Abstract
The quality and types of relationships formed between students and teachers has been shown to play an essential part in the personal and academic success of students (Davis, 2003; Pianta, 1999). Little, however, has been done to determine the role that assessment plays in teacher-student relationships. Drawing upon the work of cultural anthropologist Alan Fiske (1991), I explore the ways in which certain basic forms of relationships (known asRelational Models) are initiated and maintained in secondary school through the use of alternative assessment methods — narrative evaluations, portfolios, rubrics, and end-of-year presentations — in place of traditional letter grades. In his Relational Models Theory, Fiske posits that human relationships and social systems are culturally-specific implementations of four elementary Relationship Models: “Authority Ranking”, “Communal Sharing”, “Equality Matching”, and “Market Pricing”. Here, I discuss how the non-traditional assessment methods used at a progressive secondary school in California allow relationships between students and teachers to shift away from an exclusively authority-based system (the Relational Model of Authority Ranking), towards a more nuanced model of negotiation (Market Pricing) and communal input (Communal Sharing) — ultimately leading to more empowered and involved students.
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Bagley, S.S. Students, teachers and alternative assessment in secondary school: Relational Models Theory (RMT) in the field of education. Aust. Educ. Res. 37, 83–106 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03216915
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03216915