Rene’s Assessment

It is clear, and I think a matter of broad consensus that our succes and prosperity, and that of our society, requires increasing amounts of learning, reflection and adaptation. It is this assertion that makes widening participation, and lifelong learning so important. In particular in these difficult times, the investments we make now in our skills and competences will determine how strong we will arise from the ashes of this recession.

It is therefore rather shameful to see how the higher education sector is being driven to ruin. While government is advocating that we widen articipation, at the same time it cuts back funding for teaching by 65 million pounds in the next academic year. Earlier it had already stopt funding the education of those of us who already have a degree (Equivalent or lower level Qualifications). It is strange isn’t it, that on the one side we get told how important it is that we all keep learning, as the halftime of knowledge is decreasing so rapidly. Yet our funding system now seems to say that once you have learned something, no further investment or maintenance of that learning will ever be required. We spend billions of pounds on rescuing a banking system that few of us actually really want, but we cannot commit to even a fraction of that funding to guarantee us the learning and development we all so desperately want and need. Lifelong learning is on the verge of extinction, the Times Higher Education reports, but very few of us seem to really care. Or have we just become too numb over the past months to realise what is happening?

Our regulations and practices, both in education and professional bodies increasingly breed compliance in stead of creativity. Are we selling off Higher Education to corporations, and to those with the personal wealth to fund their own development? A system that should be about the development of critical individuals, which I believe to be in the long term benefit of society as a whole, is risking slowly transforming into a goverment sponsored corporate training ground. I believe that is the very last thing that we need.

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I attended a guest lecture by Jesse Martin on how Psychology can contribute to the scholarship of teaching. It was an interesting talk, but the thing that really caught my attention concerned feedback.

Jesse was illustrating how we often fail to apply well understood psychological principles and research to our practice by looking at the current hype around feedback. According to existing cognitive research, extensive feedback actually breeds compliance, not learning. While targeted feedback at key points in someones development is important, continuous detailed feedback actually inhibits independent critical thought.While a bit of a shock at first, I must admit that this does make sense on an intuitive level. So then what do we do?

Well, there are some usefull suggestions from existing psychological research here as well. One observed phenomenon that we might exploit is the testing effect. This effect describes how neural connections are strengthened by retrieval. practice, such as through formative assessment, can therefor enhance the retention of what has been learned. it has also been shown to improve the retention over time.

So formative assessment is still seen as crucial. But it might be that the activity is much more important then the feedback resulting from it.

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