The Discourse of Assessment: language and value in the assessment of group practice.

Authors: Jackie Smart, King Alfred's College Winchester, email: j.smart@WKAC.ac.uk &
Steve Dixon, University of Salford, email:s.Dixon@salford.ac.uk
This paper is published in Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, Vol 1 (2) 2002. Sage Publications, London Thousand Oaks and New Delhi.

Drawing on Foucault’s methods of discourse analysis, this paper raises questions about how the language and structures we use in assessing undergraduate collaborative practice in the performing arts convey ideas of value. Central discourses which inform performing arts education are identified as relating to three key fields: ‘The Academy’, ‘Professional Theatre’ and ‘Art’. Consideration is then taken of how a range of institutions site themselves in relation to these discourses and to the values inscribed within them, and how such discourses impact upon interpretations of the concept of assessment itself.

The paper uses field research to investigate staff and student comprehension of what assessment ‘means’ and to evaluate the impact of ‘discourse-conflicts’ within learning, teaching and assessment processes in collaborative projects. The paper examines ways in which educational cultures in the post-16 sector construct preconceptions and expectations about performance and assessment that students bring to HE, and how institutional cultures influence staff approaches to these areas within different Departments and Schools of Performing Arts. In the context of a number of case studies and with reference to interviews with the students and staff involved in them, areas of difficulty related to the assessment of collaborative work at HE level are identified. Examination of the articulation of assessment (its design, structure and expression) indicates how perceptions of conflict or contradiction can be generated between the intellectual demands of ‘The Academy’, the skills-based requirements of ‘Professional Theatre’ and the creative (and often transgressive) culture of ‘Art’. The paper examines ways in which groupwork assessment constructs these relationships, in terms of the evaluation of creative and critical, group and individual, process and product-based learning; and compares student and staff perceptions of the appropriateness and effectiveness of the various methods.

The paper concludes with discussion of potential solutions to the problems raised, identifying existing examples of good practice and proposing methods by which these could be developed and integrated into the broader pedagogical structure. With reference to Foucault’s notion of discourse as a system of relations between power and knowledge, the creation of a culture of dialogue is advocated within performing arts departments and institutions, and between those constructing and those experiencing groupwork assessment.
 
 

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