The emergence of pluriversities and the disappearance of the assignment: Inequity generation in Universities and what to do about it.

Universities in Aotearoa/New Zealand are very concerned with the achievement of ‘priority learners’[1]. Priority learners always include ‘Māori and Pasifika’1 students. Universities have made progress in increasing the number of Māori graduates but equity issues still remain. This blog post will suggest some reasons for this and contend that a radical transformation of University culture is required to make a difference for priority learners and, thereafter, all students and society in general.

Over the last 30 or 40 years, we have experienced a broad and deep neo-liberalisation of society which has created, in my view, a punitive, judgmental culture focused on compliance and performance in the protection of a false freedom in and of ‘the market’. This culture imposes ‘sensible’ requirements on students but, typically, without caring too much about or understanding the impacts of those requirements on the totality of the lives of students. ‘Sensible’ here refers to a neo-liberal sensibility, a certain form of common sense if you like, which sees this practice of imposition as unproblematic, obvious, and ‘normal’. But it isn’t.

I see the normality of imposition as being connected to the phenomenon of gaming[2]. By this, I mean the strategies that some students use to meet the performative requirements of a course or qualification, without ever actually engaging fully with substantive learning. Imposition and gaming are related – too much imposition makes gaming more attractive, especially for students who already have complex and pressured lives. Gaming may even be seen as ‘working smart’ and as part of what it takes to be a successful student nowadays.

University courses impose a number of requirements which present students with significant barriers to overcome. The practice of setting (i.e. imposing) assignments which is deeply entrenched in the neo-liberalised University is a dominating feature of most courses.  A full-time student may be doing four courses a semester and be involved in 10 to 12 assignments, most if not all making significant cognitive demands.  A semester is 12 weeks long, so there is likely to be one assignment each week on average. In this scenario, university students are constantly doing assignments – with little time to reflect and muse about what they are learning.

Recently I have been struck by some of the problems that the setting of assignments creates. Usually, the same assignment is set for everyone on the course and demands that work be submitted at the same time on or before a due date. Missing this date results in some kind of punishment.  But then, in neoliberal terms, this is right and proper, because students must organise their lives (aka everything) to meet the due dates. I argue that the practice of setting the same assignment for all students in a course with a fixed due date is likely to generate inequity and contribute to the underachievement of priority learners.

A major problem here is a dangerous conflation of ‘learning’ and ‘assessment’ that is inherent in the assignment task. Situations may vary according to disciplines, but it is common, I believe, that assignments require students to learn something new and substantial, and be assessed simultaneously on what they are learning. If student life consists of an endless succession of doing assignments, new learning must be included in assignments, a conflation is established and, I contend, an inequity generated. Some students are advantaged by this practice because they have already learned, at least in part, what the assignment asks for and/or have the personal and collective resources (such as time, space, technology, other people) to learn it quickly. Other students are not in this fortunate position but are no less able – in this perspective, it seems likely that their assignments will receive lower grades. It is also difficult to see, given the student experience of constant assignments, how and when students are supposed to learn the content in a deep and meaningful way (without the monkey of assessment on their backs) which then indicates that they are then ready to be assessed. Assignments which conflate learning and assessment in this way generate inequity so that a significant factor in the success of a student (misrecognized in the sliding scales of the assignment rubric) is the social, economic and cultural background of students. So, priority learners remain priority learners?

We can also see how tempting, even necessary, it might be for some students to ‘game’ their courses. If they don’t, they may well fail. If they do, they may pass but with lower grades that do not reflect their ability. Priority learners then may be forced into strategic gaming and a consequent depression of their achievement. A speculation here is that the same gaming strategies when used by advantaged students may actually enhance their grades and be considered good studentship. For example, a student who constantly communicates with lecturers in order to move, say, from a B+ to an A might be considered to be a good student. A student who has a similar contact with lecturers to move from a fail to a pass might be considered to be receiving unfair help.  For priority learners, gaming is survival, but for others it creates educational profit?

It is also interesting to note the practice of assessing participation. Official policy may reject awarding marks for just showing up at a lecture or a workshop, but the issue of equity is raised when it is the quality of participation that is to be assessed. The problem here is again one of conflation of learning and assessment – how/when/where do students learn to be quality participants before they are assessed on their participation? If no learning period is given to this, students who already bring practices of quality participation (of a particular type) with them are advantaged. But then, ‘quality participation’ is a very contentious idea because what is quality in my world may be quite different from quality in yours. So, is this a case of institutional racism by imposing and assessing what we think are universal ideas of quality participation on everyone? 

Pluriversities and the need for a sweeping change in university culture

Let’s have another think about the traditional assignment. Now, assignments I would say are often very valuable exercises, but they are best seen as learning activities not assessment activities. A necessary move here is to make a clear distinction between learning activities which generate formative feedback for students and summative assessment activities which assess what students know and can do after a long enough period in which they have been able to learn important things. Assessment would then mean just recognising what important things students have learned. This reduces assessment to a simple request for students to communicate or demonstrate what they have learned in ways that best achieve this.

There are a number of other implications which cannot be discussed in detail here (see future posts). These involve the removal of grades, the abolition of rubrics and due dates, increasing the languages and modes of communication, and a focus on substance not appearances (e.g. not paying excessive attention to essay structure, spelling, grammar and APA referencing and the like).

I believe we need a radical transformation of what it means to be a University. A critical part of this transformation is about re-imagining the pedagogic relation between lecturers and students and, indeed, between Universities and the lives of students and their communities. In becoming individually, collectively and institutionally aware that our work is intricately involved with the totality of each student’s life – everyone in fact is connected to the students, all of their communities – universities must eventually become pluriversities. Pluriversities must be capable of recognising and validating all of the languages and modes of life that students bring with them, and to work with them to generate real benefits for them in the lives they actually live. So, pluriversities cannot be just about how well students are doing in what a course or qualification is about. A pluriversity is centrally concerned with how well the course/qualification is doing in what students are about.

[1] a term which invites critique.

[2] gaming in two senses – student attitudes to study being derived from actual computer game playing, and using game-like strategies to achieve success in courses.

I have been a secondary teacher of mathematics, physics and IT in a wide range of English-medium and Māori-medium schools. I have also been an adviser for English and Māori medium schools for mathematics|pāngarau and science|pūtaiao. I have lectured at Victoria University, Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi and Te Kūnenga ki Pūrehuroa|Massey University in education and the humanities. My research interests all centre around issues of legitimation and ethics in contexts where people from different backgrounds must live together

Brian’s Contact Details:

Email: b.tweed@massey.ac.nz Phone: (06) 356 9099 ext. 84401