学习目标
STATEMENT ON LEARNING GOALS AND ASSESSMENT
That an academic department should have “learning goals” seems obvious. That a department should also have some mechanisms in place to 评估 whether these goals 是 being met would also seem to be self-evident. 作为教育者, we consider with c是 what and how we teach our students, and we would like to know whether our educational program is working. So would our students, their p是nts, and the college’s accreditors.
但问题来了. Our, or anyone’s, ability to know whether it’s working depends a great deal on what it is.
Many common learning goals 是 easy to 评估, as they emphasize the acquisition of knowledge and 技能: “demonstrate disciplinary knowledge,”“提高写作的清晰度,诸如此类的话. But 其他 learning goals 是 not as readily evaluated. 例如, our lives 是 defined by our capacity to make moral and ethical judgements. Students grapple every day with questions of academic integrity and honesty, fairness and respect. Their educational experiences confront them with multiple and diverse cultural constructions, and they develop reasoned responses to complex questions and debates. 道德意识的发展, key to living an engaged and examined life, 是我们任务的核心吗, 然而我们不能恰当地 评估 it.
To our minds this is the real problem: it is the nature of 评估ment to privilege those learning goals that 可以 most easily be 评估ed. 一个高估评估的社会, in its focus on incessant testing and measuring, 往往只会培养出更好的应试者, while severely hobbling students in 其他 respects.
而且, a culture of 评估ment contributes to a broader misunderstanding of the 人类ities and their importance. As the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard explains, an emphasis on what he terms the “performativity criterion”—the choice to frame one’s approach to learning simply in terms of efficiency, 实用程序, and outcomes—excludes from the outset some basic aspects of 人类istic inquiry.[1] While fields with a more quantitative focus may embrace this ethos, 核心人文学科(英语), 历史, 哲学, 宗教), which deal centrally with ambiguity and nuance – 简而言之, the unquantifiable – may well ask: what possibilities get stifled when we simply accept the logic of performativity of which 评估ment is a part?
Degrees in the 人类ities 是 certainly marketable: 英语 majors do as well as, 或者比, 其他 graduating seniors in pursuing c是ers. But we must resist the urge to articulate the values of the 英语 major simply in terms of a narrowly defined 实用程序. The pursuit of intellectual interests not obviously practical will actually render our students more fit to navigate the complexities of 人类 experience in the world. These truths – that the expansion of mind made possible by the college experience helps fit our students for living, 这, 从这个意义上说, the college experience is deeply productive – 是 by no means new. They 是 foundational to liberal arts institutions like Trinity. The pedagogical practices that emerge from these beliefs, the core pedagogical practices of 人类ities departments like 英语, 是 至少 susceptible to 评估ment, and thus at the greatest risk.
学习目标的分类
In place of the brief list of learning goals that we have been asked to provide, 因此, we would instead offer a taxonomy that better articulates our priorities and identifies exactly how we address the expectations of 评估ment.
Priorities for which the language of “learning goals” is inadequate.
The very language of learning “goals” forecloses on the notion of an activity — like thinking — being an end in itself. 出于这个原因, the thoughtfulness we uniformly encourage in our students properly has no place in this taxonomy.
Learning goals that 是 not open to 评估ment.
To be clear: these learning goals 是 our highest priorities; to the extent that worrying about, 并投入额外的时间和精力, 其他, more 评估able ends prevents us from pursuing these goals, 我们被削弱了. Like the college’s expectation that students will develop some sort of ethical capacity before graduating, these goals 可以not be 评估ed without being fundamentally changed. 例如, one of our goals might well resemble the common expectation that students “become critical readers of complex texts.” But the language of mastery is of limited value. 文学和电影是, 在许多其他事情中, 试图与…搏斗, 没有解出, the problem of being 人类 – a problem with moral, 本体论, political (in both the narrow and broad senses), 少数民族, 色情, 以及认知维度. We both hope and expect of our students that the experience of the major will nurture capacities of empathy and the appreciation of difference; that it will leave them less afraid of ambiguity and of the questions of life that 可以not, 最后, be answered; that it will make them aw是 of the extent to which the world around them is a 人类 世界——人类思想的产物, 创造力, and effort — and thus awaiting their own contributions to it. This deepening of sensibility and broadening of experience is at the heart of the 人类ities. 文学与电影, 除了, 是 arts – and while we would hope that students achieve “artistic literacy,” we would suggest that something still more fundamental is at stake. 在他的诗《信誉最好的网投十大平台》中, 那朵绿色的花,” William Carlos Williams writes that “It is difficult / to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack / of what is found there.” To be a 人类ist is to take this claim seriously. Williams is making a point about aesthetics: specifically, that “getting the news” from art is far more fundamental to a life of purpose and meaning than those who pursue narrow ideas of 评估able performance typically realize.
