It is currently presented by Dylan Wiliam, writing in both the British Educational Research Journal (1996) and British Journal for Curriculum and Assessment (1992), that the percentage of students misclassified by testing at key stage 2 is anywhere up to 40%, whilst if national curriculum tests are approximately 80% reliable the percentage of student misclassified at key stage 3 is up to 46%. This remarkable statistic presents a stark picture of the inaccurate assessment that is central to creating the troubled picture of inflated data, which immediately undermines the validity of the current process of measurement for secondary schools in England and Wales. It means that teachers are regularly working with data that only becomes more volatile as they and school managers apply their own value added progress measures on top. In simple terms it means that we are working with data in schools that is fundamentally unreliable and yet our own success is measured by it to the point where it can ultimately affect our pay and conditions. Bourdieu (1967) cites Durkheim and the quote is particularly salient in today’s audit culture as he elegantly reflects, ‘[a]ll that is learnt is a remarkable skill in concealing from oneself and others that the dazzling shell of high-flown expression is empty of thought’ (p.354). Or, according to Zizek (1989), quoted by Atkinson (2011), the ‘act of concealing deceives us precisely by pretending to conceal something’ (p.99).
If the pedagogy of audit is to remain, and it shows no signs of going away, is there a way to improve the validity and reliability of measuring success whilst justifying the less prescriptive methods of assessment as seen in the art classroom? Wiliam (2001), argues that it would take the significant extension of time in tests to increase their reliability and validity and states:
‘if we wanted to improve the reliability of… tests so that only 10% of students were awarded the incorrect level, we should need to increase the length of the tests in each subject to over 30 hours!’ (p.19).
This prodigious comment actually does a lot to support the importance of the art examination - currently 10 hours at GCSE level and 20 hours for the GCE qualification (8 hours at AS level and 12 hours at A2 but to become 25 hours under new A-level specification framework for 2016) and begs the question; are the art results actually the most accurate in the school? It perhaps makes sense considering that the current exam timescale actually makes up the 30 hours cited by Wiliam. But there is more; In the build up to such an examination there is the exploration of initial ideas, the continual refinement and reviewing of ones practice, the self, peer & teacher evaluation that take place throughout the exam preparatory period (not to mention the months of exploration, mistake making, learning, reflecting and experimenting throughout the previous coursework unit) before the culmination of the 2 or 3 day long timed outcome. It also needs to be taken into consideration that the assessment structures within the qualifications build on top of each other, resulting in the gradual yet continual raising of student development over four years from year 10 to year 13 through long-term thematic projects and on-going formative feedback.
This then raises another question - is the artist teacher’s knowledge of their students and application of their assessment, both formative and summative therefore more reliable and valid than any projected grade set by stakeholders or government statistics? If so, there is a case for promoting the validity and reliability of the art results as the most rigorous and trust-worthy across the current testing system in schools. This throws into doubt the current narrow external performance measures & data targets being forced onto teachers and their students.
It is a positive argument to make for two reasons. Firstly it outlines the continued importance of teaching and learning through the pedagogy of the artist teacher, where the student is encouraged to become an active and creative individual, heavily involved in their own learning and it also denounces the rigid, narrowing band of achievement as presented by the current neoliberal model for education. Yet it does not mean that all is well. Atkinson (2011), when analysing systems of assessment, presents them as ‘a clear manifestation… of the wider exponential growth of audit cultures’ precipitating learning ‘along prescribed routes’ (p.98). So we can see that, by its very existence the demand for assessment underpins the pedagogy of audit that I am seeking to undermine. The learning parameters set by the rigid molar structures of assessment have often been challenged by artist teachers but ultimately we return to the position where:
‘[t]he discrepancy between belief and practice is infused with complicities of power whereby although we may not believe totally in our specific social mandates the demands of our institutionalised practices suggest that we do’
Atkinson (2011, p.97).
This is evidence that despite the best intentions of the lines of flight to decode, deterritorialise and undermine the working of the social machine they are eventually always:
‘recaptured or reterritorialized in molar processes such as institutionalized and bureaucratic education practices that translate the desire of bodies into the line segments necessary to make ‘education’ happen’
Albrecht-Crane & Daryl Flack (2007, p.104).
As such, by ‘virtue of molar segmentation, bodies become identifiable in their roles as teacher and students’ (p.103) and we then need to ‘consider carefully how learners and teachers and their objects are constructed or commoditised and how such processes prescribe learning and teaching’ Atkinson, (2011, p.99).
What Wiliam does for the importance of arts education and assessment however is bring about evidence that helps reclaim the argument for process rather than the simply the focus on end result where we now have a case for challenging the pedagogy of audit through the explicit reliability and validity of our delivery. Wiliam (2001) talks about the relationship between reliability and validity of testing and how the results of ‘even the best tests can be wildly inaccurate’ for individuals and for this reason high-stake decisions should never be based on the results of individual tests. He states that:
‘[I]t is worth noting that these are not weaknesses in the quality of the tests but fundamental limitations of what tests can do… the key to improved reliability lies with increased use of teacher assessment’ (p.20).
