Self- assessment vs second AND third party assessments

“The real position will come to light when we have the assessment done by a third party” – this is a very common comment made during the evaluation of the performance of the on-going projects or their outcome. Such an intervention of the performance profile of the people and projects starts right from the school level.

When the learner comes with a statement “I know this”, the teacher asserts “Well, you may or may not know this. How do I know that you know this?” and he or she plays the role of a second party., to cause an intervention through a structured model of assessment, she believes is right to assess the learner. 

And then the Boards of Education walk in to assess whether the learner has learnt and whether the teacher has done the job properly to ensure the learning of the first party with much broader objectives, which lie out of focus of the ambit of learning of the first party.

If one critically examines, the assessment of the second and third parties are operative far away from the actual circle of learning, where the learner or performer as the first party is the lone operator or possibly in a few cases, supported externally by a second party.  The observations of the second and third parties are facilitative and reflect a distant and bird’s eye view of the real learning activity or performance.  Their so-called assessments happen entirely in a different “time and space” outside the learning sphere.

While the compass of learning or performance of the first party is highly focused and personal, the tools of assessment used by the second and third parties are generally normative.

What is significant, is that the learner as the first party should be convinced about the strengths and weakness of the process in which he or she is involved. That alone would help him to correct, modify, improve and scale up his performance. The assessments of the second and third party may or may not have an emotional impact on the learner, but the self-assessment of the learner is a critical and is something which could convincingly put him on the track. It would indeed mean that there should be harmony between the objectives of assessment of the first, second and third parties, if at all these three stage assessment has to be relevant and meaningful, which rarely occurs. With a cut-throat competition in the markets today to usher in several models of assessment, with some of them not positioned on pedagogical logistics or procedural feasibility, the third party assessments also need careful consideration and evaluation for their credibility and sustainability before they are inducted into any system.

The challenge in the entire process is to ensure- whether the self-assessment is objective, whether the right tools have been employed, whether the assessment reflects the factual position of the process. That is where the second party mentoring or validating and improving the tools of assessment of the learner plays a vital role. It is quite possible that the objectives, priorities and focus of the second and third parties could be slightly different and hence the ‘self-assessment’ of the first party may be considered as weak, falling short of targets and thus rejected. In several cases, entrepreneurial initiatives meet this fate. While it is important to keep certain core objectives, securities and defined scope of achievement, it is equally important to give ‘time and space’ to the players to articulate the way with their own frame of mind, so long it is not perverse or manipulative.

Once the focus in the entire system shifts to effective first party assessment and the role of the second party becomes more mentoring, the third-party interventions in assessments may be superfluous and irrelevant.

What is the problem? Psychologically, many of us are elated when we are recognized and commended by someone else. We are happy when we are celebrated by others. And hence ‘the certificates’ – the ‘Brands’ associated with ‘certificates’.

While we cannot do away with the existing romance with the second and third parties to feel ‘happy’ or to “make them happy”- a paradigm shift over a period of time where “skills” speak than “certificates” will be a journey towards El Dorado!

The concept doesn’t stop with a school scenario. It extends to all fields of activity, in office procedures, business plans, market assessments and financial allocations and the like.. I have seen in a number of cases, quality certifications, brand authorizations are mostly on display and there is huge gap between the factual situations and what those ‘credentials’ stand for.

While I do not rule out the need or place of a second and third party assessments in their entirety, I think the paradigm shift to empower the first party through self-assessment that is valid, reliable and credible is much more vital than the rest.  This approach could possibly initiate a journey towards organizational improvement and efficacy!