Ipsative Assessment

Motivation through Marking Progress

G. Hughes

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137267221
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

Ipsative assessment is a powerful new approach that provokes a radical rethink of the purposes and methods of assessment. This book presents a case for partially replacing competitive assessment with ipsative assessment, and it explores the possibilities and the challenges with research evidence and case studies.

1

A Fresh Look at Assessment

Most of the time, most people will not achieve perfection or excellence, but most people can make improvements most of the time. This simple statement will form the basis for the book and in this introductory chapter I will begin to explore why I think a fresh look at assessment is long overdue.

Addressing the problem of assessment

Assessment seems to be a troubling and treacherous process for all involved: learners complain about unfairness and poor feedback and many find the process stressful, while many assessors and managers worry about maintaining standards and motivating learners. Although teachers may appreciate that assessment can empower learners, designing assessments, marking and giving feedback are often perceived as a chore. This book argues that the root of the problem is that assessment is highly competitive and students are constantly comparing themselves to often unachievable standards, while assessment should really be about learning and progressing.

To illustrate the damage that competition can cause and to begin a fresh look at assessment, I would like to present a short anecdote. I play in an amateur string quartet with three others who have had similar educational backgrounds to me. We gathered one evening to view a video recording of our recent concert. My three fellow string players’ viewing of the video was accompanied by volumes of criticism and cries of dismay at their perceived inadequacy of our performance. One player even suggested that perhaps we should give up playing altogether. I pointed out that they were comparing our performance to that of professional musicians and that such comparison is not helpful – we were not aiming to compete with other quartets. I reminded them that when we first started playing together two years ago we played as four separate voices and not as an ensemble, but the video recording demonstrated that we were now listening to each other and so there was evidence of how much we had improved. We would not have been able to give a credible concert performance at all two years ago and this performance was our personal best. Switching from a judgement based on a competitive standard to an assessment of our progress enabled us to feel much more proud of our performance and continue playing together, rather than disband. This incident demonstrated to me very starkly the pernicious effect of learning framed by competitive external standards that has so dominated all of our learning lives and how a simple switch to a focus on progress can have huge benefits without requiring any extra work.

Few would dispute that students can benefit from assessment and feedback and that assessment can also be harmful, but despite decades of initiatives to provide learners with better assessment, for example, coursework instead of examinations, alongside the release of resources for making assessment more reliable and fair, the problems with assessment persist. In response to the concerns about assessment there have been numerous books analysing practice and research providing us with insight into the learner and teacher perspectives. A movement that started in the school sector has grown up around viewing assessment as being for learning rather than only assessment of learning (Black & Wiliam, 2003, 2009). If students are to learn from assessment then they need both meaningful opportunities to demonstrate what they have learnt and feedback that they can use. But, students repeatedly report that feedback is not helpful and not understood (Boud & Molloy, 2013; Handley et al., 2008; Walker, 2009). There are some enduring myths about feedback: firstly, that feedback is a one-way process of imparting information on performance from an expert to novice, and secondly, that there is a single ‘best practice’ model of feedback that applies to all learners in all situations. These myths are now being challenged (Boud & Molloy, 2013; Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006; Carless et al., 2011; Crisp, 2007). But, while there are undoubtedly pockets of excellent practice and broad agreement that assessment has improved over the past few decades, there remains unease about assessment and some fundamental disagreements over its purpose and practice.

Recent educational contexts do not inspire optimism over continued change for the better and may even herald regression to the kind of mass testing that has been largely discredited. Post-compulsory education in the UK and many other places is undergoing unprecedented reform as financial and organisational accountability increase under tighter budgets. Meanwhile student backgrounds and expectations widen and change. Educators face new challenges in supporting development of personalised learning, lifelong learning and self-directed workplace learning skills. But, as resources in education dwindle, current systems that are already stretched become further pressurised with the risk of damaging ground gained in promoting assessment reform. Teaching staff find themselves under increasing pressure to mark more in less time, managers fret about standards and so it is little wonder that assessment has become the bête noir of the teaching–learning–assessment nexus. Evidence for assessment systems under pressure abounds (Gibbs, 2006).

This book will argue that the underlying purpose of assessment as a competitive process where an individual’s performance is compared to externally set standards is deeply problematic. Constantly comparing oneself to others can be dispiriting and de-motivating: in the opening statement I noted that few of us will be top performers in any field. But, all humans have the capacity to improve and develop and it is this sense of progress that inspires and motivates us to achieve more. Assessment that records and celebrates self-progress – ipsative assessment – I will argue, can do just this – and it might even reduce the time spent on assessment and feedback and make it more enjoyable for everyone involved. Teachers might say ‘I gave a great lesson today’ but might we also say ‘I did a great assessment’?

