1st Edition

Measuring Up in Education Philosophical Explorations for Justice and Democracy Within and Beyond Cultures of Measurement in Educational Systems

Edited By Steven Stolz, R. Scott Webster Copyright 2020
    136 Pages
    by Routledge

    136 Pages
    by Routledge

    Cultures of measurement are often considered to dominate educational practices, to the degree that, as Biesta (2010) has identified in Good Education in an Age of Measurement we no longer measure what we value, but rather we have become conditioned to value what is measured. A clear example of this occurs when institutions and staff "teach to the test" by emphasising narrow conceptions of learning and of knowledge, simply because the consequences of high-stakes assessments have important implications regarding funding, resources, and even tenure.



    This collection explores, via various philosophical means, how valuable educational practices can occur within and beyond cultures of measurement. What seems to be required is for practitioners in education to regain their relationship to the overall purposes of education, such as the furthering of justice and democracy for both individual students and societies as a whole. Such a reconnection has the potential to re-humanise curricular experiences for students, which may have become dehumanised through particular cultures of measurement. It is argued that certain legitimate measures can advance justice and democracy, and so careful attention must be assigned to their validity and value.



    This book was originally published as a special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory.

    Introduction: Measuring Up in Education

    Steven A. Stolz and Scott Webster

    1. Education, Measurement and the Professions: Reclaiming a space for democratic professionality in education

    Gert Biesta

    2. Valuing and Desiring Purposes of Education to Transcend Miseducative Measurement Practices

    Robert Scott Webster

    3. Getting the Measure of Measurement: Global educational opportunity

    Penny Enslin and Mary Tjiattas

    4. Creating the Civil Society East and West: Relationality, responsibility and the education of the humane person

    Janis (John) Talivaldis Ozolinš

    5. Can Educationally Significant Learning be Assessed?

    Steven A. Stolz

    6. The Givenness of the Human Learning Experience and Its Incompatibility with Information Analytics

    David Lundie

    7. A Quantum Measurement Paradigm for Educational Predicates: Implications for validity in educational measurement

    Ian Cantley

    8. On the Un-becoming of Measurement in Education

    Nuraan Davids

    Biography



    Steven A. Stolz, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer at La Trobe University, Australia. He has a diverse array of research interests, which ranges from: critical theory, epistemology, phenomenology, embodied cognition, narrative inquiry, and learning theories in psychology. At the moment, his primary area of scholarship is concerned with the relationship between theory and practice, particularly how theory informs practice, and/or how practice informs theory. Recent publications of note include: Theory and Philosophy in Education Research: Methodological Dialogues (Routledge), and MacIntyre, Rationality and Education: Against Education of Our Age (Springer).



    R. Scott Webster is an Associate Professor, and the coordinator of the Curriculum, Pedagogy and Professional Learning group within the School of Education at Deakin University, Australia. His areas of research include philosophy and theories of education, teacher education, curriculum theory, existentialism, and spirituality. His authored and edited books include the following: Educating for Meaningful Lives (2009); Understanding Curriculum: The Australian Context (2019, 2nd ed., with A. Ryan);  Rethinking Reflection and Ethics for Teachers (2019, with J. Whelan); and Theory and Philosophy in Education Research: Methodological Dialogues (2018).