and understanding are
present, the form of the assessment can inhibit a students ability to
demonstrate it (Dunn, et al., 2004.
p. 17). If examinations do, as Sally
Brown and Peter Knight suggest, allow demonstrations of deep understanding,
Race’s findings suggest it to be entirely dependent on the extent to which a
student is able to approach an examination without any of these momentary and
often unpredictable reactions. It is
arguable, as well, whether examinations can ever really allow a demonstration
of deep understanding unless that student in question has a sound ability for
memory recall.
And here is the most frightening thing about what Gove is
doing. To pin a child’s entire
educational future on a single exam risks labelling them as a failure before
they even turn 16. All it takes is JUST
ONCE for a child to suffer too much from anxiety, or to become ill, or for a
fire alarm to go off, or to choose the wrong question – and that’s it. No EBC qualification. Which means no A-levels. Which means no University. Which means limited life choices.
To pin a child’s entire educational future on a single exam
means that the ones who get to University will have good memory recall, and be
good at repeating stuff.
I’m sorry, but my computer can do that – and do it
better. Mr Gove, for nearly a century
educational theorists have been trying to make education more about learning
how to learn. Teachers have become
experts in differentiation, and in helping children to use their strengths in achieving
learning. Your approach to education is
one which replaces learning with memorisation, which benefits few and will be
costly to many. When it comes to the
educational future of my children, I want to think that it is shaped by a
genuine understanding of the learning process – and not by a reactionary,
ignorant and horrifically rash policy based on the false assumption that ‘it
was better in my day’.
Bibliography:
- Merriam, S. and Caffarella (1991). Learning in Adulthood. A comprehensive guide, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
- Tennant, M. (1997) Psychology and Adult Learning, London: Routledge
- Ashcroft, K. and Palacio, D. (2004). Researching into Assessment and Evaluation in Colleges and Universities, London: RoutledgeFalmer
- Hartley, J. (1998) Learning and Studying. A research perspective, London: Routledge
- Rogers, C. (1983). The Freedom to Learn. London: Merrell
- Hattie, J. (1999). Influences on Student Learning. Available at: http://www.geoffpetty.com/downloads/word/influencesonstudent2c683.pdf [Accessed: 09/01/2006]
- Wakeford, R. (1999). Principles of Student Assessment, in A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 2nd edn., Fry, H., Ketteridge, S. and Marshall, S., eds., London: Kogan Page, 42 – 61
- Race, P. (1999). Why Assess Innovatively?, in; Brown, S. and Glasner, A., eds., Assessment Matters in Higher Education, Buckingham: Open University Press, 57-70
- Race, P. (1995). What has Assessment Done for Us – and to Us?, in; Knight, P., ed. Assessment for Learning in Higher Education, London: Kogan Page, 61 – 74
- Dunn, L., Morgan, C., O’Reilly, M. and Parry, S. (2004). The Student Assessment Handbook: New Directions in Traditional and Online Assessment, London: Routledge Falmer
- Brown, S. and Knight, P. (1994). Assessing Learners in Higher Education, London: Kogan Page
Hmmm.
ReplyDeleteWhile constitutionally inclined to support you I find your arguments one sided:
rote learning for quick recall is essential in some jobs, so may be worth testing as we funnel children to them.
yes, exams are terrifying, but I used to ace exams and have a terrible time with essays--all that time meant I spent ages reading and putting off the terrible day of writing, to the point of crying over a tutor because I couldn't get started; and I know others who felt the same way.
Good point - and yes, I'm afraid I am very one-sided. I am not sure though, from what you say, that you would advocate exams being the ONLY mode of assessment though - would you? As you say, some of us function better with exams, some with essays, and it is unfair to force everyone into the same mould.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I aced exams too. Indeed, I got an A in English from an exam based on a text which I hadn't even read. I hadn't revised. Knew diddly squat. But was good at waffling.
Nothing's changed.
Right on! I was good at exams too, so I got on.
ReplyDeleteStill, it could be argued that exams, teaching kids to cope in stressful situations, is good training for life too. But this has to be alongside genuine learning, how to manage facts & data, how to analyse experiences and the world, and so on. So what on earth was wrong with mixing exams with course work in the first place?