Chapter 10: Socio-Cultural Aspects of Assessment

ion and memory skills, and the separability of social from cognitive skills and knowledge from action . performance in cognitive tasks is inseparable from values about appropriate social relationships in such situations" (pp. 58-59). Reliance on others for help in problem-solving situations varies according to the cultural setting. In traditional American and British school settings, relying on a companion for help in assessment is likely to be considered cheating, whereas in other settings in everyday situations not to use a companion's assistance may be regarded as inappropriate. Some researchers in the sociocultural perspective, which focuses on situated learning, suggest that assessment is not necessary, while others suggest that individuals must be assessed as part of a group. For example. Lave and Wenger (1991) argue that, in the apprenticeship system, testing is not necessary since increasing participation has its own use value; in settings such as schools, however, learning becomes commoditized, and exchange value, demonstrated through testing, replaces use value: Gipps: Socio-Cultural Aspects of Assessment 377 The commoditization of learning engenders a fundamental contradiction between the use and exchange values of the outcome of learning, which manifests itself in conflicts between learning to know and learning to display knowledge for evaluation. Testing in schools and trade schools (unnecessary in situations of apprenticeship learning) is perhaps the most pervasive and salient example of a way of establishing the exchange value of knowledge. Test taking then becomes a new parasitic practice, the goal of which is to increase the exchange value of learning independently of its use value, (p. 112) The requirement, in the sociocultural perspective, to assess the processes of learning and to assess learning in the social setting can be met in a number of ways. Portfolios can be used to reflect the processes of learning and their development over time. Portfolios, of course, take many forms: They may contain items selected at intervals by the teacher or "best" pieces of work chosen by the pupil; work in the portfolio may be assessed in a more or less standardized way (Koretz et al., 1993). To support the sociocultural model of learning, they need in some way to reflect or articulate the social setting in which the learning took place. Commentary by the teacher and the pupil can describe the social situation of learning. For example, student and teacher commentaries are part of the final portfolio in the PROPEL project (Wolf et al., 1991). These commentaries are focused on the process of learning and developing achievement, and they encourage reflection on the part of both pupil and teacher. The process, Wolf (1989) argues, is difficult because portfolios ' 'demand intimate and often frighteningly subjective talk with students" (p. 37). Pupils may be unwilling to engage in the intellectual process, while teachers may be unable to give up control of the discussion. But when it works, she argues, it is well worth the effort. Assessment within a social situation can be afforded by assessing students in collaborative group activities in which they contribute to a task and help others. "In such assessment, as in instruction using group approaches, the student can observe how others reason and can receive feedback on his or her own efforts. In this context, not only performance, but also the facility with which a student adapts to help and guidance, can be assessed" (Glaser & Silver, 1994, pp. 412-413). Such socially situated collaborative assessment also has the advantage of encouraging students to develop and question their definitions of competence. Brown and colleagues analyze collaborative assessment environments and compare them with collaborative teaching environments. In their view (Brown et al., 1992), the crucial difference between the two is that in the teaching environment aid is opportunistic, while in the assessment environment aid is in the form of "standardized hints. " Lampert (1990) describes a project in the teaching of mathematics in which the roles and responsibilities of teachers and students within classroom discourse were altered. Sometimes the teacher consciously held back from commenting on answers given by students, and so the class developed discussion around the problems and tasks, made hypotheses about solutions, and took risks in the way that the mathematical community would. The teacher, standing back, refused to be the intellectual authority in the way that is normally the case in school mathematics. This approach to learning in a classroom community entails a 378 Review of Research in Education, 24 different view of assessment of pupil attainment, one based very much on understanding: The questions I expected them to answer went beyond simply determining whether they could get the solutions. I also expected them to answer questions about mathematical assumptions and the legitimacy of their strategies. Answers to problems were given by students, but I did not interpret them to be the primary indication of whether they knew mathematics, (p. 38) The emphasis was on the analysis of the students' language, their assertions, and their ability to demonstrate that their strategies were valid. In such a group/community learning situation, assessment may be focused as much on the group as on individuals: "By the end of the lesson, 14 of the 18 students present in the class had had something mathematically substantial to say about exponents" (p. 52). Cobb and Bowers (1998), too, talk about assessment (using the term evaluation) within the group. Within their cognitive and situated perspective on learning, performance is socially situated. Therefore, the teacher should evaluate the group's changing beliefs and reasoning, and the individual should be evaluated in relation to the group. The issue for Cobb and Bowers is how one views individuals whose (mathematical) reasoning is less effective than others in the group. They describe such students as those who have less sophisticated ways of participating in particular classroom practices. Since performance is socially situated, the performance resides not just in the student but in the relationship between the teacher and the individual. They treat academic success/failure as the exclusive property neither of individual students nor of the instruction they receive. They see it as a "relation" between individual students and the practices that they and the teacher construct. So, pupil assessment in this model focuses on the individual as part of the group, and the key issue becomes how or whether one interprets the evidence of performance of individuals. Assessment within the framework of sociocultural theory is seen as interactive, dynamic, and collaborative. Rather than an external and formalized activity, assessment is integral to the teaching process and embedded in the social and cultural life of the classroom. Such an approach is seen as constructive—because of its focus on assessing the process of learning, the attempt to elicit elaborated performance, and the emphasis on collaborative activity (whether the collaboration is with the teacher or a group of peers). Much of the work in this field is still at the level of research, however, and a number of issues remain to be clarified. For example, such assessment is often time consuming and demands particular skills of the teacher/assessor. The procedures, being unstandardized, do not meet traditional reliability criteria, and this has an impact on the purposes for which the assessment can or should be used. There are many issues to be resolved around the evaluation of individuals within group performance. A key issue, too, is the relationship between teacher/assessor and pupil. The Assessment Relationship In traditional assessment, the relationship between teacher and student is a hierarchical one. The teacher sets and defines the task and determines its evaluation. The student's role is to be the object of this activity and, through the Gipps: Socio-Cultυral Aspects of Assessment 379 completion of a range of tests, to be graded. However, if one uses an interpretive approach, there are other ways of seeing this relationship. In newer forms of assessment, such as negotiated assessment and self-assessment, the student has a role in discussing and negotiating the terms and outcomes of the assessment, although in reality such a practice may be rare. The thesis behind such a nontraditional approach (critical-theoretic in Habermas's framework) is that students need to become involved in the assessment process so that they are encouraged to monitor and reflect on their own performance in order to become self-monitoring and self-regulating learners (Broadfoot, 1996; Wittrock & Baker, 1991; Wolf et al., 1991). A key element of the interpretive paradigm is the need to understand a learner's response. In relation to informal assessment, this includes the learner's expectations, assumptions, and interpretations of the classroom culture, task demands, and criteria for success (Aikenhead, 1997). Sadler (1998), developing this line of argument further, points out that teachers commonly bring with them to the assessment setting a more elaborate and extensive knowledge base, a set of attitudes or dispositions toward teaching as an activity, skill in devising assessments, a deep knowledge of criteria and standards appropriate to the assess­ ment task, evaluative skills in making judgements about student performance, and expertise in framing feedback statements. Sadler argues that an appreciation of these resources and skills is important because eventually the teacher must share them with the student in order to pass them on. Ultimately the intention of most educational systems is to help students not only grow in knowledge and expertise, but also to become progressively independent of the teacher fo