This does challenge the current pedagogy of audit as the main form of measuring progress and validating success and goes some way to arguing that the current system places too much importance on teaching to the test over the development of life-long learners. Glenys Stacey of Ofqual, in a speech to the Association of School and College Leaders on 20th March 2015 also explains how:
‘in this country we put a great deal of reliance on individual grades, on results… the grades students achieve are central to how schools are judged – central to accountability’
It is worth noting that Stacey does go onto prescribe how the reforming of qualifications will validate the current upheaval we are seeing in the sector but mainly through the use of neoliberal rhetoric making the content unreliable in my opinion.
There is clarity in Wiliam’s method of manipulating the more supple molecular frameworks however as it potentially gives power back to the artist teacher to continue applying ‘processes of real learning and their affective dimensions’ Atkinson (2011, p.98) through a more abstract version of the commodity of assessment. Even if it means a return to the contradictions between practice and assessment, it is one ‘with new points located outside the limits and in other directions’ where we ‘plug the tracings back into the map, connect the roots or trees back up with a rhizome’ Deleuze & Guattari (1987, p.11 & 14). Indeed, Bourdieu helps make the point that if we can position ourselves to challenge the audit culture through evidencing the importance of our own, more accurate, collation of information of our students; through assessment, through delivery, through the possibility of illumination by conversation and negotiation we are in greater control of our actions that the current system would like us to be:
‘The cunning of pedagogic reason lies precisely in the fact that it manages to extort what is essential while seeming to demand the insignificant… Bodily hexis is political mythology realized, em-bodied, turned into a permanent disposition, a durable way of standing, speaking, walking, and thereby of feeling and thinking’
Margolis (1999, p.71).
This is what the artist teacher does so well. It is our relationship with our classes, with individuals specifically, which underpins our role. The craft of our pedagogical approaches are difficult to be measured and controlled through audit and we manipulate our routines and read the situations put in front of us on a daily basis. The practical nature of this pedagogy, where we accompany learners as they learn and support them through the demands of assessment by providing a framework where we can accurately place their progress, whilst still being able to encourage a creative and intuitive learning environment, is key to challenging compliance to the pedagogy of audit. The strength of belief in the validity and reliability of assessment in our subject can challenge the demand to defer to big data, stakeholders predictions and the increased monitoring of our classroom activity. The pedagogy of audit will remain but as artist teachers we can be confident in our identity, our ability and our understanding of more complex pedagogical approaches that continue to deterritorialise the more rigid constraints of the current system both through reflective practice and assessment.
Reference List:
Albrecht-Crane, C. and Daryl Slack, J. (2007) Towards a Pedagogy of Affect in Hickey-Moody, A. and Malins, P. (2007) Deleuzian Encounters: Studies in Contemporary Social Issues
Palgrave MacMillan
St Martin’s Press
Atkinson, D. (2011) Art, Equality and Learning: Pedagogies Against the State
Sense Publishing
Badham, M. (2013) The Turn to Community
Journal of Arts & Communities, volume 5, numbers 2 & 3
Intellect Limited
Barber, M. and Hill, P. (2014) Preparing for a Renaissance in Assessment
London: Pearson
BBC News Education (2013) Warnings of Rise of ‘Unqualified Teachers’ in Classrooms
BBC News Education (2012) Academies Told They Can Hire Unqualified Teachers
Bourdieu, P. (1967) Systems of Education and Systems of Thought
International Social Science Journal: Social Functions of Education, volume XIX, number 3
Unesco
Bouveresse, J. (1999) Rules, Dispositions, and the Habitus in Shusterman, R. (1999) Bourdieu: A Critical Reader
Blackwell Publishers Inc.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
DfE (Department for Education) (2015) Speech: 20th March Stacey, G. Artistic Tensions
Gov.uk
DfE (Department for Education) (2014) Speech: Secretary of State for Education: Our Plan for Education
Gov.uk
DfE (Department for Education) (2012) Academies to Have Same Freedom as Free Schools Over Teachers
Gov.uk
Hickman, R. (2007) (In Defence of) Whippet-Fancying and Other Vices: Re-evaluating Assessment in Art & Design in Rayment, T. (2007) The Problem of Assessment in Art & Design
NSEAD
Intellect Books
Lords Hansard text for 27th November 2014 (2014) Schools: Arts Education
Margolis, J. (1999) Pierre Bourdieu: Habitus and the Logic of Practice in Shusterman, R. (1999) Bourdieu: A Critical Reader
Blackwell Publishers Inc.
OECD (2014) PISA 2012 Results in Focus: What 15-year Olds Know and What They Can Do With What They Know
OECD 2014
OFSTED (2015) Better Inspection for All - a report on the responses to the consultation February 2015
OFSTED 2015
Prime Minister’s Office, 10 Downing Street (2014) Press Release: 8th December Cameron, D. Maths and Science Must Be the Top Priority in Schools
Gov.uk
Smith, M. K. (2012) What Is Pedagogy? The encyclopedia of informal education. [http://infed.org/mobi/what-is-pedagogy/. Retrieved 20/04/2015]
University of Warwick (2015) Enriching Britain: Culture, Creativity and Growth. The 2015 Report by the Warwick Commission on the Future of Cultural Value
The University of Warwick
Wiliam, D. (2001) Reliability, Validity and All That Jazz. Education 3-13 Assessment October 2001 p.17-21
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