It’s not fair! Students and staff views on the equity of the procedures and outcomes of students’ choice of assessment methods

Giving students a choice of assessment methods is one approach to developing an inclusive curriculum. However, both staff and students raise concerns about its fairness, often described as its equity. This study investigates their perceptions of the fairness of the procedures and outcomes of this approach to assessment, in nine modules in a University setting. Using a tool validated as part of the study, students’ views on procedural fairness were gathered (n?=?370 students). In addition, seven module co-ordinators were interviewed. A seven-step approach to the design of the approach was used. The results demonstrated that students were satisfied that their assessment choices were fair in levels of support, feedback, information and, to a lesser extent, student workload and examples of assessment methods. In exploring fairness of the outcomes, the students’ grades were not significantly different between the two sets of choices. However, based on staff interviews, the overall grades were higher than previous cohorts and higher than average for current student cohorts in the institution. The discussion highlights some of the complex issues surrounding fairness (equity) using assessment choice and, in addition, the paper refers to some practical tools for its implementation.     

Three views of fairness in a school-based assessment scheme of practical work in biology

This interpretive study of the implementation of a school-based assessment scheme of biology practical work in Hong Kong examines three teachers' struggles with the issue of fairness in relation to their classroom actions. Though the teachers' discourses were dominated by, and their classroom actions were pre-eminently influenced by, the notion of fairness, they did so in three qualitatively different ways: (1) fair in the sense of assessing students on a fair basis; (2) fair in the sense of not jeopardizing students' chances to learn the subject matter while they are being assessed; and (3) fair in the sense of not depriving students' of opportunities of receiving all-round education. The implication is that assessment innovation is a necessary, but not a sufficient, mechanism for changes within our educational system. The role of the teacher is challenged by the new assessment scheme?the co-existence of assessment and learning requires a significant change in the teacher's pedagogy. For teachers to implement the new programme their existing understanding and beliefs concerning assessment must be challenged and opportunities provided for them to come to terms with the philosophy of the new assessment scheme. Most importantly, the teachers themselves must undertake such a learning process.     

马克思恩格斯的资本主义“公平”观及当代启示

公平与效率的问题是任何社会在其发展过程中都要面对的。马克思、恩格斯在对资本主义进行深入研究后认为,资本主义社会的经济效率较高,所创造的社会生产力明显比其以前任何社会都多,但它在对公平问题的处理上却陷入泥潭。资本主义"公平"仅是"公平"历史发展过程中的一环,它在现实上集中表现为"资本"的公平,是资产阶级的乐园,具有明显的形式性、虚伪性。这种所谓的公平必然束缚社会生产力的进一步发展,导致阶级之间的尖锐对立,资本主义社会将在其中灭亡。马克思、恩格斯对资本主义"公平"问题的认识给当代中国深刻启迪,告诉我们不仅要注意"效率",更要善待"公平",借以促进社会稳定,增进社会和谐。     

论公正与公平、平等、正义之间的差异

公正与公平、平等、正义之间既有某种相似性,又存在着不同。公正与公平的差别表现在:公正是一个具有正价值取向的概念,是人们对社会政策或制度设计的理想追求,其应然性强,而公平则突出衡量标准的一视同仁,具有很强的工具性;公正与平等的差别体现在:公正涉及的范围比较广泛且具有积极意义,而平等则更关注权利、地位、义务的等同,不适当地运用平等原则往往带来负面效应;公正与正义的差别在于:正义侧重于道德性的内涵,而公正则侧重于政治和社会层面的意义,正义与公正是一种属种关系,公正是正义的特殊表现形式,是社会普遍认同的正义。     

美国ACT公平性析论

ACT在美国大学招生过程中发挥着重要的作用。作为大规模入学考试,ACT也是一个公平的考试。ACT在考试内容的选取上注重全面覆盖知识点并保证知识点与高中学科教学的相关性,这就使得所有考生拥有了公平的竞争机会;在试题命制过程中,ACT把公平性作为试题取舍的必要条件以保证试题不偏袒任何群体,这是考试公平的关键所在;分数报告系统的全面细致,使得考生之间的差异性在大学招生过程中能够得到恰当的对待,这是考试公平必不可少的组成部分。     

高校教师教学质量过程性评价系统的设计与实现——基于Assessment Portfolios的实践

论述了基于Assessment Portfolios的教师教学质量过程性评价的概念和基本理念,根据其评价过程的特点和实际用户需求,设计了系统的功能结构,提出了基于Assessment Portfolios的教师教学质量过程性评价模式,完成了系统软件的设计和开发,并投入使用,实现了教师教学质量评价活动的信息化管理,提高了评价的科学性和公平性,完善了评价指标体系、评价工作机制和反馈机制。     

