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Who's Afraid of Assessment? remarks on Winch and Gingell's reply
Author(s) -
DAVIS ANDREW
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
journal of philosophy of education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.501
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-9752
pISSN - 0309-8249
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9752.1996.tb00408.x
Subject(s) - winch , argument (complex analysis) , identity (music) , epistemology , state (computer science) , space (punctuation) , psychology , pedagogy , mathematics education , sociology , philosophy , computer science , aesthetics , engineering , mechanical engineering , biochemistry , chemistry , algorithm , linguistics
This paper defends my argument that criterion‐referenced assessment should not be used to render an education system accountable to the state. Winch and Gingell's reply to my original paper understands me as denying the ‘plasticity’ of abilities. Considerable space is devoted to further discussion of this issue.‘Plasticity’ is not denied, but problems about the ‘identity’ of capacities, abilities, processes and rules are explored in some depth. Winch and Gingell defend certain kinds of pedagogy such as rote learning and ‘teaching to the test’. I remind them that I was not actually discussing pedagogy in the original paper.