Teaching Intersections, Not Assessments: Celebrating the Surprise of Gift Giving and Gift Getting in the Cultural Commons

Abstract

Unlike current assessment protocols, which emphasize prediction and control—often at the expense of engagement with the unknown, emergent, and new—we explore here our experiences as professors opening to surprise, in pedagogical interactions that have unpredictable outcomes. We imagine and advocate for institutional structures that, rather than predetermining goals and measuring how well we have achieved them, necessitate surprise and strengthen us to respond creatively and liberally to it. Without room for surprise, we argue, education is denied, and distorted by the loss of, one of its central energies: the circulation of the gifts of chance and serendipity.

Notes

¹Accepted and reviewed under the co-editorship of Patrick Slattery and Jim Henderson. The authors dedicate this article to Paul Grobstein, and thank Jody Cohen, Alison Cook-Sather, Howard Glasser, and Nydia Palacios for their careful attention to earlier drafts.