Margaret Price
Biographic Data
| ID | 3888902 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Margaret Price |
| GIVEN NAMES | Margaret |
| FAMILY NAME | Price |
| SIGNATURE | PRICE M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Oxford Brookes University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9117-824X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 167 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1968 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Time Harms
Focusing on the theme of "slowness," this article demonstrates that an individualized approach to access in university life worsens inequity rather than alleviating it. It introduces the concept of the "accommodations loop," through which slow systems and processes impede access through a relentless focus on individual accommodation and biocertification. The accommodations loop shows that time, often thought of as a desirable commodity, can also …
What makes good feedback good
HE institutions persistently seek to increase student engagement and satisfaction with assessment feedback, but with limited success. This study identifies the attributes of good feedback from the perspective of recipients. In a distinctive participatory research design, student participants were invited to bring along actual examples of feedback that they perceived as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ to 32 interviews with student researchers. Findings hig…
Forum: Centering Disability in Qualitative Interviewing
Two disabled researchers draw from their experiences conducting an interview study with a population of self-identified disabled faculty members to question some long-held commonplaces about qualitative interviewing. They use the phrase centering disability to emphasize disability as a critical lens and form of embodied experience that has theoretical and methodological implications for qualitative interviewing research design, implementation, an…
Conceptual acrobatics: Talking About Assessment Standards in the Transparency Era
Since their introduction in the 1990s, explicit standards documents have pervaded higher education assessment – success likely linked to their compatibility with constructive alignment and quality assurance regimes. Researchers, however, criticise that such documents are based on a misconception of standards as explicit and absolute, when in fact standards have tacit and contextual qualities that make it impossible to codify them fully. This arti…
A scholarly approach to solving the feedback dilemma in practice
It is clear from the literature that feedback is potentially the most powerful and potent part of the assessment cycle when it comes to improving further student learning. However, for some time, there has been a growing amount of research evidence that much feedback practice does not fulfil this potential to influence future student learning because it fails in a host of different ways. This dilemma of the disjuncture between theory and practice…
Let’s stop the pretence of consistent marking: Exploring the multiple limitations of assessment criteria
Unreliability in marking is well documented yet we lack studies that have investigated assessors’ detailed use of assessment criteria. This project used a form of Kelly’s Repertory Grid method to examine the characteristics that 24 experienced, UK assessors notice in distinguishing between students’ performance in four contrasting subject disciplines: that is their implicit assessment criteria. Variation in the choice, ranking and scoring of crit…
External examining: Fit for Purpose
In a context of international concern about academic standards, the practice of external examining is widely admired for its role in defending standards. Yet a contradiction exists between this faith in examining and continuing concerns about standards. This article argues that external examining rests on assumptions about standards which are significantly open to challenge. Six assumptions relating to the conceptual context, the operation and th…
The Bodymind Problem and the Possibilities of Pain
What is a crip politics of bodymind? Drawing upon Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's theory of the misfit, I explain my understanding of crip and bodymind within a feminist materialist framework, and argue that careful investigation of a crip politics of bodymind must involve accounting for two key, but under-explored, disability studies (DS) concepts: desire and pain. I trace the turn toward desire that has characterized DS theory for the last decade, …
Students’ perceptions of the usefulness of marking guides, grade descriptors and annotated exemplars
Grade descriptors, marking guides and exemplars are generally accepted to have a positive impact in assisting students’ understanding of assessment task requirements and standards, but little is known about how students use such resources. This paper provides insight into the perceptions of first-year students of the usefulness of grade descriptors, marking criteria and annotated exemplars. Of the 119 students who provided their reflections on th…
Situational analysis and mapping for use in education research: A Reflexive Methodology
