6.4 Theoretical shifts and discourses of learning

be self-defeating, as shown in the doctor residency programme. Strategies and tactics abound: to incorporate assessment into the teaching system (e.g. Schuwirth & van der Vleuten, 2011); the design and implementation of assessment rubric to enable assessment for learning (e.g. Maxwell, 2010); the design of feedback for learning based on ideas of “sustainable assessment” (e.g. Boud & Molloy, 2013); the enabling of “meta-thinking” described in Marzano’s “habits of mind” (1992) as “mental dispositions or traits individuals can develop to render their thinking and learning more self-regulated” (Beck et al., 2013, p. 328); and so on.

Yet a more fundamental shift in thinking about assessment and learning is required which suggests neither more nor mere changes in teaching/learning activities. There is a need to address the state of understanding of learning and assessment before obsessing over what (new) processes, procedures and programmes to develop and implement as “solutions” for/of a generic and uncritical notion of learning and assessment. For instance, learning needs to be understood as a deeply situated and enculturating process that socialises learners into communities of professionals and/or practitioners:

Particularly influential has been the work of Lave and Wenger. They originated such crucial concepts as “communities of practice” and “legitimate peripheral participation” . For them, learning is not the acquisition of products, whether propositions or skills. Rather, they understand learning in relational terms as the process by which the learner comes to be able to function appropriately in a given social, cultural and physical setting. Thus, learning is “situated” in a network of relations that constitutes a framework of participation. This network transcends individual participants. So for them, learning is not a thing located in individuals’ heads, or even bodies. Rather, it is an essentially social process. (Hager, 2013, p. 90)

Expanding the assessment horizon must mean widening an understanding of learning as simultaneously social and personal formative processes rather than discursive and discrete functions.

6.4 Theoretical shifts and discourses of learning

Our discussion about assessment for and as learning thus far suggests a profound theoretical shift in learning:

With the emergence of new – social constructivist – theories on learning and the notion of competencies as outcome indicators of the educational process, the call for radical changes in the way we set up and use assessment is heard in the literature (Boud, 1990; Brown, 2004; Shute 2008, van der Vleuten & Schuwirth, 2005). This was a highly needed antithetic movement against the traditional approaches. (Schuwirth & van der Vleuten, 2011, p. 478)

The shifts in perspectives about learning, broadly, and assessment, more specifically, as something done to learners, and as classifying, ranking and ordering learners, towards assessment as fostering learning, and learning beyond the course, are firmly rooted in contemporary 20th-century discourses of education and learning. Learning could no longer be conceived as just preparing students/learners for an economically productive/useful life. The foundations of this “new” promissory discourse lay in ideas of education as learning how to live practically and independently in one’s current environments (Dewey, 1938), how to participate as a members of one’s community and change the nature of social order if necessary (Counts, 1932), and how to think critically and become “conscientised” (Freire, 1972) in order to take ownership, responsibility and action for one’s own (learning) needs.

Current assessment and learning strategies embody values of this educational discourse that seeks to develop aware/conscientised, independent and active learner-citizen-workers who contribute to society;

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