Join us for a free online Community Gathering with Heloisa Pait on Saturday, November 7, at 12 noon ET. Please RSVP here to save your spot! RSVP here to save your spot!
My mother is in the criteria, and my father is in the collective experience of grading, of assessing the pieces in a ceremony.
—Heloisa Pait
Who Gets to Judge? Assessment as a Shared Intellectual Experience
What if grading were not simply a private judgment delivered by a professor, but a public celebration of students' intellectual accomplishments? For Brazilian sociologist and professor Heloisa Pait, assessment brings together two seemingly opposite traditions: the rigor and precision she inherited from her mother, and the exuberant, communal approach to evaluating student work she witnessed in her father's classroom.
In this conversation, Heloisa and I explore how she brings these traditions together through public self-assessment, inviting university students to present their work, apply shared criteria, and evaluate their own accomplishments before their classmates. We discuss why making assessment public can put the teacher's authority into perspective, how a traditional Brazilian dish called vatapá helps students understand the ingredients of meaningful academic work, and why educators must help students make intellectual ideas their own rather than simply imitate academic language. Along the way, Heloisa shares a wonderful story about her mother turning a disappointing statistics grade into an unforgettable lesson about teaching.
Topics
Two contrasting family traditions of grading: rigor and celebration.
How public student self-assessment works in Heloisa's university courses.
Why assessing learning in front of a community can change the relationship between students and teachers.
Using shared criteria to recognize different kinds of intellectual accomplishment.
What the Brazilian dish vatapá can teach us about content, reflection, presentation, and innovation.
Making academic knowledge more accessible through metaphor and lived experience.
Helping students develop their own intellectual voices rather than imitate academic authorities.
Why meaningful assessment can become a rite of passage into a shared intellectual community.