In the quest for a better reflexive research practice and to respond to the challenge of expanding on an education research repertoire, the authors consider situational analysis, proposed as a post-modern approach to grounded theory using maps. Originally situating their research projects within a social constructivist theoretical frame, the authors apply situational analysis to a qualitative study on how new joiners to an academic community come…
Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life
"A very important study that will appeal to a disability studies audience as well as scholars in social movements, social justice, critical pedagogy, literacy education, professional development for disability and learning specialists in access centers and student counseling centers, as well as the broader domains of sociology and education." ---Melanie Panitch, Ryerson University "Ableism is alive and well in higher education. We do not know how…
Beyond ‘doing time’: Investigating the concept of student engagement with feedback
Feedback on students’ assignments may be comprehensive and well-constructed as a result of careful thought from tutors trying to identify and address students’ needs. However, feedback’s utility ultimately depends on the way students engage with it. ‘Doing time’ by complying with a norm of collecting, but then only skim-reading, feedback is a long way from the ‘mindful’ engagement associated with reflection, interpretation, deepening understandin…
If I was going there I wouldn’t start from here: A critical commentary on current assessment practice
Assessment is currently in the spotlight for its poor ratings in student satisfaction surveys and 'under performance' in quality reviews. Consequently, a variety of initiatives and projects are being undertaken aimed at improving assessment. However, many of the concepts and theories underpinning assessment practice are complex and interrelated, which can mean that relatively simple and apparently minor changes can have major, and often unintende…
Feedback: Focusing Attention on Engagement
Within many higher education systems there is a search for means to increase levels of student satisfaction with assessment feedback. This article suggests that the search is under way in the wrong place by concentrating on feedback as a product rather than looking more widely to feedback as a long-term dialogic process in which all parties are engaged. A three-year study, focusing on engaging students with assessment feedback, is presented and a…
Feedback: All that effort, but what is the effect
Constraints in resourcing and student dissatisfaction with assessment feedback mean that the effectiveness of our feedback practices has never been so important. Drawing on findings from a three‐year study focused on student engagement with feedback, this paper reveals the limited extent to which effectiveness can be accurately measured and challenges many of the assumptions and beliefs about effectiveness of feedback practices. Difficulties rela…
Through the Looking Glass: Our Autoethnographic Journey Through Research Mind-Fields
Two curriculum professors team taught naturalistic inquiry in an education college where research is the domain of a "service" department. Within the seminar, participants were challenged and transformed. Within the college, pillars of traditional research cracked. Conflicting streams of criticism, support, and imposition emerged, as grievances were filed and emails were requisitioned. Legalized bullying abounded. However, students continued to r…
"Her Pronouns Wax and Wane": Psychosocial Disability, Autobiography, and Counter-Diagnosis
The article analyzes autobiographical narratives written by persons with psychosocial disabilities; it argues that such narratives can refigure conventional assumptions of autobiography through a strategy designated counter-diagnosis. Drawing upon a hybrid methodology that combines disability studies with critical discourse analysis, the article conducts a close reading of the narratives' uses of pronouns in order to highlight their counter-diagn…
The Author Closet
Assessment standards: The role of communities of practice and the scholarship of assessment
This article considers the methods and difficulties of establishing, sharing and applying assessment standards within module teams working in a business school. Against a background of increasing reliance on explicit knowledge to establish standards in the HE sector the study looks at ways in which staff within module teams attempted to reach a common view of assessment standards through sharing tacit knowledge in order to make consistent judgeme…
A social constructivist assessment process model: How the research literature shows us this could be best practice
Although assessment is acknowledged as vitally important in its effect on students’ approaches to learning, there is much criticism of assessment practice. This paper argues that if a social constructivist approach is applied to the assessment process many of the problems could be overcome. It describes what a social constructivist approach to assessment would look like and gives practical examples, from the research literature, of ways it could …
Know what I mean? Enhancing student understanding of assessment standards and criteria
In recent years there has been an increasing emphasis in higher education on the explicit articulation of assessment standards and requirements, whether this emanates from calls for public accountability or is based on ideas of good educational practice (CitationEcclestone, 2001). We argue in this article that a single‐minded focus on explicit articulation, whilst currently the dominant logic of higher education, will inevitably fall short of pro…
