Creative

education, grades, self-assessment and plain English.

Fred Wyver

Students crave grades. Grades are the crack cocaine of education, good grades give you an
addictively satisfying hit of dopamine, and bad grades can send you into a week-long doom
spiral.

Students also like to be ranked. They like to think of themselves as better than certain of
their classmates, and like it even more when they get that confirmed with a numerically
quantified percentage of betterness.

When you get your grades, firstly you compare them to the grades you’ve got before. Have I
done better? Have I done worse? Secondly you begin to compare each other’s grades. Who
have I beaten? Who has beaten me?

At each stage there is the possibility of highs and lows, which can be compounded with
incredulity at the assessment of our own abilities against those of others (who we may not
rate as highly). In an ideal world, everyone accepts their grade not as a punishment, but as a
helpful critical commentary upon the level of their current engagement. But Universities are
far from ideal. In reality this form of grading is at best, an addictive reinforcement of
approved practice, and at worst, a direct source of confrontation, anger, depression and
demotivation.

One of the key difficulties in managing grading is in determining the criteria the assessor
uses to rate the work. In some fields this is simple. Some questions have a right and wrong
answer. The creative fields are rarely so clear. Certainly it’s possible to assess whether
something is well made if you have the relevant technical skills yourself, but assessing a
concept for aesthetic virtue, for coherency of design values, for creativity itself, well, that’s a
different problem.

To that end exists the rubric. A rubric is “a scoring guide used to evaluate the quality of
students' constructed responses” (Popham, Educational Leadership. 55.2)

A key flaw, identified by James Popham, and which applies perhaps most frequently in
creative field’s assessments is that it may contain “Excessively general evaluative criteria.”

“The highest level of student performance is labelled "advanced" - or some suitable
synonym, then described as "a superior response to the task presented in the
performance test - a response attentive not only to the task's chief components, but
also its nuances." A second, lower level of response is described in slightly less
positive terms, and so on. In essence, these overly general criteria allow both
teachers and students to conclude that really good student responses to the task are,
well, really good. And, of course, really bad student responses are - you guessed it -
really bad.” (ibid)

This in itself is problematic, however, it is somewhat systemic to creative education. Fields
that do not have right and wrong answers rely on contrasting terms like ‘fluent’ and
‘capable’ and these are still to be found in creative subject assessment guidelines. Popham
was writing two decades ago, and this problem hasn’t really gone away. It has, however,
been hidden from view.

It is my assertion that educators in creative fields know that much of the time they’re using
quite subjective quality judgements based on experience to assess students work. Much in
the same way that a panel of experts might assess the provenance of a newly uncovered
work of art purported to be by an old master. There is a legitimacy in this approach, but it
relies on the standing of the assessors as individuals and as an institution, and it is not easily
transferable or standardisable. And so, in order to maintain a ‘university standard’ of
assessment these judgements must be shrouded in words that make them sound more
justified, more quantifiable, more objective. To that end, assessment and particularly self-
assessment criteria, are written in a highly academic language that makes their meaning
unnecessarily difficult to determine to the student.

Self-assessment is a vital skill in engaging with a university education, especially in the
creative field. It would not be hard to argue, in fact, that self-assessment is what creative
universities are almost entirely engaged in teaching. Critical self-awareness and evaluation
of your own work is the only way a creative practitioner becomes a professional, a rounded
individual, and a productive member of society. Accurate, recursive and meaningful self-
assessment is the lifeblood of creative practice. But if the assessment criteria are
simultaneously woolly and impenetrable, how is a student supposed to achieve this?

Let’s look at an example taken from a student self-assessment form in use today in a
creative university. We are asked (well, we aren’t actually, it’s just presented as a statement
in a box with no context, but anyway, we’ll assume we are asked) if the student has
demonstrated “Technical and applied skills through: speculative, imaginative and innovative
application of materials and processes in the realisation of work toward original outcomes.”

Now, firstly let’s take a look at the context in which this is used. We are dealing with
undergraduate students in a creative university. Most of these students are coming from
backgrounds that have not heavily prioritised academic subjects. Some will have come to
university later in life having had no academic engagement for decades. A great many of
them are dyslexic. This run-on sentence with multiple clauses is problematic in the first
place. The words it uses have specific meanings in the field of design which differ from their
common usage, and are terms which, if not regularly reinforced throughout the course
(which they are not) are not immediately digestible.

How might we render this sentence in more palatable language? Maybe something like:
“How have you used the skills and techniques you have been taught? Have you
experimented with skills and materials in order to discover outcomes that weren’t already
known to you? Have you used this process of testing and experimentation to push your
work in an original direction?”

Taken as a single example it has sufficient problems to indicate revision might be necessary,
however the self-assessment sheet it comes from has seven such opaque statements. All of
which could easily be re-worded to form a more meaningful guide to self-assessment. The
danger is that, in doing so, the subjectivity of the rubric would be revealed.

