Abstract
The contemporary viva in higher education has a long history. This chapter considers this history by exploring the viva’s form, beginning with the time of the Classical Greeks. Thereafter, the following periods are discussed: the Greco-Roman, the Middle Ages, the modern period with a focus on the centrality of the form of the viva once found at Oxford and Cambridge, the contemporary professional and academic viva and, lastly, postmodern conceptions of the viva.
To be on anew and basking again
in the panaroma of all flores of
speech … in the states of suspensive
exanimation.
(Joyce 1992: 143)
Joyce (1992: 143) uses panaroma instead of panorama; exanimation comes from the Latin exanimatio for terror, and the word exanimation can also mean loss of consciousness.
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Notes
- 1.
An earlier version of this chapter has been published (Dobson 2007) in Sosiologisk årbok (Annual Review of Sociology).
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
This kind of viva falls under the group of oral assessments typical of a number of professions: ‘medicine with its clinical assessment, law with its mooting or mock trials, and architecture with its “design juries”’ (Joughin 1998: 367).
- 5.
Pearce and Lee (2009: 127) state: ‘the literature notes frameworks or guidelines to improve reliability’.
- 6.
Of course, Meno, like many of Socrates’ thoughts, has reached us as a literary work written by Plato. However, this must not detract from the fact that it was written as a dialogue between more than one person and can be read aloud to demonstrate this. For instance, Bolter (2001: 104) has regarded Plato’s works as a hybrid or compromise ‘between oral and written controlling structures’.
- 7.
He differentiated between the scientific syllogism and the dialectical syllogism and concentrated his argument on the role of dialectics. The scientific syllogism allowed demonstration and was based upon premises that were true and immediate, whereas the dialectical syllogism was based upon premises that were probable, or acceptable, as it is sometimes termed in translations (Smith 1997: 1). Furthermore, the dialectical syllogism was differentiated from the contentious syllogism, which reasoned from premises that merely seemed probable (or acceptable) or were based upon incorrect reasoning.
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- 9.
Nothing is taken from the master, if not under the master has been the apprentice (cited by Bourdieu 1996: 95). An alternative translation would be ‘no-one should be accepted as a master, who has not been a disciple under a master’. In other words, in gaining the status of master, the candidate was dependent on the master. This was a vertical relation.
- 10.
Bildung can be understood as identity formation in the individual sense over a long period and/or becoming part of a culture in the collective, societal sense.
- 11.
Back (2007: 180) goes on to say the following, to somewhat contradict his earlier point: ‘The novelty is the combination, the particular insights and the counter-intuitive nature of the things that people say when we listen to them’.
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Dobson, S. (2018). The Life and Death of the Viva. In: Assessing the Viva in Higher Education. The Enabling Power of Assessment, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64016-7_1
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