Hutchins, Roger Clive; (2013) High achieving pupils’ experiences of assessment for learning in a mainstream junior school : a qualitative case study drawing on perspectives from psychoanalytic theories. Doctoral thesis , UNSPECIFIED.

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Abstract

Assessment for Learning (AfL) remains a controversial and a significant aspect of education across the world, with both opportunities and dangers being presented as this strategy moves from being a radical new initiative to becoming routine. Investigating children’s experiences of AfL with a group of higher achieving pupils in a junior school in England, consideration is given to their cognitive responses to AfL, their personal psychological responses and their experiences of AfL in interaction with their teachers. Theoretical positioning is primarily drawn from the psychoanalytic concepts of Donald Winnicott – creativity and compliance, True and False Selves and the potential space. Lesson aims, success criteria, feedback, self-assessment and peer assessment are viewed through the eyes of the children with results which both support and challenge underlying formative assessment theory. Contributions to knowledge include the effects of the routinization of AfL; the necessity of taking into account the impact of the educational context in any study of AfL; the selective use that pupils make of AfL strategies; and the importance of taking the age, maturity and experience of pupils into account when examining the effectiveness and impact of AfL strategies in the classroom. These assessment strategies are being developed within a context of ‘assessment as measurement’ where ‘learning’, ‘progress’ and ‘improvement’ are regarded by pupils and staff alike as taking place when increasingly higher national curriculum levels in maths and English are being achieved by the children. The danger of routinization is apparent as pupils employ the assessment strategies they have been taught and have experienced throughout their school careers in a mechanical and instrumentalist way. As one pupil said, ‘It’s a bit like cleaning your teeth in the morning. It’s something you just do.’

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