cultural ideals for eportfolio practice: authenticity, deliberation, and integrity
DESCRIPTION
Keynote presentation at ePortfolio & Digital Identity 2008, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, May 6, 2008TRANSCRIPT
Cultural Ideals for ePortfolio Practice: Authenticity,
Deliberation, and Integrity
Darren Cambridge
ePortfolio & Digital Identity 2008Montreal, Quebec, Canada
May 6, 2008
Three Ideals
Authenticity
Integrity
Deliberation
Different Paradigms?
• Expressive: creative, individualized, self as authority
• Standardized: common structure set through institution, objective process of evaluation
• Barrett: Story vs. Test
Authenticity
• Finding truth through examination of what’s unique about oneself – Rousseau, Romanticism – Intersection of cultural influences
social structures
• Enacting that difference through creative expression– Aesthetics of the self (Foucault)
• Protecting choice as a core value
Authenticity in Education
• Ownership– Let Your Life Speak– Experiential learning – Reflection as
reflexive– Self-directed learning
– Self-authorship
• Creativity – Capturing the
learning of diverse students
– Personalization of education
– End in itself
Essentially, I do not have a religion to cling on to; I’m left with the experience of my life and I try to relate it to my own understanding of truth. That, I suppose, is the essence of spirituality—maybe this is all a blessing in disguise. Echoing so many theorists on minorities and social repression, the struggle to simply be what I am is edifying.
Sean Moore
Neutrality as a Consequence
• Abandonment of “horizons of significance”
• Validation of choice as an end in itself
• Freedom of neutrality • Procedural justice (Bellah, Habits of the Heart)
Critique of Authenticity
• Expressive: Promotes a culture of atomism and narcissism– Self-absorption, lack of enduring
commitments, disposable relationships
• Standardized: Creates the conditions that foster this culture– Abdication of role of institutions in
cultivating shared values
Necessity of Dialog
• Without horizons of significance, how do we know which individual differences make a difference?
• Language is always dialogic (Bahktin)• Autonomy dependent on recognition
(Benjamin) • The authentic self must be defined in dialog
with horizons of significance • Manner vs. content
Integrity
• Consistency and coherence over time
(lifelong)
• Consistency and coherence across roles (lifewide)
• Achieved and asserted through narrative
Psychological Need for Integrity
• Desire for narrative of the long term in a globalized economy (Richard Sennett)
• “Own kind of integrity” in the face of discontinuity (Mary Catherine Bateson)
• “Finding a thread in my life” (Samantha Slade)
• Sharing my “whole human being” (Tracy Wright)
Three curricula
Kathleen Yancey, Reflection in the Writing Classroom
Good Work has Integrity
ExpertiseDoing work wellCompetencies
SocialProfessional contribution to society
IndividualPersonal integrity and meaning
EthicsDoing good workValues and meaning
Good Work(Gardner, Csikszentmihalyi, Damon)
From Dialog to Deliberation
• A portfolio is a message in a rhetorical situation– Audience as well as author– Not just expression of but also expression to
• Portfolio as a means for participation in collective decision making
• Deliberative democracy – Decision making – Legitimation
Principles of Deliberation
• Publicity– Deliberative system which informs and holds
accountable
• Inclusiveness– All impacted by decisions can participate
• Reasonableness– Economy of moral objections– Respect for reasonable disagreement
• Provisionality – Openess to changing positions and decisions
University as Ethical Learning Organization
• Authenticity: Help students discover and document what’s important to them about learning, based on evidence
• Dialog: Put those individual articulations in conversation with organizational understanding
• Deliberation: Student inputs must have real influence on decision making
A New Role for Competencies
• Standardized: Matching performance to a pre-defined set of outcomes
• Deliberative: Capture standards all stakeholders value as enacted in practice and examining alignment of both student and programmatic performance
Competencies in Organizational Learning
• Standardized: Articulating expectations to students• Deliberative: Means for mutually accountable
connection between individual and organizational learning
• Boundary objects: “Boundary objects are objects that are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites” (Leigh Star 1989)
Deliberative Assessment
• Standardized: Objectivist/utilitarian• Expressive: Subjectivist/intuitionist
(Gray 2002)
• Deliberative assessment – Learning complex and situated – Judgment based in embodied expertise– Students as authoritative informants about their
own learning (Yancey 1998) – Institutional values and outcomes the result of
deliberation based these sources of expertise
New Century College Competencies
• Communication
• Critical Thinking
• Strategic Problem Solving
• Valuing
• Group Interaction
• Global Understanding
• Effective Citizenship
• Aesthetic Awareness
• Information Technology
NCC Graduation Portfolio
• No predefined standard for what constitutes satisfactory performance in each competency
• Students exposed to (and assessed with) many models and standards through coursework and experiential learning
• Students redefine each competency, beginning with “official definition”– Synthesizing multiple perspectives – Integrating evidence from own experience – Taking ownership and planning for the future
ePortfolio outcomes
• Demonstrate learning power or learning competencies (Broadstreet 2006) – Key affordance of the portfolio genre
(Meeus, Petegem, and Looy 2006)
• Input to a community conversation about what it means to be an educated person in the 21st Century– Competencies are means of connection – Analysis of student competency essays and evidence a
central feature of program review– Conversation involves students, faculty/staff, alumni, and
community partners
Authenticity
• OwnershipValidation through reflexivity
• Creativity Articulation the inchoate self through reflection
• How does the portfolio model help students articulate their self-
understanding?
Deliberation
Decisions made through discussion that •Is reasonable•Is inclusive•Takes into account information from all
•Allows for both consensus
and dissent
• How can the way portfolios are evaluated be defined by and involve everyone affected? • How do we ensure that the information about learning that informs such decisions is broad enough to take advantage of individual differences?
Integrity Consistency of values and articulation of relationship between • Different spheres of life
• Different social roles
• How does the portfolio help students represent their identity as “whole human beings”?
•How does it invite connections with learning beyond the context of the course, discipline or
institution?
Ideas?
Darren Cambridge
George Mason University
+1-202-270-5224