Chapter 5
Negotiation and Dialogue in Student Assessment by Teachers

Negotiation and dialogue in new forms of student assessment

Student profile assessment and records of achievement schemes have developed with such rapidity that they seem to bear the stamp of an evangelical movement. As with many such movements, emphasis on development and action often outweighs critical reflections (see Broadfoot, 1986, for a critique of some of the issues arising). Even a cursory examination of profiling practice reveals a confusion of purposes, processes, concepts and principles. On the one hand, processes aspire to be formative, developmental and confidential; on the other hand, they have a summative element and claim public currency. One can argue that this dichotomy represents a fundamental division of purposes that is not easily reconciled.

Similar tension is manifest in the almost arbitrary use of the terms negotiation and dialogue as labels for what goes on in the process of reviewing the experience and achievement of individual students. The following definition of negotiation, for instance, makes passing reference to aspects of social control but, by treating them as unproblematic, implicitly denies the need for negotiation in the sense in which the term is commonly understood, i.e. with an assumption that the parties involved have different interests and values:

Elsewhere, as in the illustration given below, even this minimal recognition that negotiation has something to do with power relations is absent. ‘Negotiation’ and ‘dialogue’ are therefore often used interchangeably.

I will begin by examining a recorded and publicly available example of negotiation/dialogue between a teacher and two of her students, then I will comment on some of the issues raised. In subsequent sections I will develop the idea that negotiation and dialogue are logically distinct processes which assume different contexts, have different purposes and need to be governed by different sets of principles and procedures.

The critical question that emerges is whether negotiation, as more appropriately applied to summative assessment, and dialogue, as appropriate to formative assessment, should be considered as two entirely separate and polarized activities or whether they can both be accommodated in a unified profiling assessment or appraisal scheme. My feeling is that the latter is possible provided that the worth of formative and summative aspects or stages is judged according to different, though not conflicting, criteria. In other words, formative dialogue could be expected to contribute to understanding and development, while summatively oriented negotiation should aim to promote credibility, accountability and justice. My argument is mainly for greater clarity and an end to some of the muddle that threatens the baby as well as the bath-water.

An instance

The following is a transcription of an excerpt from an Open University (1978) television programme. A teacher of French is conducting one-to-one review sessions with students. She talks first with Michelle, then Kelly, about their achievements. Before each interview the teacher prepared an assessment sheet and the student wrote a self-assessment. Teacher and student sit side by side and the teacher refers to the two assessment sheets during the interview.

Commentary

This example of a reviewing process invites a number of comments, and poses several questions regarding the nature of the process itself and the validity of the assessments made.

Issues of power and authority

The teacher sets the pace and tone of these interviews, especially the second. ‘I think we’ll try to do this fairly quickly because if I look at my own gradings I’m fairly certain of the good gradings that I have given you, all right?’ This has the effect of giving priority to the teacher’s assessments but it also means that she has no time to explore the learning difficulties that the student is signalling to her. Thus, she passes up the opportunity for diagnosis and planning of future action on both her part and the student’s.

Eight grades are assigned in the course of these two interviews. On three occasions the teacher invites the student to state her self-assessed ranking before offering her own judgement, and on three occasions the teacher offers her grading first but asks whether the student agrees. Yet on two occasions the teacher assigns a grade without discussion. If a teacher gives her assessment first, will it inevitably be established as ‘authoritative’ and invite acquiescence on the part of the student?

On three occasions the assessments of students and teacher are clearly at variance (regarding Michelle’s ‘general ability in the subject’ and Kelly’s ‘speaking’ and ‘understanding’). In each case the teacher disagrees, sometimes quite forcefully, with the student’s judgement and substitutes her own assessment, twice without change and once with only minor modification (from Grade One to One/Two, with the option of changing it back later, possibly without the student’s explicit agreement). On all three occasions the student’s ‘agreement’ looks like capitulation. Is this an inevitable consequence of the value traditionally ascribed to the professional judgement of teachers, and claimed by them? Would this be undermined if they ‘compromised’ their judgement in areas of special expertise, e.g. subject areas? Can they ‘afford’ to concede to the judgements of students?

In each case of disagreement, the students assessed their achievement less favourably than did the teacher. Are these students deliberately underselling themselves to avoid risking any loss of self-esteem, which might be occasioned by downgrading by the teacher? Is this one way of ensuring that they retain some power in a situation that is weighted against them? Or, do they deliberately undervalue their own worth in order to encourage a favourable assessment by the teacher, who will probably approve of their modesty? Alternatively, in interviews such as these, is there a tendency for teachers to ‘upgrade’ students, either because they do not wish to do anything to destroy motivation, or because they find it too difficult to be totally honest when face-to-face with the person they are assessing? Whatever the reason, is downgrading of self by students, or corresponding upgrading of students by teachers, a common phenomenon, and is it particularly characteristic of the profile assessment process experienced by girls?