Improving Students' Learning by Developing their Understanding of Assessment Criteria and Processes
This paper reports the findings of a two-year research project focused on developing students' understanding of assessment criteria and the assessment process through a structured intervention involving both tacit and explicit knowledge transfer methods. The nature of the intervention is explained in detail, and the outcomes are analysed and discussed. The conclusions drawn from the evidence are that student learning can be improved significantly…
A Pastoral Symphony; In the Fen Country
The Potomac Institute
The Bodymind Problem and the Possibilities of Pain
What is a crip politics of bodymind? Drawing upon Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's theory of the misfit, I explain my understanding of crip and bodymind within a feminist materialist framework, and argue that careful investigation of a crip politics of bodymind must involve accounting for two key, but under-explored, disability studies (DS) concepts: desire and pain. I trace the turn toward desire that has characterized DS theory for the last decade, …
Feedback: Focusing Attention on Engagement
Within many higher education systems there is a search for means to increase levels of student satisfaction with assessment feedback. This article suggests that the search is under way in the wrong place by concentrating on feedback as a product rather than looking more widely to feedback as a long-term dialogic process in which all parties are engaged. A three-year study, focusing on engaging students with assessment feedback, is presented and a…
Time Harms
Focusing on the theme of "slowness," this article demonstrates that an individualized approach to access in university life worsens inequity rather than alleviating it. It introduces the concept of the "accommodations loop," through which slow systems and processes impede access through a relentless focus on individual accommodation and biocertification. The accommodations loop shows that time, often thought of as a desirable commodity, can also …
External examining: Fit for Purpose
In a context of international concern about academic standards, the practice of external examining is widely admired for its role in defending standards. Yet a contradiction exists between this faith in examining and continuing concerns about standards. This article argues that external examining rests on assumptions about standards which are significantly open to challenge. Six assumptions relating to the conceptual context, the operation and th…
What makes good feedback good
HE institutions persistently seek to increase student engagement and satisfaction with assessment feedback, but with limited success. This study identifies the attributes of good feedback from the perspective of recipients. In a distinctive participatory research design, student participants were invited to bring along actual examples of feedback that they perceived as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ to 32 interviews with student researchers. Findings hig…
Through the Looking Glass: Our Autoethnographic Journey Through Research Mind-Fields
Two curriculum professors team taught naturalistic inquiry in an education college where research is the domain of a "service" department. Within the seminar, participants were challenged and transformed. Within the college, pillars of traditional research cracked. Conflicting streams of criticism, support, and imposition emerged, as grievances were filed and emails were requisitioned. Legalized bullying abounded. However, students continued to r…
Situational analysis and mapping for use in education research: A Reflexive Methodology
In the quest for a better reflexive research practice and to respond to the challenge of expanding on an education research repertoire, the authors consider situational analysis, proposed as a post-modern approach to grounded theory using maps. Originally situating their research projects within a social constructivist theoretical frame, the authors apply situational analysis to a qualitative study on how new joiners to an academic community come…
Conceptual acrobatics: Talking About Assessment Standards in the Transparency Era
Since their introduction in the 1990s, explicit standards documents have pervaded higher education assessment – success likely linked to their compatibility with constructive alignment and quality assurance regimes. Researchers, however, criticise that such documents are based on a misconception of standards as explicit and absolute, when in fact standards have tacit and contextual qualities that make it impossible to codify them fully. This arti…
A Pastoral Symphony; In the Fen Country
The Potomac Institute
Improving Students' Learning by Developing their Understanding of Assessment Criteria and Processes
This paper reports the findings of a two-year research project focused on developing students' understanding of assessment criteria and the assessment process through a structured intervention involving both tacit and explicit knowledge transfer methods. The nature of the intervention is explained in detail, and the outcomes are analysed and discussed. The conclusions drawn from the evidence are that student learning can be improved significantly…
