Cultural Ideals for ePortfolio Practice: Authenticity,

Deliberation, and Integrity

Darren Cambridge

ePortfolio & Digital Identity 2008Montreal, Quebec, Canada

May 6, 2008

Three Ideals

Authenticity

Integrity

Deliberation

Different Paradigms?

• Expressive: creative, individualized, self as authority

• Standardized: common structure set through institution, objective process of evaluation

• Barrett: Story vs. Test

Authenticity

• Finding truth through examination of what’s unique about oneself – Rousseau, Romanticism – Intersection of cultural influences

social structures

• Enacting that difference through creative expression– Aesthetics of the self (Foucault)

• Protecting choice as a core value

Authenticity in Education

• Ownership– Let Your Life Speak– Experiential learning – Reflection as

reflexive– Self-directed learning

– Self-authorship

• Creativity – Capturing the

learning of diverse students

– Personalization of education

– End in itself

Essentially, I do not have a religion to cling on to; I’m left with the experience of my life and I try to relate it to my own understanding of truth. That, I suppose, is the essence of spirituality—maybe this is all a blessing in disguise. Echoing so many theorists on minorities and social repression, the struggle to simply be what I am is edifying.

Sean Moore

Neutrality as a Consequence

• Abandonment of “horizons of significance”

• Validation of choice as an end in itself

• Freedom of neutrality • Procedural justice (Bellah, Habits of the Heart)

Critique of Authenticity

• Expressive: Promotes a culture of atomism and narcissism– Self-absorption, lack of enduring

commitments, disposable relationships

• Standardized: Creates the conditions that foster this culture– Abdication of role of institutions in

cultivating shared values

Necessity of Dialog

• Without horizons of significance, how do we know which individual differences make a difference?

• Language is always dialogic (Bahktin)• Autonomy dependent on recognition

(Benjamin) • The authentic self must be defined in dialog

with horizons of significance • Manner vs. content

Integrity

• Consistency and coherence over time

(lifelong)

• Consistency and coherence across roles (lifewide)

• Achieved and asserted through narrative

Psychological Need for Integrity

• Desire for narrative of the long term in a globalized economy (Richard Sennett)

• “Own kind of integrity” in the face of discontinuity (Mary Catherine Bateson)

• “Finding a thread in my life” (Samantha Slade)

• Sharing my “whole human being” (Tracy Wright)

Three curricula

Kathleen Yancey, Reflection in the Writing Classroom

Good Work has Integrity

ExpertiseDoing work wellCompetencies

SocialProfessional contribution to society

IndividualPersonal integrity and meaning

EthicsDoing good workValues and meaning

Good Work(Gardner, Csikszentmihalyi, Damon)

From Dialog to Deliberation

• A portfolio is a message in a rhetorical situation– Audience as well as author– Not just expression of but also expression to

• Portfolio as a means for participation in collective decision making

• Deliberative democracy – Decision making – Legitimation

Principles of Deliberation

• Publicity– Deliberative system which informs and holds

accountable

• Inclusiveness– All impacted by decisions can participate

• Reasonableness– Economy of moral objections– Respect for reasonable disagreement

• Provisionality – Openess to changing positions and decisions

University as Ethical Learning Organization

• Authenticity: Help students discover and document what’s important to them about learning, based on evidence

• Dialog: Put those individual articulations in conversation with organizational understanding

• Deliberation: Student inputs must have real influence on decision making

A New Role for Competencies

• Standardized: Matching performance to a pre-defined set of outcomes

• Deliberative: Capture standards all stakeholders value as enacted in practice and examining alignment of both student and programmatic performance

Competencies in Organizational Learning

• Standardized: Articulating expectations to students• Deliberative: Means for mutually accountable

connection between individual and organizational learning

• Boundary objects: “Boundary objects are objects that are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites” (Leigh Star 1989)

Deliberative Assessment

• Standardized: Objectivist/utilitarian• Expressive: Subjectivist/intuitionist

(Gray 2002)

• Deliberative assessment – Learning complex and situated – Judgment based in embodied expertise– Students as authoritative informants about their

own learning (Yancey 1998) – Institutional values and outcomes the result of

deliberation based these sources of expertise

New Century College Competencies

• Communication

• Critical Thinking

• Strategic Problem Solving

• Valuing

• Group Interaction

• Global Understanding

• Effective Citizenship

• Aesthetic Awareness

• Information Technology

NCC Graduation Portfolio

• No predefined standard for what constitutes satisfactory performance in each competency

• Students exposed to (and assessed with) many models and standards through coursework and experiential learning

• Students redefine each competency, beginning with “official definition”– Synthesizing multiple perspectives – Integrating evidence from own experience – Taking ownership and planning for the future

ePortfolio outcomes

• Demonstrate learning power or learning competencies (Broadstreet 2006) – Key affordance of the portfolio genre

(Meeus, Petegem, and Looy 2006)

• Input to a community conversation about what it means to be an educated person in the 21st Century– Competencies are means of connection – Analysis of student competency essays and evidence a

central feature of program review– Conversation involves students, faculty/staff, alumni, and

community partners

Authenticity

• OwnershipValidation through reflexivity

• Creativity Articulation the inchoate self through reflection

• How does the portfolio model help students articulate their self-

understanding?

Deliberation

Decisions made through discussion that •Is reasonable•Is inclusive•Takes into account information from all

•Allows for both consensus

and dissent

• How can the way portfolios are evaluated be defined by and involve everyone affected? • How do we ensure that the information about learning that informs such decisions is broad enough to take advantage of individual differences?

Integrity Consistency of values and articulation of relationship between • Different spheres of life

• Different social roles

• How does the portfolio help students represent their identity as “whole human beings”?

•How does it invite connections with learning beyond the context of the course, discipline or

institution?

Ideas?

Darren Cambridge

George Mason University

dcambrid@gmu.edu

+1-202-270-5224