Understanding Student Evaluation in Educational Research

Contesting our taken understanding of student evaluation Paper currently under review Co-authored by Janet Rankin, Lynn Malinsky, Betty Tate and Linda Elena Presented by Lynn Malinsky and Diane Contesting our taken- -for understanding of student evaluation for- -granted granted Presented by Lynn Malinsky and Diane Jacquest Jacquest

Somehow grading and evaluating is distracting from my teaching...I can t be in the moment, be present with the student while making judgments about her practice at the same time. I don t always remember to take notes and then at the end of our session I have an overall feeling of things will be ok or I hope things will be ok or this could be trouble but can t always retrieve specific examples. I can t think about teaching at the same time as I am gathering evidence. It s frustrating...

Institutional Ethnography: A Method of Inquiry The Research Team Work Our Preliminary Findings Rethinking our work with students

Social organization of knowledge The social world is constituted in the activities of people IE takes the stance of those who are experiencing the trouble to learn how it is being organized To explore how knowing relates to power, institutional ethnographers study how one s knowing is organized by whom and by what. (Campbell & Gregor, 2002, p. 15)

IE pays attention to texts that when activated in people s work organize things to happen in certain ways When we investigate how texts operate to socially organize us we begin to discover how they rule our work To accomplish the explication of people s lives, IE research relies on the formulation of a problematic to guide and ground the research The guiding questions are : how does this happen as it does? How are these relations organized?

How does it happen that within a curriculum that is designed to be emancipatory, transformative and embedded within caring relationships, teachers describe serious tensions and contradictions arising in their evaluation experiences?

gathered detailed descriptive data about day-to-day activities that teachers engage in with students, professional colleagues and administrators took field notes, conducted interviews, wrote personal reflections collected forms and documents (texts) identified from the field notes, interviews and reflections worked systematically through each piece of data in person, by teleconference and WebX

Used Maxqda to organize data segments into clusters of similar work activities used data and our knowledge to show the connections between everyday experience and organizational processes (hallmark of IE) analytic process shows how practice is ideologically organized (around particular ideas and knowledge) purpose is to see how practice is invisibly and anonymously coordinated with other work

created pictorial representations of the context that is shaping our everyday practice identified institutional and regulatory groups and processes that had some connection to our routine evaluative practice produced schematics of two regulatory regimes intersecting our work with students : 1. Regulatory Nursing Regime 2. Regulatory Education Regime

The ontological shift happened when we unravelled our ordinary everyday activities to see how they are linked into institutional practices. We began to understand on the surface, the regulatory regimes (ruling relations) within our institutions that were shaping our work. At the same time, we had the insider knowledge of nurse educators committed to a relational pedagogy that builds supportive relationships and facilitates student learning.

The social organization of our evaluation work places us on a line-of-fault between the regulatory demands of the institutions and our teaching intentions. ...to illustrate we use a data excerpt that brings to our attention the due process of student evaluation

Practice teacher: The student was not prepared. . . I don t want it to be about me working harder than student. Teaching colleague: Could she tell you verbally what should be in the care plan? Practice teacher: No. Teaching colleague: Is she overwhelmed?

Teaching Colleague: In the care plan, what are her foci statements? Teaching Colleague: Do you need another set of eyes to see what is passed (met the requirements)? Teaching Colleague: We have this bar and we don t let them in [to practice] until they make the bar. Practice Teacher: How can we maximize the student s potential?

The data excerpt reflects the teachers intentions, but our analysis reveals the infiltration of regulatory requirements. THERE IS A DUEL WORK PROCESS HAPPENING HERE Teachers are committed to supporting student success, AND when the data is scrutinized to explicate the taken-for- granted enactment of competent teaching, the disjuncture emerges.

We identified a point of contention in teachers work when guiding a student s learning is overtaken by activities directed towards gathering evidence to fail. We uncovered the built-in contradiction that is supported by the nurse educator s comments in the introductory comment:

Somehow grading and evaluating is distracting from my teaching...I can t be in the moment, be present with the student while making judgments about her practice at the same time . I can t think about teaching at the same time as I am gathering evidence. It s frustrating...

We formulated a research problematic at the juncture The problematic provided the focus for our second stage interviews

We have come to realize that we are involved in a consciousness-raising project that requires us to rethink our work with students.

How does due process work in student evaluation? Is it actually a fair and transparent set of activities that are organized in the interests of students? Or is it a relation of ruling that protects universities and colleges? What do you think?