Celebrating Achievement

This post is the third in a series where I take something that I have learned from living with a chronic illness (ME) and use it to give new insights into an issue in teaching/learning.

(The other two are:  'I passed, the surprising benefits of learning with a chronic illness', and ' 'Why able to is different to 'can'' )

It is December, the time of year when many people look back over the year and think about what they have achieved, so in this post I want to take a close look at achievement. What exactly is do we mean by 'achievement'? How, or even can it be measured? I have to confess that this post is partly a celebration of my achievements this year. Not the 'running a marathon', or 'climbing Everest' type of achievement, but the small, and sometimes slightly larger achievements of someone with severe(ish) ME.  I hope you will join me in this celebration!

In education, achievement is generally measured in just one way - through summative assessment. Often that is based on exams marks and grades on essays. This measures (at least in theory), the level that a student has reached in a given time. But this seems so one dimensional. Chronic illness has forced me to re-evaluate what is meant by 'achievement', and one thing I have learned is that achievement has many different forms. It is certainly not captured by measuring only a single end point.

So what do achievements look like?

Firstly, true achievements are always individually oriented. Comparing your achievements to that of other peoples' is not helpful, because it tells you nothing about how you got there. Achievements depend on your own individual starting point. For example at the end of last year I was well enough to go to Limmud - a cross denominational Jewish conference/learning event held every year around the end of December.  It is the most amazing informal learning event and it was so fantastic to be back after many years' absence. It was a huge achievement for me, (but obviously not in comparison to others).  I had to take my starting point (my level of energy) into consideration and I had to make adjustments to my expectations of what was possible  -  for example by alternating going to a session with resting in my room, and using a mobility scooter to get around campus.

Me and my hat!

Secondly achievements should not be defined by the time they take. In education, students normally have a set amount of time to learn, but surely we shouldn't devalue the achievement just because for some people it takes longer than 'normal'. In fact doesn't that make the achievement even greater? When I became severely affected in 2008, my sole achievement during the first 6 months was to learn how to knit.  During that time I knitted a hat which I sill treasure to this day! Not because it is different/better/worse than anything that I have knitted since, but because it represents what was at the time, a major achievement. 


Finally, the value of an achievement (for the individual concerned, although not, generally for the wider world) depends on the barriers/obstacles that need to be overcome (or side-stepped) to get to the end point. For example this year I published an academic paper: 'Analyzing learning during Peer Instruction dialogues: A resource activation framework'. The barriers involved in having severe ME made this quite a challenge - my concentration is limited (often to a maximum of 30 minutes), I struggle to sit at a computer, at times I have problems recalling, and making sense of words. But these barriers also mean that this is my proudest achievement to date! 

Of course the existence of barriers does not necessarily imply a reduction in quality. My paper was nominated as an 'editors selection', and I've written before about how, under certain circumstances, the conditions imposed on me through chronic illness can actually be helpful – can actually support higher quality, more creative work. So I find it valuable to think about and to celebrate achievement in these different ways.

How can we find a way to value the different ways that students might have achieved, rather than relying on a single, often one dimensional end of course assessment? There is no easy answer to this. But with the increasing diversity in our student population it is perhaps something that should be addressed. When students come to higher education with such different backgrounds, language ability, cultural diversity and academic level, it is perhaps more valuable, both for them and for us, to think about what the different ways that they have achieved during their studies. Perhaps this can be done by measuring the 'gain' (i.e. the difference between their start point and their end point), as well as the final level of attainment. A related option is to use ipasative feedback, described in this Guardian Higher Education article. In ipastive feedback, students are assessed based on their individual progress, rather than in comparison to their peers, this leads to higher motivation, particularly in low achievers.  Another option is to use competency based learning  - where students learn at their own pace, mastering each competency before moving on to the next one.

So, if you are grading essays or marking exams just now, take a moment to consider, and to celebrate just what it is that your students have actually achieved! 

Celebrating Achievement by Anna Wood is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.