Blog 3: Mark Barrow and Foucault inspired reflections

The title of Barrow’s 2006 piece ‘Assessment and student transformation: linking character and intellect’ was thought provoking for me. It lead me to consider what I believe university is truly for, it is a place designed to produce individuals who will play their own part to form a capitalist, consumerist society? Is Higher Education simply learning for the sake of learning? Or do Higher Education facilities exist for the generation of new knowledge?

I believe that in an ideal world the purpose of higher education is to teach students to consider the world and their place within it more thoroughly, and so it is not directly about the content but the process of accumulating new knowledge and the kind of inquiring mind and nature that students learn through this process. This is a similar idea to what Barrow (2006) explains could be cultivated throughout a continual ipsative feedback technique where student work is assessed holistically against looking at progress rather than comparison against a grade scale that does not take into consideration that individual’s previous work or grades (Classtime, 2024)

Faucault’s (1983) idea of confession being essential for humans to conduct themselves ethically by continually evaluating the morality of their actions is equated in Barrow’s (2006) work to the process of assessment. The ideas behind this are very compelling and suggest a large quantity of similarities, however assessment in the traditional format is generally seen within higher education as the culmination of work rather than the process. Within Barrow’s study he looks at how this plays out for a student on a creative degree where they are also marked on a journal of their work process, versus a student on a Business degree, who’s graded on one final assessment which doesn’t take into consideration the process to get to that point. Meaning that the business student misses the chance of Faucault’s “confessions” where as the design student had them in the form of on going critiques and touch points with their tutor when building up their sketchbook/journal. 

As a specialist technician, my role does not allow me to take part in formal assessment within the university, however I believe this concept of continual “confessions” and through these a chance to guide students to reflect fits perfectly into my role with the students who want to explore 3D print to a further degree, as often with these individuals I get to see their project evolve, they will come to me with questions and thoughts throughout their design and making process and I can support and guide their thought process through this, feeding into the way the ultimately consider and conduct themselves in the world throughout and post-university. I look forward to unpacking this idea further within Case Study 3.

Bibliography:

• Barrow M, (2006) ‘Assessment and student transformation: linking character and intellect’ Studies in Higher Education Vol. 31, No. 3 pp. 357-375
• Classtime, (2024), Ipsative Assessment: A Deep Dive into Personalized Learning Progress Available at: https://www.classtime.com/en/ipsative-assessment
• Foucault, M. (1983) The subject and power (Afterword), in: H. L. Dreyfus & P. Rainbow (Eds) Michel Foucault: beyond structuralism and hermeneutics (2^nd edn) (Chicago University Press), 208-226