Good education in an age of measurement – Gert Biesta

This is my response to Gert Biesta’s paper ‘Good Education in an age of measurement’.1 It was one of the first that I was introduced to on starting my doctoral studies at MMU and it stuck with me throughout. It opened up a new way of thinking. He describes the purpose of education as qualification, socialisation and subjectification. I hadn’t thought too much about the purpose of education before. It made me start to question in whose best interests we were doing things, particularly the overt socialisation of the children in our care.

I then saw Biesta speak at MMU. His views on educational research were refreshing and again stuck with me. His view is that there is too much focus on researching the effectiveness of programmes. He feels that we need to focus more on whether the effectively delivered programme is in the best interests of the children. He thinks we should do less effectiveness research and more research about the way we discuss education. I find that I agree. We are obsessed by how effective we are and don’t stop often enough to work out if what we are now doing effectively is the right thing to do for the children and society as a whole.

Working with excluded pupils has made me question our purpose. What is our job with these children? Throughout my doctoral work, I have gradually become more comfortable with the idea of the socialisation of children. At first, it felt like a top down imposition of values onto a group of young children but I no longer believe that this is necessarily the case. We are not simply looking for compliance but autonomous beings who can navigate their social worlds, make good quality relationships and enrich their lives. We can help them with that. It is a core part of our work.
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  1. Biesta, G. (2009) ‘Good education in an age of measurement: on the need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education.’ Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 21(1), pp. 33 – 46