What does it mean to be “good”?
One of my favorite warm-up activities to do with a group of instructors is to have them think of something they feel good at doing (ideally not related to their academic work), and reflect on how they judge their proficiency. The prompts would be: What is something you think you’re good at? How do you know? Let’s take cooking. You may know you’re good if the food tastes good, or if other people compliment your dishes. Or for a craft like knitting, you may judge your proficiency based on what you are able to make, if you progress from making scarves to more complicated patterns, or you learn cabling, color work, or other more advanced techniques. Like an academic field, there is a progression of skills development. Intangibles like creativity may play a role too; you may have technical skill, but is the product beautiful? For something like sports, being good may be more precise: you run a certain time and then you run it faster. It may also mean you are better than other people. You get chosen for the team! You win the race! I like to do this activity with teachers because it surfaces many interpretations of what it means to do well, which is important to think about for assessing students, who have their own ideas for what good means. What does it mean for students to succeed in your class, and how will they know? The activity has an added benefit of prompting teachers to think about what it means to be good at teaching, and how to develop as a teacher. We should think about how to consider the success of our teaching as we explain to students how their performance will be measured.
I have been thinking even more about different perspectives on what it means to do well because I recently started working part-time in the Graduate Program at Harvard Law School. As I learn more about legal education around the world., I realize that my educational experiences have primarily been in environments where the underlying assumption is that everyone can do well if they work hard (or if they’re smart enough, depending on your perspective on mindset). I’ve never taken a class that was graded on a curve! In my experience assessing incoming international students’ English language proficiency, I’m often asked what percentage of students pass, as most of them come from rankings-based educational systems. I try to explain that anyone can pass: it’s a rubric-based assessment designed to show what students can and can’t do with the English language, and is individual to each student’s ability. That percentages are not a factor and that the outcome depends solely on individual abilities is so hard for some students to understand!
I am also reflecting on these questions in the context of so much news about grade inflation in universities. There is a concern that too many students are getting As. Ideally this would be a good thing, right? Everyone is doing well! But we are losing trust in our systems, more students are going to college, and there is a pressure to make sure the system is successful, even if we don’t really know what that means. A key challenge is that we haven’t explained the different forms and uses of assessment very well. Is a grade an opportunity for feedback and development, or a final judgment of ability or rank? Who should decide? What does an A actually mean, and should we have a shared understanding of it? There is so much variability across institutions, fields, and individual instructors: different approaches to assessment need to be clarified and explained. It is easy to see the potential for misunderstandings and mismatched expectations, and why assessment is such a thorny issue. My 8th grader wants to get As because he knows that’s good, but Bs are ok, too. I can’t imagine that he’s thought much beyond that, and probably most students are in that camp! How can we help them think more deeply about their performance, what it means to do well, and make sure we are setting up our courses and assessment structures in ways that make sense?
In any case, after many years of working with scholars across disciplines, I believe that a common criterion of excellence is the ability to explain or demonstrate one’s knowledge and skills in ways that others can understand. Whether it’s a compelling presentation of your research, a well-reasoned paper, an oral proficiency interview that showcases your language skills, or a complicated cabled sweater, can you share you what you know and explain why it matters? I specialize in helping scholars do just that. So, what does success look like in your field? What does it mean to you to be good at your work? Would you like a thought partner as you work on articulating it, either for yourself, or for your students? Please reach out!
