Measuring Up in Education

Philosophical Explorations for Justice and Democracy Within and Beyond Cultures of Measurement in Educational Systems

Steven Stolz, R. Scott Webster

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367360320
• eBook ISBN: 9781000692020
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Cultures of measurement are often considered to dominate educational practices, to the degree that, as Biesta (2010) has identified in Good Education in an Age of Measurement we no longer measure what we value, but rather we have become conditioned to value what is measured. A clear example of this occurs when institutions and staff "teach to the test" by emphasising narrow conceptions of learning and of knowledge, simply because the consequences of high-stakes assessments have important implications regarding funding, resources, and even tenure.

This collection explores, via various philosophical means, how valuable educational practices can occur within and beyond cultures of measurement. What seems to be required is for practitioners in education to regain their relationship to the overall purposes of education, such as the furthering of justice and democracy for both individual students and societies as a whole. Such a reconnection has the potential to re-humanise curricular experiences for students, which may have become dehumanised through particular cultures of measurement. It is argued that certain legitimate measures can advance justice and democracy, and so careful attention must be assigned to their validity and value.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory.

Index

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes.

ACARA see Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA)

‘age of measurement’ 4–7, 20

AITSL see Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership Limited (AITSL)

Anderson, E. 39, 48n2

Anheier, H. K. 65n15

apartheid education system 113 see also post-apartheid education system

Apple, M. W. 24

Aquinas T. 59–60

Arab Spring 52

Aristotle 12, 59, 75; Nichomachean Ethics 52; Politics 59, 65n10

artistic/aesthetic knowledge 75, 76

Ashton, D. 26

assessment 3, 68–70; classroom-based 114; educationally significant learning 73–6; formative 74; knowledge and education 70–3; for learning 114–16; summative 74

Augustine 87, 88

Augustinian pedagogy 86

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) 25

Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership Limited (AITSL) 20

Barnett, R. 26, 27, 30, 31

Bauman, Z. 22

behaviourism, cognitivism and 97, 99

Beitz, C. 46–7

Belenky, M. F. 25, 26

Bell’s theorem 106

Biesta, G. J. J. 2, 20–3, 29, 31, 32, 111, 112, 114–16, 118

Big Data 2, 81, 82

Blake, N. 23

Bohman, J. 47

Bohr, N. 3, 94–7, 99, 100, 104; principle of complementarity 103–4, 108

Boring, E. G. 96

British Psychological Society 108

Brown, P. 26

Bruner, J. S. 96

Butler, J. 119–20

Cantley, Ian 2

capability approach 40–2

CAPS see Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS)

Carr, D. 71, 72, 75

charitable organizations 44

children’s labor 37

Chisholm, L. 112

Christian National Education 113

civic associations 58, 59, 64n8

civil ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• Education, Measurement and the Professions: Reclaiming a space for democratic professionality in education
• Valuing and Desiring Purposes of Education to Transcend Miseducative Measurement Practices
• Getting the Measure of Measurement: Global educational opportunity
• Creating the Civil Society East and West: Relationality, responsibility and the education of the humane person
• Can Educationally Significant Learning be Assessed?
• The Givenness of the Human Learning Experience and Its Incompatibility with Information Analytics
• A Quantum Measurement Paradigm for Educational Predicates: Implications for validity in educational measurement
• On the Un-becoming of Measurement in Education
• Index