Publish at July 09 2015 Updated February 21 2024
By Laure Endrizzi, Research Fellow, Institut français de l'éducation,
École normale supérieure de Lyon.
It's hard to demand that universities help as many students as possible to succeed, when they are obliged to admit all new baccalaureate holders who so request... whether it's their first or third choice. It's also hard for them to mobilize their staff to perform well in terms of teaching, when pedagogy receives no professional recognition and scientific excellence has been boosted in recent years by the proliferation of Labex, Idex and other investment programs...
As the work of François Sarfati (2013; 2015) shows, universities have to find ways of coping with these paradoxical injunctions by inoculating the system with selection: by drawing lots when the number of applicants is too great for the number of places available; on the basis of academic records, obviously in medical fields, but also increasingly in certain special courses, such asdouble bachelor's degrees or bilicences, which have exploded in recent years in the Paris region, although less so in the sciences than in the humanities and social sciences. Another selection mechanism is the APB pre-registration system, which is authorized by institutions on the basis of average grades in Première and the first two terms of Terminale.
Of course, not all university courses are on the same footing. Some are deterred by the low chances of success of technological and vocational baccalaureate holders in the very presentation of the diploma, because their numbers are in any case assured, while others, with a deficit, pay little attention to the origin of baccalaureate holders, because their existence is conditioned by the number of students enrolled... In the latter case, it's as if selection by failure were just one of a number of methods: it is tacitly endorsed by certain faculties as a necessary evil, not to ensure an egalitarian public service, but to maintain their own financial and human resources. What's more, young people who want student status, for a variety of reasons, also supposedly benefit from it; but do we really know how many of them want to take on the role of phantom student?
No one's fooled by this unsatisfactory situation... In some académies, circulars are appearing (and disappearing?) stipulating that technological and vocational baccalaureates have priority in so-called "selective" short courses (STS and IUT), sometimes even daring to set enrolment quotas in their favor, or even explicitly targeting baccalaureate holders with a distinction. The best among them are therefore "oriented" towards the courses that were originally created for them... But wasn't this already the case?
In the face of so much inertia, few policies seek to eradicate the roots of the evil, and the system continues as best it can. The focus then turned to new baccalaureate holders, seeking to make them more responsible... The introduction of" active guidance ", aimed at informing high school students of their chances of success in a given higher education stream, is part of this approach. The aim is to help them " choose the university courses best suited to their background and plans ". Prior learning assessments, in the form of pre-requisite tests or placement tests, are part of the same student-centered approach, providing information to assess the student's "suitability" for the targeted course. In the final analysis, active guidance and prior learning assessments are aimed more at young people who have had a difficult career; for others, the question hardly arises. In a system where "free access" is coupled with an extremely hierarchical educational offer, the good students go where they want to go, and the not-so-good where they manage to enrol!
On the occasion of the launch of the Faq2sciences platform by Unisciel, we thought it appropriate to try and understand the issues associated with prior learning assessments on entry to higher education, and to take a closer look at the Belgian experience conducted since the early 2000s on the initiative of the University of Namur - the only French-speaking university with sufficient documentation - to gain some perspective (Vieillevoye et al., 2012; Wathelet & Vieillevoye, 2013).
The aim of this type of device is to make new students aware of their strengths and weaknesses, while encouraging them to be proactive in their learning. From the outset, there seems to be more room for manoeuvre than with active guidance, as the approach partly escapes the inertial forces of the education system: students (with or without teachers) can take control of their weaknesses, unlike other factors such as social background and, above all, previous schooling, which strongly conditions success.
However, the ways in which these learning assessments are implemented are open to debate. In France, where the debate has only recently begun, some advocate a common external test for each subject area: this is the option Unisciel has just chosen for Faq2sciences. Others argue in favor of tests adjusted by the teachers themselves in each curriculum : this is the choice made in 2008 by the Université Joseph Fourier in Grenoble, whose system is largely inspired by what has been developed in Namur, and in 2009 by Unisciel, which launched the POS project, fed by science teachers from the 18 partner universities currently participating in this action. In one case, the focus is on generic prerequisites, with the test enabling students to position themselves on a global scale; in the other, the focus is on knowledge and skills linked to training expectations, i.e. prerequisites. In both cases, the test is not an admission test, the aim is formative, and only students have access to details of their results. While placement tests focus on students' self-regulation strategies, prerequisite tests involve teachers more, both upstream and downstream.