起点公平、过程公平和结果公平辨析

关于公平的争论,若从时序的角度出发来分析公平问题,抽象的公平可以区分为起点公平、过程公平和结果公平三种。研究公平问题不能把这三个紧密相关的方面分割开来,而且事实上也很难分开研究。这三种公平,互相衔接,互相影响,互为条件,缺一不可。社会主义的公平是这三个方面的有机统一,缺少其中一项都不是社会主义的公平观。     

Toward a Fair Community of Scholars: moral education as the negotiation of classroom practices

Abstract

This paper reviews research on students’ concepts and theories of fair and effective educational practices and casts them as insightful critics of schooling who should be included in the negotiation of academic practices. Formal interviews show that students consider the goal or definition of the situation when evaluating the fairness of practices, and that conceptions of fairness develop differently for each type of situation. Students also hold different theories about how school should be defined and which situations should predominate. Moral education programmes could encourage students and teachers to negotiate fair classroom practices, creating a community of scholars who collaborate to build more fair and effective schools.     

和谐社会框架下的公平问题

社会公平是一个具有丰富内涵的概念,在构建和谐社会过程中具有举足轻重的作用.当前在我国经济建设取得举世瞩目的伟大成就的同时,要客观地正视现实生活中存在的起点、制度和结果不公平等社会不公平现象,并通过建立公正的司法制度、公平的社会分配制度等相应措施加以解决,以达到维护社会公平、构建和谐社会的目的.     

Being Fair: Teachers’ Interpretations of Principles for Standards-Based Grading

Knowing that grades can have long-term consequences for students, teachers voice concern about being fair in the grading process. However, their interpretations of fairness are varied and sometimes contradictory. This study looked at how teachers in one standards-based educational system determined secondary students’ grades, focusing specifically on the extent to which they followed a specific set of principles for grading. The results support previous research, and suggest that a better understanding of essential principles is needed for grades to accurately reflect students’ achievement.     

How do the existing fairness metrics and unfairness mitigation algorithms contribute to ethical learning analytics?

With the widespread use of learning analytics (LA), ethical concerns about fairness have been raised. Research shows that LA models may be biased against students of certain demographic subgroups. Although fairness has gained significant attention in the broader machine learning (ML) community in the last decade, it is only recently that attention has been paid to fairness in LA. Furthermore, the decision on which unfairness mitigation algorithm or metric to use in a particular context remains largely unknown. On this premise, we performed a comparative evaluation of some selected unfairness mitigation algorithms regarded in the fair ML community to have shown promising results. Using a 3-year program dropout data from an Australian university, we comparatively evaluated how the unfairness mitigation algorithms contribute to ethical LA by testing for some hypotheses across fairness and performance metrics. Interestingly, our results show how data bias does not always necessarily result in predictive bias. Perhaps not surprisingly, our test for fairness-utility tradeoff shows how ensuring fairness does not always lead to drop in utility. Indeed, our results show that ensuring fairness might lead to enhanced utility under specific circumstances. Our findings may to some extent, guide fairness algorithm and metric selection for a given context.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• LA is increasingly being used to leverage actionable insights about students and drive student success.
• LA models have been found to make discriminatory decisions against certain student demographic subgroups—therefore, raising ethical concerns.
• Fairness in education is nascent. Only a few works have examined fairness in LA and consequently followed up with ensuring fair LA models.

What this paper adds

• A juxtaposition of unfairness mitigation algorithms across the entire LA pipeline showing how they compare and how each of them contributes to fair LA.
• Ensuring ethical LA does not always lead to a dip in performance. Sometimes, it actually improves performance as well.
• Fairness in LA has only focused on some form of outcome equality, however equality of outcome may be possible only when the playing field is levelled.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• Based on desired notion of fairness and which segment of the LA pipeline is accessible, a fairness-minded decision maker may be able to decide which algorithm to use in order to achieve their ethical goals.
• LA practitioners can carefully aim for more ethical LA models without trading significant utility by selecting algorithms that find the right balance between the two objectives.
• Fairness enhancing technologies should be cautiously used as guides—not final decision makers. Human domain experts must be kept in the loop to handle the dynamics of transcending fair LA beyond equality to equitable LA.

