学习目标

STATEMENT ON LEARNING GOALS AND ASSESSMENT

That an academic department should have “learning goals” seems obvious. 一个部门也应该有一些机制来评估这些目标是否正在实现，这似乎也是不言而喻的. 作为教育者, we consider with c是 what and how we teach our students, and we would like to know whether our educational program is working. So would our students, their p是nts, and the college’s accreditors.

但问题来了. Our, or anyone’s, ability to know whether it’s working depends a great deal on what it is.

Many common learning goals 是 easy to 评估, 因为他们强调知识和技能的获取:“展示学科知识,”“提高写作的清晰度,诸如此类的话. But 其他 learning goals 是 not as readily evaluated. 例如, our lives 是 defined by our capacity to make moral and ethical judgements. 学生们每天都在努力解决学术诚信、公平和尊重的问题. Their educational experiences confront them with multiple and diverse cultural constructions, and they develop reasoned responses to complex questions and debates. 道德意识的发展, key to living an engaged and examined life, 是我们任务的核心吗, 然而我们不能恰当地 评估 it.

在我们看来，这才是真正的问题:评估的本质是优先考虑那些最容易评估的学习目标. And a society that overvalues 评估ment, in its focus on incessant testing and measuring, 往往只会培养出更好的应试者, while severely hobbling students in 其他 respects.

而且, 评估文化导致了对人文学科及其重要性的广泛误解. As the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard explains, 强调他所说的“性能标准”——选择简单地根据效率来构建一个人的学习方法, 实用程序, and outcomes—excludes from the outset some basic aspects of 人类istic inquiry.[1]  While fields with a more quantitative focus may embrace this ethos, 核心人文学科(英语), 历史, 哲学, 宗教), which deal centrally with ambiguity and nuance – 简而言之, 那些无法量化的人可能会问:当我们简单地接受绩效逻辑(评估是其中的一部分)时，有什么可能性会被扼杀?

Degrees in the 人类ities 是 certainly marketable: 英语 majors do as well as, 或者比, 其他 graduating seniors in pursuing c是ers. 但是，我们必须抵制这种冲动，不要把英语专业的价值简单地定义为一种狭隘的效用. 追求看似不实用的智力兴趣，实际上会使我们的学生更适合驾驭世界上人类经验的复杂性.  这些真理——通过大学经历使思维的拓展成为可能，帮助我们的学生适应生活, 这, 从这个意义上说, the college experience is deeply productive – 是 by no means new. They 是 foundational to liberal arts institutions like Trinity. The pedagogical practices that emerge from these beliefs, the core pedagogical practices of 人类ities departments like 英语, 是 至少 susceptible to 评估ment, and thus at the greatest risk.

学习目标的分类

In place of the brief list of learning goals that we have been asked to provide, 因此, 相反，我们将提供一个分类法，更好地阐明我们的优先级，并准确地确定我们如何处理评估的期望.

Priorities for which the language of “learning goals” is inadequate.

学习“目标”的语言本身就排除了一种活动——比如思考——本身就是目的的概念. 出于这个原因, 我们一贯鼓励学生的深思熟虑在这种分类中没有一席之地.

Learning goals that 是 not open to 评估ment.

To be clear: these learning goals 是 our highest priorities; to the extent that worrying about, 并投入额外的时间和精力, 其他, more 评估able ends prevents us from pursuing these goals, 我们被削弱了.  比如学校期望学生在毕业前培养某种道德能力, these goals 可以not be 评估ed without being fundamentally changed. 例如, 我们的目标之一很可能类似于学生“成为复杂文本的批判性读者”的普遍期望.” But the language of mastery is of limited value. 文学和电影是, 在许多其他事情中, 试图与…搏斗, 没有解出, the problem of being 人类 – a problem with moral, 本体论, political (in both the narrow and broad senses), 少数民族, 色情, 以及认知维度. We both hope and expect of our students that the experience of the major will nurture capacities of empathy and the appreciation of difference; that it will leave them less afraid of ambiguity and of the questions of life that 可以not, 最后, be answered; that it will make them aw是 of the extent to which the world around them is a 人类 世界——人类思想的产物, 创造力, and effort — and thus awaiting their own contributions to it. 这种感性的深化和经验的拓宽是人文学科的核心. 文学与电影, 除了, 是 arts – and while we would hope that students achieve “artistic literacy,” we would suggest that something still more fundamental is at stake. 在他的诗《信誉最好的网投十大平台》中, 那朵绿色的花,” William Carlos Williams writes that “It is difficult / to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack / of what is found there.” To be a 人类ist is to take this claim seriously. Williams is making a point about aesthetics: specifically, 从艺术中“获取新闻”对于有目的和有意义的生活来说，远比那些追求可评估表现的狭隘想法的人通常意识到的要重要得多.

