Aesthetics of the beautiful: Ideologic tensions in contemporary assessment

Abstract

Pedagogy is an uncertain art. Yet by its very nature, contemporary teaching and learning practice typically suggests that the expert teacher must come to know their student well enough to plan and predict for educational challenges that will expand and extend their thinking. In many countries, this process is underpinned by bureaucratic ideology that has persuasively developed an agenda for assessment as accountability for pedagogy. As a result assessment practice in these educational institutions is very public, highly accountable and heavily prescribed through curriculum documents that claim to encompass societal agendas. In some cases, such practices are even legislated. Assessment practice is now seen as integral to the pedagogical process since it is through assessment that the teacher purportedly comes to understand the learner; thus providing a rationale for the teaching approaches and strategies that are applied in order to progress learning. In this chronotopic location I suggest there is little room for uncertainty, since the quest to capture the "essence" of the learner and mould them towards societal goals is as much a political agenda of accountability as it is pedagogical.