The Rise of Learner Profiles in the UK: a Network Ethnography

• In Event: International Education: Dynamics, Issues and Explorations

Proposal

Relevance

As global trends in educational policy increasingly emphasise high-stakes accountability systems that are rooted in testing and evaluation as a means for shaping schooling practice and defining educational ‘quality’, many have called for an end to such ‘toxic testing’ environments. In England, with English children among the most tested in the world, the National Education Union (NEU) warns that schools risk being turned into “exam factories” if significant efforts are not taken to reduce the frequency of testing in schools. Such warnings have galvanised a number of grassroots organisations to raise awareness about the deleterious effects that such testing regime has had on teaching and learning. In our previous work (Authors 2022; 2023, 2024) we studied forms of resistance to high-stakes testing in England, with particular attention to the More Than a Score campaign.

In recent years, Learner Profiles (LPs) have gained support in education policy as “digital records of students’ learning and achievements” (Rethinking Assessment, 2024). LPs are proposed as a solution to diversify and rethink traditional educational assessment methods, and to adapt educational training and achievement to technological advancements in the job market. As an assessment alternative, LPs aim to provide a more holistic view of student achievement, replacing narrow insights from high-stakes exams with a broader understanding of students' strengths, knowledge, and skills by combining a range of assessments such as vivas, digital badges, and extended investigations. These records are showcased in personal e-portfolios that track learning progress, even beyond formal education.

LPs function as personal digital portfolios (Times Education Commission, 2022), enabling employers to assess candidates based not only on academic qualifications but also other achievements, such as personal projects, hobbies, and volunteer work. Technology is essential to making these records accessible, supporting industries that increasingly demand adaptable workers with up-to-date skills.
While LPs have begun expanding at the school level in the Global North, academic research has largely been absent from the conversation. This paper addresses this gap by examining a UK-based pilot project launched in 2022 by Rethinking Assessment (RA), addressing the following research questions: How and why did LPs gain traction as a policy solution within a network of actors with diverse interests? What are the characteristics of these actors, their relationships, and negotiations? What implications might LP development have on the concept of assessment?

Context

UK-based organisations such as the Beyond Ofsted inquiry, the Independent Commission on Assessment in Primary Education (ICAPE), and the British Educational Research Association (BERA) have emphasised the need to move away from heavy test-based accountability systems, addressing the negative effects on students’ wellbeing and the stress associated with them. As noted by The Times Education Commission (June 2022) ‘we need to consider a radical reset to ensure that the education system fulfils the potential of all children.’ In this context Rethinking Assessment introduced LPs as an alternative to test-based forms of certification. RA is a nonpartisan coalition of school leaders, researchers, policymakers, employers, and higher education representatives aiming to create a strengths-based and broader assessment system focused on the equity and fairness of student achievements. As a coalition of diverse actors, RA provides a valuable opportunity to examine the network of relationships and organisations working to advance LPs as a new policy solution, which produces and gathers meanings within a “complex web of social and political relations” (Merriman, 2020, p. 142).

Methodology

We suggest that ‘network ethnography’ (Author, 2017; 2023) is best suited to our attempt to specify the exchanges and transactions between organisations involved in the advocacy and development of LPs in England, and the roles, actions, motivations, discourses, and resources of the different actors involved. Network ethnography entails close attention to practices, dynamics and the structure formed by actors within a policy network, and “the meaning-making and -reshaping that occur through exchanges in social relations” as well as policy discourses “shared and enhanced in and by policy networks” (Author 2023, p. 509).

Our data collection involved deep and extensive internet search on the LPs project and its policy network, online documents (newsletters, press releases, videos, podcasts, etc), observations of instances when network actors come together (conferences and other events), and in-depth interviews with key participants. The data was analysed using Foucault's (1988) concept of problematisation, expanded by Bacchi (2009, 2012), which explores how problems are framed, and solutions produced. In this regard, RA constructs traditional assessment as outdated and unfair, offering LPs as a policy solution.

Preliminary Findings

Within the school assessment domain, LPs represent a significant shift by personalising student achievement, moving away from large scale, standardised exams. However, this change presents challenges to applying LPs across the entire educational system. While LPs effectively create personalised credentials for students leaving school, their compatibility with large-scale admissions processes, such as those used by universities, remains unclear. This issue raises concerns about the limits of assessment personalisation and prompts a re-evaluation of the higher education model and its connection to school learning. Our network ethnography offers an initial mapping of the LPs policy network, identifying key players and their connections, as well as their interests, transactions and exchanges. The rise of digital badges and micro-credentials seems to bring together new and old players into the educational assessment and certification ecosystem, as well as the need for new monitoring and articulation mechanisms, teaching standards and learning practices.

Scholarly Contribution

This paper explores how and why LPs gained traction as a policy solution in the UK, with a focus on Rethinking Assessment as an epistemic community, analysing the characteristics, relationships, negotiations, and the potential implications of LPs development for the very notion of assessment. Building on our previous work around resistance to standardised testing in the UK (Authors 2024; 2023), this paper represents a step forward in our understanding of assessment policy change, by closely mapping the trajectory of LPs as a new horizon for school assessment.

Authors

• Diego Santori, Kings College London

• Francisco Zamorano Figueroa