Can I Submit That? Using Student Assessment to Challenge Power Structures in Our Learning Environments

Why do educators assess? To whom are our students demonstrating their achievement of the course learning objectives? While assessment directly influences what students will do to learn, students often have no role other than to subject themselves to the act of assessment, to be measured and classified (Bain, 2010; Boud and Falchikov, 2007).

This interactive workshop will invite you to engage in critical reflection and reflexivity to explore how choices in student assessment can challenge marginalizing power structures. We will share our own work in redesigning a traditional summative assessment to centre student partnership and agency. We ask that you bring with you an assessment that you would like to re-design.

By the end of this workshop, you will be able to:
– Identify how traditional methods of student assessment can reinforce oppressive power structures in higher education
– Critically appraise your own methods of student assessment
– Apply an anti-oppressive and relational lens to begin to design more just and equitable methods of student assessment

References:
Bain, J. 2010. Integrating student voice: assessment for empowerment. Practitioner Research in Higher Education, 4(1), 14-29.
Boud, D. and Falchikov, N. (2007) Assessment in higher education: Learning for the longer term, Abingdon: Routledge.

Facilitators:
– Katie Lee Bunting, Assistant Professor of Teaching
– Judy Chan, Sessional Lecturer, Land and Food Systems