对于学习目标，一个额外的评估机制，虽然可以想象，将是微不足道的.

The learning goals that we group under this heading 是 reflected, 主要是, 我们如何组织课程. 我们相信, 例如, 我们的专业, in all three concentrations that we offer, should acquire a grasp of literary history. 相应的, 我们要求我们的专业学生学习调查课程，调查产生文学作品的复杂社会环境，以及流派如何随着时间的推移而发展.

我们的专业还选修了一定数量的1700年以前的高级文学课程, and a certain number of courses in literature written after that year. 除了这个历史重点, 我们提供的课程向学生介绍广泛的文化产品:美国和英国, 上层阶级和工人阶级, “anglophone” and “少数民族” (all in their endless varieties).

These requirements shape students’ experience of the major. But their taking and passing these courses constitutes a more signifi可以t, 客观的, and revealing marker of goal achievement than any secondary mechanism could provide. These goals 是 ultimately at the service of our deeper priorities (in B), which 是 not susceptible to any codified rubric of 评估ment. 为什么我们会在意, 也就是说, that our students be exposed to literature from the distant past, and to cultures fundamentally different from their own? 因为:如果文学是, 在许多其他事情中, a grappling with the problem of being 人类, 我们认为重要的是让学生们了解在不同的时代和不同的文化背景下人们是如何应对这个问题的. 这些学习目标很重要, 简而言之, 因为它们有助于加深情感和批判性思维，而这正是英语系的主要目的.

Learning goals for which we believe our students should take 评估ment responsibility.

学生职业生涯的一部分——在任何专业——理想情况下都应该包括a)作为一门学科(其主要话语)不断提高对学科的认识, how the 是as of study comprised by 这个学科 relate to each 其他, 等.), and b) a growing sense of responsibility for — and ownership of — her or his own path 通过 这个学科. To address the first of these “meta” concerns, 我们要求学生至少选修一门关于批判性反思的课程(我们对评估这一目标的看法), 看到C). 解决第二个目标, 我们要求我们的学生, 在大三的第一个学期, 进行自我评估, 在这篇文章中，学生们阐明了他们的专业目标，并将他们之前的课程与他们仍然需要学习的课程结合起来. 然后，这种自我评估形成了与顾问交谈的基础——这是有效果的, 潜在的, on our own thinking about the curriculum. 然而，思考他们作为专业的职业生涯的工作从根本上属于学生.

Learning goals for which 评估ment is possible.

有, 最后, a handful of learning goals for which 评估ment is possible and 潜在的 useful. These 是 the 只有 learning goals we will list – but before we do so, we would offer two observations about them. First: these learning goals 是, uniformly, 技能. 像这样, 它们最符合评估文化中对可量化结果的偏见. 然而，我们不能将(B)中讨论的概念性目标与实证主义或实践的标题结合起来, it is possible to do so when evaluating writing or research ability. In a national culture deeply suspicious of the 人类ities, 幸运的是，教学生成为更好的作家仍然具有明显的“实用”价值, 但写作和研究最终是至关重要的，因为它们使我们的学生能够探索该学科的核心问题，并在关键领域占据自己的位置, 正在进行的对话. 第二，技能评估的危险和误导程度达到了人们所认为的程度 客观的. 不像事实, the province of the more positivistic disciplines, 学生的写作, or the quality of her or his research work, 可以 只有 被主观评判. Whatever mechanisms we put in place to evaluate these learning goals, the evaluation will ultimately reflect subjective and idiosyncratic preferences. With these provisos in mind, we expect that our students will:

1. 培养清晰、连贯、有效的书面表达能力.
2. 发展研究和分析技能.

 

 

[1] 让Lyotard, 后现代状态,反式. Geoff Bennington和Brian Massumi(明尼阿波利斯:明尼苏达大学出版社，1974)，第62-64页.​

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