In the absence of sufficient elements to pursue the comparative analysis, we will concentrate on prerequisite tests in the remainder of this article. As defined in the Belgian system, their purpose is not to test knowledge extensively on the basis of an exhaustive inventory of prerequisites, but to select those that are best able to predict success in the first year. The idea is not for the universities where they are deployed to set themselves up as judges of what was well or poorly assimilated in secondary school...
The assessment of prerequisites is not a sanction, but rather a diagnostic and preventive approach. Students who have been self-diagnosed as weak in certain prerequisites can try to remedy the situation on their own, through their own personal work, or with the help of their teachers from the very first classes, or by joining other students identified as having similar difficulties, regardless of their previous course, in ad hoc tutoring groups. What is at stake here is not only the student's background when he or she enters higher education, but alsolearning autonomy and, in particular, how to learn (Beaumont et al., 2011; Boud & Molloy, 2013).
In so doing, students are indirectly alerted to the demands of the studies they are about to undertake. There's nothing trivial about this, at least in the French university context. All studies dealing with the difficulties students face in acculturating to university point to this lack of explicit pedagogical requirements as a key factor in the break with secondary education. Just as indirectly, by participating in the design of the tests beforehand, or by readjusting the first courses according to the shortcomings identified in the tests afterwards, the teachers make this effort of clarification which contributes to the overall coherence of the training.
The issues surrounding these pre-requisite tests are therefore manifold... and their contribution to a number of major causes, such as reducing inequalities reinforced or fabricated in previous schooling, fostering continuity between secondary and higher education, getting away from the "deficit rhetoric" denouncing the drop in levels..., is undoubtedly not to be overlooked, even if little supported as such by empirical research.
To better understand what this is all about, let's turn to Belgium, and in particular the University of Namur, a pioneer in these prerequisite issues since the early 2000s (Vieillevoye et al., 2012; Wathelet & Vieillevoye, 2013).
The question of what new students know or don't know is undoubtedly more acute here than elsewhere, due to the highly decentralized nature of the Belgian school system: the issue of the secondary school leaving certificate is in fact the responsibility of public (local authorities) or private (associations, denominational or otherwise) organizing authorities, which have a large degree of autonomy in the teaching provided, although legislation on "common" prerequisites has become stricter in recent years. Against this backdrop, it's difficult for universities to know what knowledge and skills young people bring with them, and it's equally difficult for these young people to know whether their knowledge and skills are sufficient to enable them to enter higher education in the best possible conditions. The PISA surveys confirm that learning achievement in French-speaking Belgium is highly heterogeneous, determined by both the social background of the pupils and the school they attend.
After more than ten years' experience, the Passeports pour le bacproject [The "bac" in Belgium corresponds to the "licence" level in France], launched in 2003 by the Commission de l'enseignement des facultés universitaires de Namur, then extended in 2007 to the three other member universities of the Académie Louvain, recommends a four-phase approach:
As part of Passeports pour le bac, particular care was taken in selecting the prerequisites needed to build the foundations of the project: interviews with teachers, questionnaires with 1st year students and analysis of teaching materials enabled us to identify both disciplinary and cross-disciplinary prerequisites and, over time, to stabilize a definition.
A "prerequisite" is any knowledge or skill that, on the one hand, is necessary for mastering a course, discipline or program, or more generally for affiliation with study practices, and which, on the other hand, is not systematically and explicitly taught by undergraduate teachers (either because it is assumed to have been acquired in secondary school, or because it is thought to be acquired "by doing", such as note-taking).
Other properties have been identified: a "good" prerequisite necessarily concerns a certain proportion of students; it must be measurable from the start of the academic year, and be the subject of explicit teaching within a reasonable timeframe and with reasonable resources; it must also be solicited in different configurations (teachers, courses, disciplines, etc.). Ultimately, the validity of a prerequisite depends on its ability to " make predictions lie ": remediation must enable gaps to be neutralized.
In 2015, 12 Passports are being offered to new students in the humanities, sciences, technology and medicine. They are either disciplinary (mathematics, biology, chemistry, English, etc.) or cross-disciplinary (vocabulary, global comprehension, fine comprehension). All are in the form of online MCQs, developed in collaboration with the teaching teams and re-evaluated each year. Each questionnaire tests several prerequisites, and each prerequisite is tested with several questions. Several versions of the Passports exist, to prevent leaks.
Students remain anonymous, but are identified on the platform by a code. Taking the test is optional, but is grouped and therefore synchronous: students in the same group meet in a room and take the test corresponding to their passport together. They consult their results online a few days after taking the test, and are informed of their level of mastery, prerequisite by prerequisite, according to a three-level scale inspired by Bloom's taxonomy: good mastery (score > 75%), partial mastery (score between 60 and 80%), non-acquisition (score < 60%). In this context, an average score for all test questions would be meaningless for the student. Generally speaking, in a formative approach, grades should be used with moderation: they focus attention more on performance than on learning, and can have a very negative effect in terms of self-esteem on less competent students (Wiliam, 2010).