Issues of validity

The teacher enthusiastically reinforces occasions when the student’s self-assessment agrees with her own. There is no further discussion. Are we to assume that agreement or consensus is equivalent to a valid assessment, or should the evidence for both ‘agreed’ and disputed assessments be examined more fully in the light of tangible evidence? Is the main purpose of the review session to agree assessments that can be made public, or should it aim to deepen mutual understanding? Can these two goals be pursued simultaneously, or will one inevitably pre-empt the other?

Is anything of value, therefore, being learnt in these exchanges, apart from the interpersonal skill of predicting the kind of things the other wants to hear? Are they merely ritual exercises in how to keep everyone happy?

Discussion

The terms ‘negotiation’, ‘conversation’ and ‘dialogue’ are all used in the Open University programme to refer to the face-to-face interaction that is part of this assessment process. Although profiling or records of achievement schemes vary in many respects, most regard a formative process of one-to-one review as essential. Indeed, although sponsors, for example, DES, MSC, examination boards, and some ‘consumers’ (e.g. parents and employers), may still conceptualize profiles and records primarily as summative documents, there is some evidence that they are taking on board the fact that many developers attach much importance to the formative process. Thus, for instance, the DES Policy Statement (1984, p. 4) made the point that: ‘Regular dialogue between teacher and pupil will be important.’ Moreover:

Interestingly, the DES favours ‘dialogue’ and ‘discussion’ over ‘negotiation’. I have no doubt that this was a deliberately neutral choice, for ‘negotiation’ has political overtones which makes its use controversial. Whereas, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘conversation’ simply means talk, and ‘dialogue’ means conversation between two parties, ‘negotiation’ has the sense of ‘conferring with another with a view to compromise or agreement’. Therefore, although agreement does not necessarily assume compromise, the term ‘negotiation’ implies differences of perception, interests and values. Certainly, in any encounter between teachers and students there are likely to be differences in these respects. Moreover, the distribution of power is manifestly unequal. Given this reality the major issue seems to be whether to recognize these differences and try to develop structures for making mutually acceptable agreements/compromises, or whether to relinquish any claim to do more than raise students’ self-esteem and motivation by spending some time talking with them individually. To choose the first option risks disturbing the status quo by countenancing radical change in relationships between teachers and students and therefore in the nature and control of schooling. The second option is easily dismissed as merely cosmetic, although it may have considerable intrinsic value, as evidence from the national evaluation of pilot schemes indicates (see PRAISE, 1987, p. 30).

The majority of profiling and records of achievement schemes have a liberal/progressive aspiration to improve pupil self-esteem and motivation without appearing to have anything very much more radical in mind. Some, for instance, refer to ‘counselling’, ‘guidance’ and ‘tutoring’ rather than ‘negotiation’ or even ‘dialogue’. However, one suspects that those profile developers who emphasize negotiation feel this does not go far enough. They would indeed like to change the nature of the relationship between teachers and students in a radical direction. The trouble is that few are prepared to take the radical argument to its logical conclusion, so it tends to fall between two stools. Even the eminently reasonable definition quoted above is too bland. It conveys no sense of the difficulties associated with the resolution of differences that we are familiar with in industrial relations. If ‘negotiation’ is to be more than a pleasant social encounter, but with the less powerful ultimately acquiescing to the views of the more powerful, it must be more hard-nosed. It must acknowledge that there will be stated or unstated disagreements, and if students are to be given real power their judgements should not be explicitly or implicitly overridden by teachers. Without the exercise of judgement in real situations it is unlikely that students will learn to have the autonomy that is so frequently stated as an educational goal. Moreover, if they begin to perceive the process as a hollow exercise, it may turn out to be not only a waste of time but educationally counterproductive. So what are the possibilities for developing situations conducive to genuine negotiation?