Know what I mean? Enhancing student understanding of assessment standards and criteria
In recent years there has been an increasing emphasis in higher education on the explicit articulation of assessment standards and requirements, whether this emanates from calls for public accountability or is based on ideas of good educational practice (CitationEcclestone, 2001). We argue in this article that a single‐minded focus on explicit articulation, whilst currently the dominant logic of higher education, will inevitably fall short of pro…
Assessment standards: The role of communities of practice and the scholarship of assessment
This article considers the methods and difficulties of establishing, sharing and applying assessment standards within module teams working in a business school. Against a background of increasing reliance on explicit knowledge to establish standards in the HE sector the study looks at ways in which staff within module teams attempted to reach a common view of assessment standards through sharing tacit knowledge in order to make consistent judgeme…
A social constructivist assessment process model: How the research literature shows us this could be best practice
Although assessment is acknowledged as vitally important in its effect on students’ approaches to learning, there is much criticism of assessment practice. This paper argues that if a social constructivist approach is applied to the assessment process many of the problems could be overcome. It describes what a social constructivist approach to assessment would look like and gives practical examples, from the research literature, of ways it could …
The Author Closet
"Her Pronouns Wax and Wane": Psychosocial Disability, Autobiography, and Counter-Diagnosis
The article analyzes autobiographical narratives written by persons with psychosocial disabilities; it argues that such narratives can refigure conventional assumptions of autobiography through a strategy designated counter-diagnosis. Drawing upon a hybrid methodology that combines disability studies with critical discourse analysis, the article conducts a close reading of the narratives' uses of pronouns in order to highlight their counter-diagn…
Feedback: All that effort, but what is the effect
Constraints in resourcing and student dissatisfaction with assessment feedback mean that the effectiveness of our feedback practices has never been so important. Drawing on findings from a three‐year study focused on student engagement with feedback, this paper reveals the limited extent to which effectiveness can be accurately measured and challenges many of the assumptions and beliefs about effectiveness of feedback practices. Difficulties rela…
Through the Looking Glass: Our Autoethnographic Journey Through Research Mind-Fields
Two curriculum professors team taught naturalistic inquiry in an education college where research is the domain of a "service" department. Within the seminar, participants were challenged and transformed. Within the college, pillars of traditional research cracked. Conflicting streams of criticism, support, and imposition emerged, as grievances were filed and emails were requisitioned. Legalized bullying abounded. However, students continued to r…
Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life
"A very important study that will appeal to a disability studies audience as well as scholars in social movements, social justice, critical pedagogy, literacy education, professional development for disability and learning specialists in access centers and student counseling centers, as well as the broader domains of sociology and education." ---Melanie Panitch, Ryerson University "Ableism is alive and well in higher education. We do not know how…
Beyond ‘doing time’: Investigating the concept of student engagement with feedback
Feedback on students’ assignments may be comprehensive and well-constructed as a result of careful thought from tutors trying to identify and address students’ needs. However, feedback’s utility ultimately depends on the way students engage with it. ‘Doing time’ by complying with a norm of collecting, but then only skim-reading, feedback is a long way from the ‘mindful’ engagement associated with reflection, interpretation, deepening understandin…
If I was going there I wouldn’t start from here: A critical commentary on current assessment practice
Assessment is currently in the spotlight for its poor ratings in student satisfaction surveys and 'under performance' in quality reviews. Consequently, a variety of initiatives and projects are being undertaken aimed at improving assessment. However, many of the concepts and theories underpinning assessment practice are complex and interrelated, which can mean that relatively simple and apparently minor changes can have major, and often unintende…
Feedback: Focusing Attention on Engagement
Within many higher education systems there is a search for means to increase levels of student satisfaction with assessment feedback. This article suggests that the search is under way in the wrong place by concentrating on feedback as a product rather than looking more widely to feedback as a long-term dialogic process in which all parties are engaged. A three-year study, focusing on engaging students with assessment feedback, is presented and a…
Students’ perceptions of the usefulness of marking guides, grade descriptors and annotated exemplars