Good feedback is more than just diagnostic; it encourages students to engage in conscious activity to improve their level of mastery, either independently or with the support of their teachers, who receive the results for the group as a whole. A grant is awarded to each school participating in Passeports pour le bac to set up remedial actions. Depending on the school, these actions take a variety of forms: tutored sessions for each option in small groups, themed reinforcement sessions, individual interviews, online self-mediation activities... Teachers may also adapt their first lessons to the group's results.
The various cross-references made between biographical background, previous schooling, results from the secondary school leaving certificate, and those obtained in the Passports and first-year university final exams confirm what a great deal of research has already shown in France (Endrizzi, 2010): previous schooling, and in particular final certificate grades and the type of program followed (general stream, strengthened in mathematics and/or with selective options such as ancient languages) are reliable indicators of students' general academic merit and equally reliable predictors of university success, whereas socio-biographical characteristics come into play to a lesser extent at this level of education. What's new about Passports to the Bac is the even stronger link that has been demonstrated between academic background and pre-requisite test results, leading to the conclusion that interventions aimed at improving mastery of these pre-requisites can partially neutralize the effects of an average academic background, or one marked by chronic difficulties. In any case, this is confirmed by the evaluation of the scheme carried out in 2010-11: the academic success of students who benefited from the remedial measures proved to be higher than that of students who did not take part, for identical Passport results.
Feedback from the UJF program, which was implemented along the same lines as the Belgian Passports and has been continually adjusted since 2008, points in the same direction (Hoffmann et al., 2013). However, there are three notable differences. The questionnaire, addressed to students enrolled in the first year of a science and technology degree, is randomly generated for each student from a bank of questions comprising some twenty prerequisites, weighted according to the disciplinary dominance of the courses. It is freely accessible before and after the in-class test, scheduled for the first week of the new academic year. Results are communicated immediately after the test, prerequisite by prerequisite. When asked about the impact of the test, students confirm its role as a warning system, whether it's simply to help them understand that university requires a certain level of commitment in terms of personal work, or to make them more aware of their weaknesses so that they can rework certain deficient content, either on their own or in a tutoring group.
Conversely, those who pass the test see their sense of self-efficacy reinforced. The correlation between S1 semester exam results and mastery of prerequisites is also interesting: it shows that it is the overall score on the prerequisite test that is ultimately the best predictor of academic success. In other words, a student with a low score on a limited number of prerequisites has less difficulty passing the semester than a student with an insufficient overall score.
What makes these experiments interesting in terms of the fight against failure at university is their integrated nature: the tests are implemented in an articulated way, through a triple operation of identifying prerequisites, measuring their mastery and remediation with students, involving both students and teachers. This is a tangible advance on the tutoring sessions of the 1990s in France, which only attracted students who were already almost acculturated, who needed to reassure themselves of their acquired skills, but who were above all eager to return to a more familiar pedagogical configuration (the "classroom"), to exchange with tutors and their peers and to escape from academic anonymity (Endrizzi, 2010).
These integrated systems give full meaning to the "formative" aspect of assessment (William, 2010): on the one hand, feedback on strengths and weaknesses, coupled with suggestions for action to improve performance or remedy identified weaknesses; on the other, adherence to the formative approach, i.e., recognition of the value of feedback for better integration into the learning process. Formative evaluation is prospective rather than retrospective, identifying solutions to be implemented in action or at a later date, and aiming to make students active by guiding them in their decision-making. In a virtuous process, teachers, for their part, are better informed of their students' actual level, enabling them to adapt their teaching. In other words, quality feedback is part of an improvement process that involves both the student and the teacher at various stages. The prospect for students is therefore not just mastery of this or that prerequisite, as has already been emphasized, but the ability to regulate their own learning in a study environment where they don't immediately have their bearings. And self-regulation needs feedback.
Teachers now realize that it was a mistake to consider new students as autonomous learners. The idea that disciplinary content can be used to develop "study skills" in the first year therefore seems not so incongruous. A transition year, then, during which the use of formative assessment would become commonplace, not just at the start of the year, but in ordinary teaching practices: the next step? (Beaumont et al., 2011; Boud & Molloy, 2015; Sarfati, 2015; Wathelet & Vieillevoye, 2013).
Bibliography
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