Who Belongs? The Use of Narrative Assessment to Recognize All Students as Learners

• In Event: International Perspectives on Belonging in Schools

Abstract

New Zealand education documents and policies support the notions of students as participants in their own learning , as co-constructors of curriculum, and as assesment partners (Ministry of Education, 2007, 2009, 2011a, 2011b, 2014). Schools are responsible for establishing and susatining cultures of belonging where all students are valued and their unique strengths and learning challenges inform responsive curriculum (Education Review Office, 2012a, 2102b, 2014; Ministry of Education, 2011a, 2011b, 2014, n.d.). In practice many disabled students remain invisible within New Zealand secondary school assessment and achievement data (Education Review Office, 2012a, 2014). This invisibility can be recognized as supporting a discourse of deviance (Skidmore, 2002) where some groups of students are recognized as belonging as learners in school and some are not (Guerin, 2015).

This paper considers how the democratic notions expressed in education policy can be realised for students who are labelled as disabled. It considers the consequences of assessment for the students themselves, and for their family/whānau. Drawing on my recently completed doctoral study I consider the re-construction of two students labelled as disabled as learning participants, valued students and co-constructors of curriculum. One of the stdeutns is labelled as severely disabled and non-verbal (not communicating with spoken words). The other student is labelled as multiply disabled with intellectual and sensory disabilities.

Over one school year a collaborative learning community consisting of the disabled students, educators and family members worked together to make sense of the introduction of narrative assessment within a New Zealand secondary school. The research participants were required to rethink notions of dialogue, identities, student agency, progress, participation, student voice and partnership as everyday practices were developed and adapted in response to the students’ unique learning strengths and challenges. Some wider school practices were investigated and changes made to support more authentic ways of educators working with disabled students to hear what they had to say.

The research suggests some possible ways forward for educators who are questioning what and how all students can be participants in their own learning, how they can belong in learning conversations, in classrooms, in schools and communities as people who have something to contribute, something to say. It challenges the use of assessment models that value certain types of knowledge above that of knowing a student and their whānau well. The research suggests that a reframing of assessment practices through recognition of a commitment to the principles of partnership, participation and protection can support all students to be recognised as the learners that they are and can be.

Author

• Annie Patricia Guerin, University of Canterbury