One thought I have is that 'learning' overall is about some kind of change ....
So maybe somehow the question is ... Can the Change be 'described' / measured / reported ....
just a broad thought ???
I would venture that all learning involves a transformation of identity. As it is mostly gradual this is not sufficiently recognised. Take a moment to think about it in your own terms.
Then think about the absurdity of assessing that change against externally imposed criteria. Who are you working for when you do that? Whose agenda?
Education should provide frameworks for emergent learning, In fact a curriculum is precisely that, it sets a framework. The problem is the belief that only one emergent result is valid. And this belief stifles identities.
Ipsative assessment approaches are arguably the only truly democratic way to go about assessment. They are the only way to respect individual freedoms and identities. However they require a lot of rigour and reflection to work (let alone to answer the critiques of the usual social engineers) and our systems are not used to that. But it is valuable to try.
Agreed - but ipsative is 'improvement on'. It doesn't measure emergent unless you're arguing that emergent is from one level to another. Emergent learning may occur as a result of serindipity, or from an area not previously assessed or quantified. It may even progress from stability to complexity thereby implying the learning is retrograding (eg, going from knowing everything about a particular subject to knowing little about the next iteration of that subject - such as during the research phase of a Ph.D).
Personally I prefer an assessment of the use of tools and artefacts than on what is achieved through their use.
Nick, precisely
If ... all learning is about transformation of identity
Then ... the learner