Chapter 4: Rubrics Reframed: Reappropriating Rubrics for Assessment and Learning

Within the dialogue regarding assessment of outcomes, it is common to focus on content expertise. An alternative framework relies upon an understanding of the instructor as an expert learner. The instructor-as-expert-learner has capabilities with multiple disciplining technologies (learning strategies that have emerged and evolved within our culture in the form of academic disciplines) and is able to discern the technology that will meet the learners’ needs most effectively. Expert learners deconstruct disciplining technologies in order to recognize the multiple and varied paths that can be taken to desired learning outcomes.

The instructor-as-expert-learner must also recognize and negotiate the technologies of power (standards and accountability systems that are hegemonic within the current education system) and overcome the assumption that assessment is about accountability and compliance. The instructor-as-expert-learner uses assessment as a tool for instructional decision-making and learning. Within a learning-driven structure, mastery of content becomes less important than mastery of cognitive processes and ways of knowing that characterize disciplinary technologies of power. The focus on content expertise leads rubrics to becoming disciplining technologies that constrain the learning and assessment process and lead to a compliance frame of mind. By reframing rubrics as learning devices and decision guides, it is possible to reappropriate rubrics as valuable assessment tools. Moving away from an accountability and compliance perspective depends upon recognizing assessment and the use of rubrics as an instructional decision-making process directed toward learning.