Is it Possible to Reveal Tacit Knowledge with ACJ and RGT?

Unpacking Teachers’ Assessment Practices

Abstract

The tacit knowledge of recognizing quality in student work is difficult to explicate in words, concepts like gut feeling or intuition is sometimes used. Is it possible to reveal such knowledge? Adaptive Comparative Judgment (ACJ) shows a high degree of consistency among teachers when assessing quality in student work. Central to the method is that judges assess the quality of student work and write a comment where their choices are justified. The ACJ procedure, combined with providing comments, makes the implicit ability of assessment to some extent explicit. In this paper, we explore possibilities to combine ACJ with Repertory Grid Technique (RGT) to make in-depth analysis of technology teachers’ assessment practice.  The theoretical framework of RGT follows the argument that we interpret our world based on our experiences and provides arguments for claiming that teachers with similar education and work experiences have shared values in their professional practice. Consequently, teachers’ agreement in assessments in the ACJ studies can be a result of shared experiences. This study is a follow-up of a previous study (Hartell, Isaksson Persson, Bartholomew & Strimel, 2018); reasoning will be further investigated and new insights on how to combine ACJ and RGT is reported in this paper.