Grade descriptors, marking guides and exemplars are generally accepted to have a positive impact in assisting students’ understanding of assessment task requirements and standards, but little is known about how students use such resources. This paper provides insight into the perceptions of first-year students of the usefulness of grade descriptors, marking criteria and annotated exemplars. Of the 119 students who provided their reflections on th…
Situational analysis and mapping for use in education research: A Reflexive Methodology
In the quest for a better reflexive research practice and to respond to the challenge of expanding on an education research repertoire, the authors consider situational analysis, proposed as a post-modern approach to grounded theory using maps. Originally situating their research projects within a social constructivist theoretical frame, the authors apply situational analysis to a qualitative study on how new joiners to an academic community come…
The Bodymind Problem and the Possibilities of Pain
What is a crip politics of bodymind? Drawing upon Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's theory of the misfit, I explain my understanding of crip and bodymind within a feminist materialist framework, and argue that careful investigation of a crip politics of bodymind must involve accounting for two key, but under-explored, disability studies (DS) concepts: desire and pain. I trace the turn toward desire that has characterized DS theory for the last decade, …
External examining: Fit for Purpose
In a context of international concern about academic standards, the practice of external examining is widely admired for its role in defending standards. Yet a contradiction exists between this faith in examining and continuing concerns about standards. This article argues that external examining rests on assumptions about standards which are significantly open to challenge. Six assumptions relating to the conceptual context, the operation and th…
A scholarly approach to solving the feedback dilemma in practice
It is clear from the literature that feedback is potentially the most powerful and potent part of the assessment cycle when it comes to improving further student learning. However, for some time, there has been a growing amount of research evidence that much feedback practice does not fulfil this potential to influence future student learning because it fails in a host of different ways. This dilemma of the disjuncture between theory and practice…
Let’s stop the pretence of consistent marking: Exploring the multiple limitations of assessment criteria
Unreliability in marking is well documented yet we lack studies that have investigated assessors’ detailed use of assessment criteria. This project used a form of Kelly’s Repertory Grid method to examine the characteristics that 24 experienced, UK assessors notice in distinguishing between students’ performance in four contrasting subject disciplines: that is their implicit assessment criteria. Variation in the choice, ranking and scoring of crit…
Forum: Centering Disability in Qualitative Interviewing
Two disabled researchers draw from their experiences conducting an interview study with a population of self-identified disabled faculty members to question some long-held commonplaces about qualitative interviewing. They use the phrase centering disability to emphasize disability as a critical lens and form of embodied experience that has theoretical and methodological implications for qualitative interviewing research design, implementation, an…
Conceptual acrobatics: Talking About Assessment Standards in the Transparency Era
Since their introduction in the 1990s, explicit standards documents have pervaded higher education assessment – success likely linked to their compatibility with constructive alignment and quality assurance regimes. Researchers, however, criticise that such documents are based on a misconception of standards as explicit and absolute, when in fact standards have tacit and contextual qualities that make it impossible to codify them fully. This arti…
Time Harms
Focusing on the theme of "slowness," this article demonstrates that an individualized approach to access in university life worsens inequity rather than alleviating it. It introduces the concept of the "accommodations loop," through which slow systems and processes impede access through a relentless focus on individual accommodation and biocertification. The accommodations loop shows that time, often thought of as a desirable commodity, can also …
What makes good feedback good
HE institutions persistently seek to increase student engagement and satisfaction with assessment feedback, but with limited success. This study identifies the attributes of good feedback from the perspective of recipients. In a distinctive participatory research design, student participants were invited to bring along actual examples of feedback that they perceived as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ to 32 interviews with student researchers. Findings hig…
Political science (17 works) · Psychology (17 works) · Pedagogy (14 works) · Student Assessment and Feedback (14 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Mathematics education (10 works) · Evaluation of Teaching Practices (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Higher education (7 works)