     

公开考试评卷工作的重要程序——香港的经验

公开考试的设计是一项专门的学问。公开考试一般包括三个重要元素：设计考试大纲、编制试题及评分、报告成绩。在考生人数众多的科目,评卷环节面临的重要问题之一就是须聘用大量评卷员参与评卷。但是,评卷是一项以专业判断为主的工作,为保证对所有考生公平,考评机构便须采取适当步骤,划一评卷尺度。本文旨在探讨香港考试及评核局为保持评卷信度,确保考生的答卷得到公平及客观的处理,在评卷环节所采取的程序,包括评卷参考的设计、评卷的配套程序、评卷教师的培训等,并分析这些程序的重要意义。     

Assessment Focus in Studio: What is Most Prominent in Architecture,Art and Design?

What can be learned about assessment from what educators in the creative practices focus their studio publications on? What should form the focus of assessment in architecture, art and design studios? In this article we draw on 118 journal articles on studio published over the last decade in three disciplines; architecture, art and design to inform the focus of studio assessment. We believe that what is published by educators themselves in these disciplines reveals what matters most to them. In addition, we argue that regardless of the primary emphasis placed in each discipline, assessment in studio should encompass a broad set of indicators. Within the wider literature including in architecture, art and design, a view of assessment is emerging that recognises the process and the person, beyond a view that positions the product or art/design arte‐fact above all else. Therefore, drawing on what educators in architecture, art and design mentioned most in the journal publications analysed, as well as the literature on good assessment, we offer a holistic model to guide and take studio assessment in the creative disciplines further.     

Linking rights,needs, and fairness in high-stakes assessments and examinations

This paper presents a novel explanation for the continued absence of a children’s rights strategy within high-stakes educational assessment with reference to the competing purposes of high-stakes assessments and group-based constructions of fairness in assessment. We provide an original critique of group-based perspectives on the validity of assessment accommodations which supports an individual perspective on fair educational assessment. From this, the (almost forgotten) concept of ‘student assessment needs’ is (re-)introduced as a central axiom, to be constructed through feedback from, and dialogue with, students about their experience of high-stakes assessments, giving primacy to their purpose as an attainment demonstration opportunity for the student. To promote a new movement towards student participation in educational assessment processes and reforms, we propose ‘rights respecting assessment’, complementary to UNICEF’s ‘Rights Respecting Schools’ initiative, in which regular system-wide student representation would contribute to the development of high-stakes examination systems. In recognition of this aspiration, this paper is co-authored with a recent school-leaving age examination candidate.     

A “conditional” sense of fairness in assessment

Standardizing aspects of assessments has long been recognized as a tactic to help make evaluations of examinees fair. It reduces variation in irrelevant aspects of testing procedures that could advantage some examinees and disadvantage others. However, recent attention to making assessment accessible to a more diverse population of students highlights situations in which making tests identical for all examinees can make a testing procedure less fair: Equivalent surface conditions may not provide equivalent evidence about examinees. Although testing accommodations are by now standard practice in most large-scale testing programmes, for the most part these practices lie outside formal educational measurement theory. This article builds on recent research in universal design for learning (UDL), assessment design, and psychometrics to lay out the rationale for inference that is conditional on matching examinees with principled variations of an assessment so as to reduce construct-irrelevant demands. The present focus is assessment for special populations, but it is argued that the principles apply more broadly.     

从教育体系角度探讨教育公平的实现

教育公平是教育现代化的一项基本原则,是我们长期奋斗的理想。如何实现教育公平也是我国教育界关注的焦点之一。介于教育体系在教育目的中的重要作用,在分析传统教育体系不利于教育入学机会均等、教育过程公平,教育结果公正因素的基础上,阐述了终身教育体系在保障入学机会,教育过程的技术支撑,教育模式及教育评价体系的多元化等方面对于教育公平实现的积极意义。     

构建和谐社会必须公平与效率并重

构建和谐社会,关键在处理好公平与效率的关系,两者是内在统一,动态平衡的.在计划经济时期,过分注重公平忽视效率,导致经济发展缓慢,人民群众的物质文化生活需要得不到满足.改革开放后效率优先、兼顾公平,经济发展进入黄金期;同时,社会矛盾也进入凸显期,由收入差距扩大而引发的种种社会矛盾成为影响社会和谐的重要因素.因此,处理公平与效率的关系,在实践层面上可以根据实际情况有所侧重,但是在法理上,特别是在党的治国理政的指导方针上,不宜提“谁先谁后“,而要强调“并重“,这样才能真正持久地构建和谐社会.     

小学教师的公平素质及其构建

小学教师公平素质的构建,有助于实现教育公平由教室外向教室内最后0.5米的冲刺,促进教育过程和教育活动参与的公平。小学教师公平素质包括小学教师应有的公平知识、公平意识、公平责任、公平方式和公平情感五方面内容。小学教师公平素质的培养与提升,应当从教师专业标准、教师培训与培养和教师主动潜能出发。