“Very Sad, But It Works”: One Pupil's Assessment Career in Religious Education

Abstract

This article combines two under-researched issues: the role and effect of assessment in religious education and the effect of assessment regimes on the construction of learner identities. It describes the context to assessment in English religious education. Then generic arguments about summative and formative assessment are reviewed, and the notion of assessment careers is introduced. The practitioner research methodology is described, before analyzing the data from one pupil, which shows how he combined elements of two types of learner identity, including the ability to reflect on wide aspects of his learning in religious education. The implications for conceptualizing learner identities and for assessment in religious education are considered.

KEYWORDS:

• assessment
• assessment career
• learner identity
• religious education

Notes

This is described in Robert Jackson and Kevin O'Grady, “Religion and Education in England: Social Plurality, Civil Religion and Religious Education Pedagogy,” in Religion and Education in Europe: Developments, Contexts and Debates, eds. Robert Jackson, Siebren Miedema, Wolfgang Weisse, and Jean-Paul Williame (Münster, Germany: Waxmann, 2007), 181–202.

Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, Religious Education: The Non-statutory National Framework (London: Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, 2004).

John Keast, “Issues in the Teaching of Religious Education: Assessing Achievement in RE from Early Years to A level,” in Issues in Religious Education, eds. L. Broadbent and A. Brown (London: Routledge Falmer, 2003), 56–70.

Michael Grimmitt, “The Captivity and Liberation of Religious Education and the Meaning and Significance of Pedagogy,” in Pedagogies of Religious Education, ed. M. Grimmitt (Great Wakering: McCrimmonds, 2000), 7–23.

Caroline Gipps, Beyond Testing: Towards a Theory of Educational Assessment (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1994).

Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam, “Assessment and Classroom Learning,” Assessment in Education 5 (1998): 7–74.

Ibid., 17–18.

Ibid., 7.

Caroline Dweck, Self-Theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality and Development (London: Psychology Press, 1999), 7.

Ruth Butler, “Task-Involving and Ego-Involving Properties of Evaluation: Effects of Different Feedback Conditions on Motivational Perceptions, Interest and Performance,” Journal of Educational Psychology 79 (1987): 474–482; Ruth Butler, “Enhancing and Undermining Intrinsic Motivation: The Effects of Task-Involving and Ego-Involving Evaluation on Interest and Performance,” British Journal of Educational Psychology 58 (1998): 1–14.

See note 2.

Robert Jackson, Rethinking Religious Education and Plurality: Issues in Diversity and Pedagogy (London: Routledge Falmer, 2004).

It was supervised between 2003 and 2008 by Prof. Robert Jackson and Dr. Valerie Brooks and kindly funded by Culham Educational Trust.

John Elliott, Action Research for Educational Change (Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press, 1991).

See Robert Jackson, Religious Education: An Interpretive Approach (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1997), notably chapter 5, pp. 95-120. Also, Eleanor Nesbitt, “Bridging the Gap Between Young People's Experience of their Religious Traditions at Home and School: The Contribution of Ethnographic Research,” British Journal of Religious Education 20 (1998): 102–114.

Kevin O'Grady, “Motivation in Religious Education: A Collaborative Investigation with Year Eight Pupils,” British Journal of Religious Education 25 (2003): 214–225.

John Maxwell, “Understanding and Validity in Qualitative Research,” Harvard Educational Review 62 (1992): 279–300.

Ann Filer and Andrew Pollard, The Social World of Pupil Assessment: The Processes and Contexts of Primary Schooling (London and New York: Continuum, 2000).

Kathryn Ecclestone and John Pryor, “‘Learning Careers’ or ‘Assessment Careers'? The Impact of Assessment Systems on Learning, ” British Educational Research Journal 29 (2003): 471–488, 472. See also Kathryn Ecclestone, “Commitment, Compliance and Comfort Zones: The Effects of Formative Assessment on Vocational Education Students’ Learning Careers, ” Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice 14 (2007): 315–333.

Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977) [Esquisse d'une théorie de la pratique, précédé de trois études d'ethnologie kabyle, 1972], 72.

The school is described in Janet Looney and Dylan Wiliams, “Implementing Formative Assessment in a High Stakes Environment,” in Formative Assessment: Improving Learning in Secondary Classrooms, ed. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (Paris: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), 129–148.

Paul Black, Christine Harrison, Clare Lee, Bethan Marshall, and Dylan Wiliam, Assessment for Learning: Putting It into Practice (Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press, 2003).

David Fontana and Miguel Fernandez, “Improvements in Mathematics Performance as a Consequence of Self-assessment in Portuguese Primary School Pupils,” British Journal of Educational Psychology 64 (1994): 407–417.

Anne Campbell, Olwen McNamara, and Paul Gilroy, Practitioner Research and Professional Development in Education (London: Paul Chapman Publishing, 2004).

Herbert Altricher, Peter Posch, and Bridget Somekh, Teachers Investigate Their Work: An Introduction to the Methods of Action Research (London: Routledge, 1993).

These are discussed in Nigel Fancourt ‘“I'm Less Intolerant': Reflexive Self-assessment in Religious Education,” British Journal of Religious Education 32 (2010): 291–306; and in Val Brooks and Nigel Fancourt, “Is Self-Assessment in Religious Education Unique?” British Journal of Religious Education 34 (2012): 119–122. A more general analysis of all the pupils is described in Nigel Fancourt, “Reflexive Assessment: The Interpretive Approach and Classroom Assessment,” in Religious Education Research through a Community of Practice, eds. Julia Ipgrave, Robert Jackson, and Kevin O'Grady (Münster, Germany: Waxmann, 2009).

This was the subject of a special edition of this journal: Bruce Grelle, “The Comparative Study of Religion and Education in Europe and Beyond: Contributions of the REDCo Project,” Religion and Education 38, no. 2 (2010).

Emile Lester and Patrick Roberts, “How Teaching World Religions Brought a Truce to the Culture Wars in Modesto, California,” British Journal of Religious Education 31 (2010): 187–200.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nigel Fancourt

Nigel Fancourt is a Lecturer in the Department of Education, University of Oxford. He works in teacher education and educational research. His research interests include curriculum, pedagogy and assessment in religious education; equity and inclusion; professional learning, including practitioner research. E-mail: [email protected]