What did I learn today?

The organisers of the Navcon2k4 conference really struck a chord. Julia Atkin delivered a third key note which blended harmoniously with Tom Sergiovanni's and Dale Spender's tonics.

Julia believes that just as the red flag act handicapped the performance of the early motor car, current assessment practices are crippling attempts to improve learning. What is needed, according to Julia, is a reassessment of assessment.

Like Tom Sergiovanni, Julia referenced a topical article from the previous day's Christchurch Press. News that "Teachers 'could do better'" is best answered by teachers examining their professional standards according to Julia. Julia challenged us to consider what we mean when we describe ourselves as professionals.

She emphasised the importance of having a clear vision because unless our actions are aligned with our values we will achieve nothing but chaos. New Zealand society's vision for education appeared muddled to Dr. Atkin; a vision that is more about sorting than helping each child reach their potential.

In order to encourage some reflection on our educative purpose Julia read some guiding words from Jacques Delors' introduction to Learning: The Treasure Within:

People today have a dizzying feeling of being torn between a globalization whose manifestations they can see and sometimes have to endure, and their search for roots, reference points and a sense of belonging.

Education has to face up to this problem now more than ever as a world society struggles painfully to be born: education is at the heart of both personal and community development; its mission is to enable each of us, without exception, to develop all our talents to the full and to realize our creative potential, including responsibility for our own lives and achievement of our personal aims.

This aim transcends all others. Its achievement, though long and difficult, will be an essential contribution to the search for a more just world, a better world to live in.

There is, therefore, every reason to place renewed emphasis on the moral and cultural dimensions of education, enabling each person to grasp the individuality of other people and to understand the world's erratic progression towards a certain unity; but this process must begin with self-understanding through an inner voyage whose milestones are knowledge, meditation and the practice of self-criticism.

Our assessment system is well aligned with our current vision of education as a sorting and standardising mechanism. We are very good at assessing quantity and standardising (we expect students' ideas to mirror those held by their teacher); we are not so good at assessing quality and raising standards.

So how do we assess for quality? By encouraging students to ask themselves, rather than their teachers: "What did I learn today?"—and not just because their mothers will want to know! In capturing these powerful learning stories we will be answering Dale Spender's challenge to assess not only what is in our students' heads.