Competitive assessment – who benefits?

Tests, examinations, coursework including essays and reports, student presentations and portfolios of evidence for professional courses and creative disciplines, all have one thing in common: they measure outcomes of learning against externally agreed performance criteria and standards and in the more scientific disciplines that means ‘right answers’. The dominant outcomes-based approach to assessment has served us well in identifying the top performers and has a social gatekeeping function so that school examinations provide the route into university for the high performers and entry to professions is controlled through degrees and professional qualifications (Broadfoot, 1996). Assessment regimes are thus to various degrees highly competitive: there will be winners and losers, high achievers and low achievers, passes and fails and a persistent ‘gap’ between anyone’s current performance and the ideal or highest possible achievement, which for the majority never seems to close. The competitive nature of much assessment is often taken for granted and any critique is usually about making the process ‘fairer’ and more effective. But we might ask the question fairer for whom? There is plethora of evidence that education supports the reproduction of social disadvantage and that meritocracy is a flawed ideology. Competition is historically embedded and ubiquitous and it serves both stable industrial economies and fast adapting knowledge economies very well, and thus it can be very difficult to challenge.

Competition is inevitably present in classrooms and when any group of people learn and interact together. This book is not about challenging all such competitive behaviour per se as there might be a range of competitive interactions with different outcomes, both positive and negative. However, where the stakes are very high, that is in a summative assessment where work is graded or marked, the link with competition is so embedded that conceiving of any alternative seems impossible. But, the emphasis on competition means that assessment has huge benefits for a few, while opportunities to use assessment to promote learning for the many are sacrificed. Competitive assessment promotes a narrow interpretation of feedback as something that is ‘given’ to passive learners and it is difficult for learners to engage. Assessments that could develop learner self-reliance, such as self- and peer assessment, are easily swamped by the dominant discourses of competition. Competitive assessment has other detrimental effects of narrowing the curriculum, encouraging instrumental learning and problematic methods of motivating learners through praise and rewards. Because the assessment stakes are high, competitive assessment absorbs upwardly spiraling resources in marking, monitoring and moderating assessments to justify its purpose in social selection.

Ipsative judgements: being as good as you can be at that time in that place

The opening statement for this book is broad enough not to be disputed, but if we want assessment to be helpful and positive for the majority most of the time, then it follows that assessment must judge progress rather than attainment. And there is a way of doing this: ipsative assessment. I have previously given a simple definition: ‘Ipsative assessment compares existing performance with previous performance’ (Hughes, 2011: 353). Such a comparison between previous and current individual performance gives information on progress and is a very different judgement from those made through comparisons with external standards and criteria for attainment (Hughes, 2011).

When I first heard the term ‘ipsative assessment’ I was intrigued but had little idea that it might be useful in teaching and learning. Ipsative judgements are taking place all the time, although they are not usually identified as such. There are numerous awards and measurement that are for progress in sport, health and the environment. A personal best in athletics is an ipsative measurement. Another example from those participating in a self-help group to lose weight is a ‘Slimmer of the Year’ award for the individual who has made the greatest progress in their own weight loss. Ipsative judgements can be qualitative as well as quantitative. My local park was transformed through tireless volunteers and a development grant and as a consequence won the ‘Most Improved Park, UK’ award. Again the award is for improvement and not the final outcome.

Ipsative assessment is also commonplace in education, but not often formally recognised. It is practised by diligent and dedicated teachers worldwide who inform learners about their progress to encourage and spur them on. Teachers and parents might observe progress in young children’s speech, recognition of colours or understanding of numbers. Teachers of younger children informally discuss progress, such as progress in writing, with pupils in the classroom (Torrance & Pryor, 1998). Then, at the other end of the learning spectrum, doctoral students may be assessed at regular intervals on individual progress towards the final thesis. For example, I took over supervision of a doctoral student whose supervisor had been ill and who had written up a draft thesis largely unsupervised. She was aware that she had written far too much but was despondent and had little confidence in her ability to write at the level needed to gain the award. In our supervision sessions we discussed re-structuring and focusing her writing, and each time we reflected on the progress she had made since the previous draft rather than what was inadequate. She became much more positive about her writing and started taking more risks over selecting the content for her thesis, and in a relatively short time she submitted her final thesis and passed. This experience encouraged me to think more deeply about the motivational power of an ipsative approach. However, I was aware that in most educational experience, assessment is competitive and self-referential assessments are largely hidden and are rarely recorded to contribute to formal awards and qualifications.