I don’t necessarily think this would be a bad thing. As stated above, a trusted and qualified
faculty of professors and lecturers ought by their own prominence in their field, be able to
make justifiable, albeit, subjective judgements about the quality of a student’s work when
that work is not directly or completely assessable by objective factors. We allow this to
happen in the visual and plastic arts, in music and literature, and even in athletics through
the actions of professional critics and boards of examiners. The virtuosity and fluency of a
student’s creative work is something that is only possible to judge meaningfully if the
assessor has a sufficient degree of personal fluency, and a high degree of contextual and
comparative critical awareness. The difficulty is in finding enough sufficiently qualified and
respected individuals to perform this task for the relatively small financial reward it offers.
Here, a woolly, opaque rubric could be uncharitably considered a crutch to support
assessors who lack the legitimacy to draw judgement based on their reputation and ability
in their field.

Perhaps the greatest feat of opacity in these sorts of assessment criteria is the correlation
between the words used; fluent, excellent, superior, competent and so on. How they
translate into percentile grades. And what, even, a percentile grade means?

Here we abruptly bump into the blunt fact that grades, in this sense, are not in any way
intended to benefit the student. While self-assessment is an absolutely student focussed
practice, and vital to the growth of the student through recursive discussions with peers and
teachers. Percentile assessment is merely a factory sorting mechanism, a quality control
mechanism for the universities’ ultimate product: The Graduate. Students implicitly
understand this, which (alongside their natural addictive quality) is why the chasing of
‘good’ grades is so desperate. According to the propaganda a good grade leads to a good job
and a happy life. The creative field is no less afflicted by this myopic and abusive notion.
What’s more is it’s almost completely untrue.

I’m not going to go into deeply into the reasons this particular piece of propaganda is so
damaging. For critiques of education’s role as a factory producing unquestioning workers to
feed into the capitalist machine, look elsewhere (the works of John Dewey – Democracy and
Education and Alfie Kohn – Progressive education have been recommended to me, but I
haven’t read them yet). But I will point at a job market over-saturated with graduates to the
point that it regularly makes the news. I will also point out how automation has reduced the
necessity for skilled labour, and how influential thinkers have posited that a large portion of
the job market simply doesn’t need to exist (I recommend David Graeber: Bullshit Jobs or
any of its condensed youtube synopses).

I believe that we are reaching the end of the usefulness of university graduates to most
industries (and consequently to capitalism). Science and technology (read: pharmaceuticals
and weapons manufacturers) require a certain stream of skilled graduates. But there is a
feeling within education (even in business management! See Martin Parker on business
schools) that a fair amount of what we do only really exists to serve the financial interests of
those at the top of the education corporate pyramid. Education feels like it has been turned
into another capitalist producer, which, in conjunction with the state as an advertising
machine (Education! Education! Education!), has identified a market, created a desire, and
now churns out product with ever increasing efficiency. Primarily not for the benefit of the
students, but instead to line the pockets of head-teachers and vice chancellors (just google
“academy boss pay” and you’ll see dozens of articles supporting this idea). Part of the
machinery of this process is percentile grading.

If we head down this path of reasoning we begin to understand that the use of percentile
grading, especially in creative subjects, implicitly instructs students that there is an external
authority that, unless it’s strict methodology is followed, will not allow them success or
credit them with achievement. It promotes a competitive relationship between students
and actively makes the process of assessment confrontational and emotionally stressful,
even damaging to both assessors and students. Which, unsurprisingly, is why students have
exactly that reaction to it.

So what is my advice to creative students in dealing with assessment? Ask for plain English
versions of the assessment criteria at the start of a project. Explain to your assessors why
this is important and do not accept excuses – they will have many to hand. Studiously ignore
any numbers you see that you can’t transparently understand the origin of. Whatever you
do, do not ask your assessor why your previous project was graded three percent higher
than your last one, because they will not have a satisfactory answer and it will only frustrate
the both of you. Instead develop a good working relationship with your assessor predicated
on mutual respect (if this is not possible, either you, or your assessor are probably being a
jerk, if it’s not you, then I feel for you, you’re likely just going to have to put up with it).
Discuss your work with your assessor frequently at as high a theoretical level as you are
comfortable. These discussions need not be lengthy but should be structured around a
specific question you want answered which should be their primary focus. Avoid
confrontation as it rarely achieves anything, always seek understanding rather than
argument. Record these discussions and refer to them in your work. Compare the results of
these discussions with the wider context of your field. Investigate referenced practitioners
and record your findings. During your work, take frequent opportunities to reflect upon
your practice by repeatedly looking back at (and documenting):

First, the quality of your research - for example: how good are your primary sources, what
have you looked at in the world that is driving your project forward, is it still relevant, do
you need to get more or different sources?

Secondly, how you have interpreted your sources - are your conclusions still consistent with
your research, does your direction make sense?

Thirdly, the quality of your development of that interpretation into a presentable body of
work - are you producing a creative output that reflects your own position as a practitioner,
that uses, develops and pushes your particular skill-set, and that is satisfying your need as a
creative person?

If you do this, both you and your assessor will have a closer understanding of your practice,
your practice will develop faster and more coherently, you will get to know yourself as a
maker, and hopefully percentages will seem less relevant to you.