Assessing the personal: Inclusion, anecdote, and academic writing

Abstract

In the School of Education at the University of Adelaide, the use of oral evidence is increasingly common as students engage with reflective practices now dominant in teacher-education programs. These experiences offer both a dynamic perspective and a challenge to academic assessors and raise three questions, each of which are addressed in this paper: How should one regard oral history or personal experience in an academic context? How does one assess an academic argument which uses oral evidence or personal experience? What does it mean to be culturally inclusive in one’s teaching? This paper argues that academics must accept the disruptive challenge of alternative constructions of knowledge, including personal histories, if the notion of what it means to be culturally inclusive is to be more than a token.