Putting forward a case for ipsative assessment

This book presents a case for formally including self-referential or ipsative assessment in mainstream education. It makes the radical proposal that introducing ipsative assessment into education to largely, but not completely, replace externally referenced assessment will have a huge impact on the learners who currently do not flourish, and could even encourage those who do succeed to further raise their game. I will discuss how feedback can be ipsative, how to ensure assessment is cumulative over time as well as how ipsative grading and progress reports – marking progress – could be introduced to combine with more conventional assessment. Because ipsative assessment is longitudinal and focused on learners, it is a powerful approach that allows those who begin from a disadvantaged position due recognition and reward for progress, and not only achievement. It also encourages learners to become more self-aware and more assessment literate over time through reducing dependency on the teacher for advice and critique.

To make a case for ipsative assessment, some questions the book aims to answer are as follows:

• Why is assessment competitive?
• What are the effects of competitive and externally referenced assessment on learning?
• What does ipsative assessment mean?
• How is ipsative assessment different from externally referenced assessment?
• How might ipsative assessment improve student motivation and learning?
• Could ipsative assessment create more problems?
• How can ipsative assessment be combined with externally referenced assessment?
• What approach should managers and policy makers take to implement ipsative assessment?
• How does ipsative assessment meet the needs of twenty-first century learners?

Methodology and theoretical frameworks

Voices

A book contains many voices, and in Ipsative Assessment: Motivation through Marking Progress, there are the voices of key thinkers and writers, of students and practitioners as well as the authorial voice. Some will be dominant and others repressed at different times (Schostak & Schostak, 2013). Although this book is about assessment as an educational phenomenon, it also recognises that the learning context cannot be isolated from the wider social and institutional contexts. Education is a diverse discipline and encompasses psychology, sociology, technology, philosophy and management literature, and I will draw on range of disciplinary perspectives with the aim of producing an inter-disciplinary text. Barnett (2011) claims that education looks at what ought to be, whereas sociology studies what happens now at a wider social level and psychology looks at the individual. All are relevant. Education also encompasses different modes of knowledge from the theoretical to the practical and professional. My practical experience is in teaching, learning and assessment in both secondary and tertiary education with some managerial responsibilities: these experiences will influence my perspective. However, my current role is in university teaching, and most of the examples and anecdotes I present will be from my own and other higher education practitioners’ experiences.

Criticality

My book aims to be critical in several senses of the word – critical action, critical reason and critical self-reflection (Barnett, 1997). Critical action is about making a difference to people’s lives and I aim to provoke thinking about how assessment can serve the needs of the disadvantaged and not just those who are already successful under current assessment regimes. I am indebted to the ideas of Paolo Freire (1973) and his concept of a critical pedagogy which has had a significant influence on educational theories of teaching and learning, although less so on assessment. The work of Richard Sennett (2003) on respect in a society with unequal talent and opportunity is also influential. Being critical also means presenting competing viewpoints, applying critical reasoning, questioning the status quo and unearthing taken-for-granted assumptions. Some myths about assessment are that:

• Competitive assessment is a rational and fair means for social selection.
• Competition and grades motivate learning.
• There is a correlation between progress and attainment.

I also intend that this text will be self-critical and I will be open and honest about the limitations of this work and the impact it might have on others.

Theorising different levels of social analysis

Different levels of social analysis can be relevant to assessment: the macro, meso and micro levels. At the macro level I will briefly consider contemporary views on what kind of world we live in the twenty-first century. My ideas have some congruence with Bauman’s (2000, 2005) exploration of liquid modernity which he uses as a metaphor for our fast-moving and consumer-orientated world where not everyone can go with the flow. I will also draw on thinking about the social segregation role of education from Broadfoot (1996) and Madaus et al. (2009).

At the meso level I will address institutional cultures and how these can produce obstacles to change in higher education (Dopson & McNay, 1996; Barnett, 1990). I draw on the innovation and management literature exploring the relative merits of managerialism, distributed leadership, use of technology and non-linear versus linear models of diffusion of innovation building on the work of Trowler et al. (2003) and Somekh (2007).

It is at the micro level of the classroom or practical workshop that voices of practitioners and students as well as assessment researchers are mainly heard. My work is informed by social constructivist theories of learnin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 A Fresh Look at Assessment
• Part I The Effects of Competition on Assessment: Making a Case for Ipsative Assessment
• Part II Ipsative Assessment in Practice: Challenges and Visions
• Appendix 1: Feedback analysis tool
• Appendix 2: Feedback profiles before and after introducing ipsative assessment
• References
• Subject Index