If the problem is unequal distribution of power, with students being relatively powerless, then it can be argued that the need is for structures or procedures that will create a better balance. Three possibilities present themselves. First, the student’s hand could be strengthened by a third party who takes the role of an advocate committed to supporting the student’s position. Such a person might be a school counsellor, another teacher or tutor, a parent or another, perhaps older, student. Secondly, students could operate systems of rewards and sanctions that would give them more power. The most obvious device, given current trends in the UK, would be to link student assessment with teacher appraisal. In this way it would become a reciprocal, and symmetrical, activity. Thirdly, various kinds of ‘assertiveness training’, which find a place in life skills courses, could be developed for application in teacher–student negotiations. In the last analysis, however, all these ‘solutions’ appear negative and profoundly depressing. With the exception, perhaps, of the second, they rest on a conflict model of interaction, invoking notions of ‘trade-off’, having little to do with education. Is it possible to find a more positive and educational conception of what negotiation might be?

A way forward

This is where the literature of naturalistic inquiry might be pertinent, especially the methodology of ‘responsive’ and ‘democratic’ evaluation which pays particular attention to political and ethical dimensions. Since the mid-1970s, when MacDonald (1977) developed his political classification of evaluation studies, evaluators working within a ‘democratic’ mode have acknowledged multiple perspectives and value-pluralism in the framing and exchange of information. Thus, they have sought principles and procedures to safeguard those who are least able to protect themselves from the effects of exposure. According to MacDonald: ‘The key concepts of democratic evaluation are “confidentiality”, “negotiation” and “accessibility”.’ These concepts or principles are not entirely discrete since they all relate to a superordinate concept of ownership. The assumption is that participants in an evaluation study have a right to control the dissemination of personal information about themselves and, therefore, privacy must be respected and access and use of such data should be negotiated. To meet these requirements evaluators have derived practical procedures from these principles and advocate ‘negotiation of access’ to data sources and ‘negotiation of clearance and release’ of reports (see Simons, 1979; Kemmis and Robottom, 1981). With this I have no problem. However, they also suggest that evaluators should ‘negotiate the boundaries’ of studies in terms of what should be included or excluded, and likewise ‘negotiate accounts’ in terms of accuracy and relevance. In both cases validity is the issue, which raises a question about whether it is appropriate to ‘negotiate’ truth and relevance.

If one adheres strictly to MacDonald’s position that evaluators should act as ‘brokers’ in exchanges of information and judgements, then the task is to ensure that they have accurate accounts of the truth as participants perceive it. If, on the other hand, evaluators give any interpretations of their own, and I personally think this is unavoidable since some interpretation is implicit even in the organization of accounts, then validity is crucially important. However, to talk of negotiating the validity or truth of accounts with participants implies a consensus theory of truth that is naive and relativistic. As I suggested in relation to the transcribed teacher–student review session, the fact that two people agree a judgement does not guarantee its truth. The grounds for an interpretation or judgement need to be scrutinized and this is not a matter for negotiation. It is an epistemological activity, concerned with meaning, understanding and the ascription of value. In this context the term ‘dialogue’, with all its Socratic associations, seems more appropriate.

It takes little imagination to see how closely the relationship of evaluator to participant corresponds to the relationship between teacher and student in the process of recording achievement. In both contexts, the individuals concerned are characteristically involved in both a formative and summative activity, i.e. deepening mutual understanding during face-to-face interaction and preparing accounts for possible public consumption. Since the second of these activities may place the student in a vulnerable position, it is appropriate to establish procedures for negotiation of access to information, including such things as personal diaries, and release of summary accounts, records or reports. However, when defining the bounds of relevant discussion (e.g. how far teachers should enquire into personal qualities or out-of-school achievements in making an educational record), and certainly when examining the evidential bases for assessments, then dialogue seems the better description of a process that is educational in intent. This distinction is presented in Table 5.1.

Table 5.1 Negotiation and dialogue: purposes and processes

One major question remains. Is it possible for negotiation and dialogue to be associated with different sets of concepts, principles and procedures and yet continue to co-exist within one activity, e.g. profiling or recording activity?

There are those, like Don Stansbury (1985), who have for a long time been saying that the formative and summative elements of profiling are uneasy bedfellows. The pressure to produce an ‘agreed’ summative document, of use to employers and the like, could so easily come to dominate and therefore diminish the potential for genuine educational dialogue between teachers and students concerning, not only students’ achievements, but curriculum content and processes in institutional and social contexts. Certainly, the rather inadequate and superficial attempt by the French teacher to ‘negotiate’ assessments with her students could be explained by reference to the conflicting pressures inherent in the situation. Somehow she had to juggle her roles as subject expert, assessor, diagnostician, facilitator of learning, authority figure, manager of time and resources – and television star! Even in the absence of a television crew, could any teacher be expected to do very much better? One feasible suggestion might be to develop further the distinctions made above and put them into practice as entirely separate but complementary activities. Together they could still be described as recording achievement but the process would be plural rather than singular.