评分对所有人无益,我给学生们全部都打A

安迪·法内尔(Andy Farnell)称,评分让学生焦虑,让学者内疚。它是真正的教育的敌人。是时候反抗了。

三月 16, 2023
Four Barbie dolls wearing outfits out of the letter A to illustrate Assessment just damages everyone involved. I’m giving all my students As
Source: Getty (edited)

点击阅读英文原文


今天早上,我给我的50个学生都打了A。然后我洗了个澡,跳舞,跑到海滩上,游泳,随后喜极而泣。多年来,我第一次觉得自己又像一个真正的教授了,感到我的工作至关重要,充满活力且人性化。

30年来,我一直自信具有专业精神,但却经历了信仰危机。作为一名年轻的教授,我相信制度和公平。但现在我产生了怀疑。在没有自己判断的真正权力的情况下给学生评分,这一严重道德责任压在我的心头,剥夺了我的睡眠和健康。本学期准备其他三个课程的时间压力成了压垮我的最后一根稻草。

但你可能会问,我的学生都“配得上”清一色的A吗?我的回答是,我再也不知道了。人们对“学生体验”煞费苦心,但实际上这是一种技术依赖和反乌托邦式的表现焦虑。我们精心制作清晰的作业简介、清晰的评分标准和答案模板。我们允许学生尝试性地在Turnitin上传作业查重,不断调整直至能“通过”审查。ChatGPT和总结工具、Grammarly高级检查的功能和Copilot式计算机代码的“支持”的出现,只会进一步破坏我们所声称持有的人类价值观。

我可能会反问,为什么我的学生是否应该获得A很重要。为什么我们会如此执着于评判,仿佛高校是法庭,而教育主要是一个正义的过程?这样做的结果是害怕偏离特定的学术之美的公式,就像内奥米·沃尔夫(Naomi Wolf)或苏茜·奥尔巴赫(Susie Orbach)对女性身体痛苦的描述一样。就像一排芭比娃娃,每个学生提交的内容都模仿标准答案,成为平淡无奇且千篇一律的散文和代码片段。我应该如何区分这些作业?通过关键词数量?引用风格?还是仅仅将它们打印出来并针对报告打分,就像我的教授(可能会)开玩笑说的那样,把报告打印出来然后掂量一下?

我们越是试图让评分“公平”,它就越没有任何超越“创造工作机会”的目的。然而,这并没有阻止我们继续尝试。为什么?因为知识不再是“教育产业”的产物。数据才是。具体来说,是用于专业把关的个性化心理测量和表现数据。学生们知道这一点,所以他们沉迷于自己外在的“永久记录”。他们不再对我作为老师说的话或讲的课感兴趣。他们对我的意见反馈不感兴趣,而是只关注我给出的成绩。

有些教授猛烈抨击这一点,让学生们成为“体制”的替罪羊,并以“学术不端”为由挂掉整个班级。但我们不能责怪学生们理性行事。是我们这些教职工,必须纠正自己的不当行为。我们必须反抗这样一种观点,即多年的学术努力,乃至一个人的价值,都取决于他们的最终成绩。

我的反抗并不完全是创新性举动。几千年来,教育的运作中并没有针对个体的评价。在过去20年里,“不评分”已经成为一种运动,尤其是在美国的人文学科中。但是,尽管普遍的动机与性别、种族和阶级问题有关,我自己的立场是基于科学的。

我的领域包括密码学和信号处理。对我们来说,一个难题是,几乎不可能对计算机代码进行评分或判断其原创性。正确答案确实存在。如果学生复制相同的模型,更改一些变量和值,我所能做的就是迂腐地浪费时间寻找想象中的错误。

然而,更普遍的是,有压倒性的证据表明,竞争性的同伴比较和对无关紧要的规则的痴迷所带来的持续性焦虑会引发心理伤害。这与我们迫切需要的创造性、公平的关系完全相悖;而要让学生们再次专注于学习,这样的环境是必需的。

这也与雇主的利益相冲突。将招聘外包给高校的公司不一定会招聘到最具创新性的人才。更有可能的是,他们正在招募最听话和/或最愤世嫉俗的人,最愿意对算法进行事后批评,并要求更好成绩的人。

评分所带来的情感负担,与社交媒体内容制造者带来的负担类似。评分助长了学生与老师的敌对关系——双方都感到评分不公平,并感到罪恶感和自我冲突。评分也无法充分自动化。虽然算法比人类更具有一致性,但并不会更可靠或更准确。虽然人类可以承认或挑战隐藏的偏见,但数字系统暗中将偏见进行编码并加强。

“不评分”的教授们得到的后果各不相同。有些人被誉为进步人士,并被提升至教学领导职位。其他人被解雇了。但重要的是,我们需要密切观察谁反对不评分以及为什么。这就是我进行这个实验的原因:与其说是衡量我的学生从获得A评分中学到了什么(实验的重点是不作此观察),不如说是要观察学校的反应。

我也可能被解雇。但是,如果这一情况成真,我会很高兴我的低成本、高影响力的研究可能会带来一些启发,尤其是对那些早就不把远程教育当回事的、考虑将他们正在进行的“教育”委托给高校的毕业生来说。

