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Evaluation As Construction of Knowledge

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Evaluation As Construction of Knowledge DOCUMENT RESUME ED 392 838 TM 024 614 AUTHOR Kvale, Steinar TITLE Evaluation as Construction of Knowledge. PUB DATE Apr 95 NOTE 21p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (San Francisco, CA, April 18-22, 1995). PUB TYPE Reports Evaluative/Feasibility (142) Speeches/Conference Papers (150) EDRS PRICE MFOI/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Constructivism (Learning); Cross Cultural Studies; Culture; *Evaluation Methods; Foreign Countries; Intellectual Disciplines; *Knowledge Level; Metacognition; *Student Evaluation; *Test Use IDENTIFIERS Discourse; Knowledge Acquisition; *Metanarration; *Postmodernism ABSTRACT Evaluation is discussed as knowledge construction. Examinations are considered as tests of knowledge or as tests of students and then as selection tools or as the construction of knowledge in themselves. Examinations involve the power to define what is common knowledge in a discipline and in a culture, and the examination discourse contributes to the construction of this valid knowledge. The postmodern perspective on knowledge is characterized by a disbelief in the metanarratives of legitimation. Knowledge is not fixed, but constructed, and a postmodernist perspective leads to the interpretation of knowledge as social construction. Some of the knowledge tensions in a postmodern condition are applied to evaluation, focusing on the tension between universal commensurability and the narratives of local cultures in an era when universal metanarratives no longer appear as the foundations of valid knowledge. The future of evaluation may rest on research that crosses cultural and disciplinary boundaries. (Contains 2 figures and 31 references.) 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