Beyond the assessment of knowing: reading students’ grade complaints through an ontological turn in higher education
研究从本体论视角分析学生成绩申诉，发现学生期望评估关注其存在的时空、身体和社会维度，而非仅作为认知测量。
Written summative exams are pervasive in higher education. Used as a procedure to quantify student learning and to assign final course grades, such assessments contribute to student discontent and occasional grade complaints. These entrenched assessment practices stem from ontological assumptions (i.e. beliefs about the nature of human being, knowledge, and learning). Perhaps, due to the neglect of such assumptions, the existing literature does not discuss grade complaints within a broad landscape of assessment in higher education. Consequently, this literature does not challenge ideological and epistemological conditions that enable grading and grade complaints. Adopting an ontological conception of education, in this inquiry, I try to make sense of students’ grade complaints, as a manifestation of wider assessment practices in higher education. For the purpose of this study, interview data and students’ actual grade complaints were collected. Findings suggest that contrary to conventional wisdom, which considers assessments as epistemic measures, students expect assessments to be about their being-in-the-world through taking account of the temporal, corporeal, and social dimensions of their being. We call for taking grade complaints more seriously because of the unsettling educational lessons they might have for higher education.