Strengthening educational quality in developing countries: the role of national examinations and international assessment systems     

Anthony Somerset 《Compare》2011,41(1):141-144

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Treating the Diploma Disease in Kenya: a modest counter‐proposal     

Anthony Somerset 《Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice》1997,4(1):91-106

In the 20 years which have elapsed since Ronald Dore's celebrated diagnosis, the ‘diploma disease’ has continued to take its toll. In many countries, pupils still prepare for major national examinations by ritualised learning, involving the rote memorisation of large quantities of poorly understood factual material. Dore proposed a radical cure: students should no longer be selected for scarce and highly valued opportunities in further education or employment on the basis of their scores in achievement‐based examinations. Instead other instruments—aptitude tests, school quotas, or even lotteries—should be used. The argument of this paper is that reform of examinations is a more viable alternative. It is not examinations per se that are the problem, but rather examinations of low quality. The most pervasive weakness of many national examinations is their propensity to focus on the testing of passive, inert knowledge: they require candidates to do no more than reproduce what they have remembered, in unchanged form. Good examinations, by contrast, test active ideas: they require candidates to think about what they know, and to restructure it in some way. Such examinations can be supportive, not subversive, of attempts to improve pedagogy. The fact that an education system employs achievement‐based examinations to allocate scarce opportunities does not mean that passive pedagogy and ritualised learning—the twin indicators of the diploma disease—are inevitable.  相似文献   

Uncomfortable curricula? A survey of academic practices and attitudes to delivering Indigenous content in health professional degrees     

Naomi Wolfe  Peter Le Rossignol  Shawn Somerset 《高等教育研究与发展》2018,37(3):649-662

Unacceptable inequity in health status between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians remains despite much work in the area. The imperative for graduating health professionals capable and ready to work with urban and rural Indigenous communities has led to a focus on curriculum development, but less focus has thus far been applied to academic staff capability to deliver the content. We surveyed academic staff at a large multi-campus Australian university on their practices and attitudes towards teaching Indigenous content in health professional programs. Indigenous and non-Indigenous academic staff were surveyed online about whether Indigenous content was included in the curricula they taught; whether they felt confident and capable of delivering curricula related to Indigenous issues; what challenges they found in including Indigenous content; and what, if any, supports and resources they felt were needed. Sixty-three per cent of respondents said that they included Indigenous content in their curricula, but 43% said that they did not access Indigenous resources; 60% reported feeling awkward, unsure or avoided teaching Indigenous content; most (74%) were comfortable teaching discipline-specific content to Indigenous students but only 26% felt comfortable teaching Indigenous content to Indigenous students. The findings reflect a level of discomfort experienced by some academic staff when teaching Indigenous content in health professional degrees. Reasons for this include being worried they would make mistakes, not knowing what to teach and finding it ‘too hard’. We suggest that three levels of action are required within universities to address this discomfort in academic staff: (i) provide a rationale (‘why’ teach Indigenous content); (ii) develop a plan (‘where’ and ‘what’ Indigenous content to teach) and (iii) develop capability in academic staff regarding ‘how’ to teach Indigenous content.  相似文献