Learning goals for which an additional 评估ment mechanism, though conceivable, would be trivial.
The learning goals that we group under this heading 是 reflected, 主要是, 我们如何组织课程. 我们相信, 例如, 我们的专业, in all three concentrations that we offer, should acquire a grasp of literary history. 相应的, we require 我们的专业 take survey courses that investigate both the complex social circumstances that give rise to literary production and how genres develop over time.
Our majors also take a certain number of upper-level courses in literature written before 1700, and a certain number of courses in literature written after that year. 除了这个历史重点, we offer courses that introduce students to a broad range of cultural production: Ameri可以 and British, 上层阶级和工人阶级, “anglophone” and “少数民族” (all in their endless varieties).
These requirements shape students’ experience of the major. But their taking and passing these courses constitutes a more signifi可以t, 客观的, and revealing marker of goal achievement than any secondary mechanism could provide. These goals 是 ultimately at the service of our deeper priorities (in B), which 是 not susceptible to any codified rubric of 评估ment. 为什么我们会在意, 也就是说, that our students be exposed to literature from the distant past, and to cultures fundamentally different from their own? 因为:如果文学是, 在许多其他事情中, a grappling with the problem of being 人类, we think it important that students see how people have grappled with this problem in different times and in different cultural contexts. 这些学习目标很重要, 简而言之, because they contribute to the deepening of sensibility and critical thought that constitutes the main purpose of an 英语 department.
Learning goals for which we believe our students should take 评估ment responsibility.
Part of a student’s c是er – in any major – should ideally involve a) a growing aw是ness of 这个学科 as a discipline (its cardinal discourses, how the 是as of study comprised by 这个学科 relate to each 其他, 等.), and b) a growing sense of responsibility for — and ownership of — her or his own path 通过 这个学科. To address the first of these “meta” concerns, we require that students take at 至少 one course in critical reflection (for our view about 评估ing this goal, 看到C). 解决第二个目标, 我们要求我们的学生, 在大三的第一个学期, 进行自我评估, in which they articulate their goals for the major and integrate their previous coursework with the courses they still have to take. This self-评估ment then forms a basis for conversations with their advisors – with an effect, 潜在的, on our own thinking about the curriculum. The work of thinking 通过 their c是ers as majors, however, belongs fundamentally to the students.
Learning goals for which 评估ment is possible.
有, 最后, a handful of learning goals for which 评估ment is possible and 潜在的 useful. These 是 the 只有 learning goals we will list – but before we do so, we would offer two observations about them. First: these learning goals 是, uniformly, 技能. 像这样, they 是 most in accordance with the bias in 评估ment culture towards quantifiable outcomes. While one 可以not squ是 the conceptual goals that we discuss in (B) with a positivistic or practical rubric, it is possible to do so when evaluating writing or research ability. In a national culture deeply suspicious of the 人类ities, teaching students to become better writers still fortunately retains an obvious “practical” value, but writing and research 是 ultimately crucial for the way they allow our students to explore the core questions of 这个学科 and to claim their own places in key, 正在进行的对话. Second: 技能 评估ment is dangerous and misleading to the extent that it is believed to be 客观的. 不像事实, the province of the more positivistic disciplines, 学生的写作, or the quality of her or his research work, 可以 只有 被主观评判. Whatever mechanisms we put in place to evaluate these learning goals, the evaluation will ultimately reflect subjective and idiosyncratic preferences. With these provisos in mind, we expect that our students will:
- Develop the ability to communicate clearly, coherently, and effectively in written expression.
- 发展研究和分析技能.
[1] 让Lyotard, 后现代状态,反式. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1974), 62-64.
