"(One of the many reasons that conventionalized “learning objectives” favored by some styles of assessment are so wrong-headed, because they usually exclude all the deeply important objectives that happen to be difficult to measure or particularize.) "
Of course, there are many objectives of education that are impossible to particularize or measure or even clearly explain. Nonetheless, that sort of statement always triggers the "I reach for my revolver" reflex in me, because as you have pointed out in the past, it almost always indicates a teacher who is unwilling to check if they are in fact achieving any objectives at all in their work.
There is at least a bit of an argument when you're talking about things like 'empathy' or 'emotional intelligence' or 'critical thinking' for taking the attitude that Geoffrey Rush's theater owner takes in Shakespeare in Love when he cheerily asserts that it will all come out well in the end and is asked by various other characters in states of incredulity and despair 'HOW?' and he shrugs and says "I don't know. It's a mystery."
I think more that when people say "look, we're focused on assessing the wrong things and we're doing it in the wrong time interval (e.g., right at the end of a single course)" there's a pretty sharply bimodal distribution of people who don't really want to think about whether they're achieving anything (and don't want to change anything to achieve it better) and people who do all sorts of things to investigate whether it's going the way that they want, just...not in the way that institutional assessment insists on doing that investigation. I honestly find most institutional assessment to be actively hostile to the kind of self-reflection and investigation that I pursue (which often informs my writing in this space and elsewhere); I think there are a fair number of folks I know who are doing some similar kinds of work.
"(One of the many reasons that conventionalized “learning objectives” favored by some styles of assessment are so wrong-headed, because they usually exclude all the deeply important objectives that happen to be difficult to measure or particularize.) "
Of course, there are many objectives of education that are impossible to particularize or measure or even clearly explain. Nonetheless, that sort of statement always triggers the "I reach for my revolver" reflex in me, because as you have pointed out in the past, it almost always indicates a teacher who is unwilling to check if they are in fact achieving any objectives at all in their work.
There is at least a bit of an argument when you're talking about things like 'empathy' or 'emotional intelligence' or 'critical thinking' for taking the attitude that Geoffrey Rush's theater owner takes in Shakespeare in Love when he cheerily asserts that it will all come out well in the end and is asked by various other characters in states of incredulity and despair 'HOW?' and he shrugs and says "I don't know. It's a mystery."
I think more that when people say "look, we're focused on assessing the wrong things and we're doing it in the wrong time interval (e.g., right at the end of a single course)" there's a pretty sharply bimodal distribution of people who don't really want to think about whether they're achieving anything (and don't want to change anything to achieve it better) and people who do all sorts of things to investigate whether it's going the way that they want, just...not in the way that institutional assessment insists on doing that investigation. I honestly find most institutional assessment to be actively hostile to the kind of self-reflection and investigation that I pursue (which often informs my writing in this space and elsewhere); I think there are a fair number of folks I know who are doing some similar kinds of work.