安迪·法内尔(Andy Farnell)是几所欧洲大学的信号、系统和网络安全方面的客座教授和副教授。

本文由陆子惠为泰晤士高等教育翻译。

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Reader's comments (9)

In brief we are doomed. I get all the points made here, which lead to the question what are we educating people for? The whole enterprise has become unfit for purpose as we are not adequately discriminating between the thick as mince (though often personable) and the intellectually capable and curious student. The Education process has become an earlier entry point in to accumulating debt and gaining some shiny sheriff badge at the end that promises enhanced consumer opportunity. Unfortunately academics seem unable to halt the slide towards the sleep of reason. As Goya predicted the monsters and spectres of unreason now hold sway.
Why do we want to discriminate between the "thick as mince" and "intellectually capable"? Do the thick as mince not also benefit from having their mind opened and their horizons broadened?
I have no idea why THE gives space to such nonsense. Some sort of assessment is needed and in my (30 year+) experience, this has been fair and appropriate. Then I do work in a Russell Group Engineering department that has not suffered much grade inflation. There is no emotional burden since assessment criteria are defined and students can easily be informed what was good and what was not. I guess I am just lucky to work in a STEM subject!
So good to read this. My doctorate thesis looked at workplace-based assessment - in three institutions in different countries. My analysis showed that the different stakeholders manifested quite different stories of assessment. In the accreditation and institutional documents the discourse of measurement predominated (learning outcomes); in contrast, while the managers were leaning towards standardization and objectivity, they were also aware of a more complex assessment culture. For the clinical supervisors/assessors the psychometric grades given could not be seen as a legitimate measure of objectivity as the authentic and holistic constructs of competency based medicial education (CBME) dominated. WBA is a socio-cultural-material phenomenon - and I would add so is all assessment. It was the inter-relationships between institutionalized and disciplinary discourses; between standardized and personalized competencies; between educational and practitioner identities; and the entanglement of artefacts and spatio-temporal arrangements, that enabled or constrained how assessments were being carried out. Learning outcomes are a fallacy a pretence of objectivity. In the USA everyone got an A. In the UK it was teams of assessors getting together and talking about students and assessments that was the best way to determine grades. Time consuming but fair.
Despite the challenges assessment produces, in medical education, assessments (frequently as MCQs) have demonstrated predictive validity for performance in the work place, including patient survival, time spent in hospital care, and even likelihood of Fitness to Practice sanctions. 'Giving all students an A' is not a resolution of the challenges, it is an avoidance of them.
So if (let us imagine) half of the students on my course attend one or two (or zero) sessions out of ten, don't use the reading lists, fail to respond to messages offering help, and hand in essays that ignore clear and reiterated criteria, do they get an A too? put it another way, do the students who DO work deserve the same grade? If we wouldn't qualify sportspeople or musicians or doctors like this, why is it OK for the humanities?
Response to Ian Sudbery. Hi Ian, My point was not that the 'thick as mince' should not participate in HE or other kinds if continuing education genuinely geared to interest and ability. It was, as the tenor if the article, that student ability needed to be discriminated properly. Having taught across Science related disciplines and been coerced into awarding marks to poor quality work, the truly capable are then discriminated against. It is a nonsense to pretend that a student with a poor grasp on statistical principles can be objectively compared with someone with moderate competence. Again in turn classifying a moderately competent student with one who has real mathematical talent simply undermines the whole academic enterprise. I am not making judgement on any students personal worth but on their academic abilities. If we used these same wishy washy standards in competitive sport you would be pretending the standard of play i the Championship is the same as the Premiership. Other sporting performance metaphors are available.
re: #7 (I don't know why sometimes there is reply button, and sometimes not). Hi Mike, I agree that is nonsensical to classify students with a poor grasp of statistical principles the same as a competent or talented student. But the solution I think being proposed here, is not to classify them similarly (or at least, to do so is only a protest), but rather to not classify them at all. The real solution is not to give everyone the same grade, but to not have grades. The difference between competitive sport and education is that competitive sport is, well, competitive. And education shouldn't be. To take a different sporting metaphor, I go to the gym and lift weights to be able to increase strength, tone and muscle mass. This makes me more functional in my life - I can lift heavier things, I have a higher metabolism, I'm more stable in my core. But I don't really keep track of how much I can deadlift, nor do I compare myself to others - that's not the purpose of the exercise. Apart from anything else, treating education like this might discourage those with no real interest in learning, but feel they need to be there to get a piece of paper society has decided is required for a good life.
Gert Biesta suggests there are three functional purposes to education: qualification; socialisation; subjectification. If this can be agreed upon the question then becomes which of these is in the driving seat in the current era. I'd suggest the binary flavour of this thread indicates the former is defining the values mindset in both compulsory and tertiary education right now. Added to this, certain disciplinary areas inevitably see more relevance in content accumulation measurement data as opposed to adaptive skills growth, which can be more difficult to determine. Arguably, flipping the emphasis in Biesta's three definitions of education's purpose could go some way to rebalancing our value mindset, and the unfortunate and real crises being experienced by students. In other words, prioritising the learner as a being-in-knowledge, then the learner as social agent, and finally the learner as credentialed. Not, as currently is the case, the other way around.