Integrating student voice: assessment for empowerment

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Bain, Jennifer. 2010. Integrating student voice: assessment for empowerment. Practitioner Research in Higher Education, 4(1), pp. 14-29. ISSN 1755-1382 [Article]

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This paper charts the development of a conceptual model for student involvement in assessment practice. This development seeks, through an exploration of literature in the field, to locate pedagogy that:
• supports partnerships in assessment that lead to empowered autonomous learners.
• provides opportunities for student voice that support the students’ growing ability to think critically about – and take responsibility for – their own assessment.

Accordingly, this paper uncovers a conceptual model located in critical pedagogy that might be argued to move away from a dominant discourse of assessment that illuminates the role of students as passive recipients, toward a discourse that supports the development of student autonomy and more effective student/academic partnerships. It puts forward a critical pedagogy of assessment that might involve an entirely new orientation, one that embraces a number of principles that may not be familiar in generic higher education assessment practice. These principles are rooted in dialogic interactions so that the roles of teacher and learner are shared and teacher and, particularly, student voices are validated. The paper goes on to suggest that by closely examining what is meant by the term student voice, it is possible to begin to envisage a conceptual model for integrating student voice into higher education assessment practice. Through this model, we might juxtapose the transformative goals of critical pedagogy with the transformative possibilities of student voice.

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Article