Pedagogical Voyeurism: Dialogic Critique of Documentation and Assessment of Learning

Abstract

We challenge a common emphasis on documentation and assessment of learning for providing good education: from the mainstream of neoliberal accountability movement to the progressive Reggio Emilia schools. We develop these arguments through discussing: 1) immeasurableness of education and learning, 2) students’ ownership/authorship of education and learning. We ground our conceptualization of educational assessment in critical dialogue, in a case of a student who requested assessment of her research project, and guided her peers and the teacher in providing different aspects of this assessment. We argue that documentation of learning on teacher’s demand leads to surveillance, discipline, distraction, teacher-student distrust, and robbing of students from ownership of their education and thus it is anti-educational