Abstract
The goal stated at the outset of this book was to theorise the academic viva and in order to provide a foundation for this three questions were posed: why study the viva, how is the viva ‘talked into being’, and finally, what would a validity argument look like for the viva? In the concluding chapter, re-theorising the viva is undertaken by drawing upon some of the points made in previous chapters. This entails moving beyond and at the same time incorporating the initial theorising proposed in Chap. 3. Additionally, comments upon the research and policy implications of this book are also addressed.
Avoid making the candidate feel uncomfortable,
refrain from trick questions, unanswerable
questions, or questions that are too personal.
Bourdieu (1996b: 224)
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Notes
- 1.
Strictly speaking a theory is a set of axioms, while a model is a set of objects satisfying the axioms. But I dissolve the distinction since a theory can have objects and a model axioms.
- 2.
Social practice theory is sometimes conceived in terms of Human Activity Theory if the performance perspective is not adopted. Human Activity Theory can be quite systematic and goal-oriented, understanding, ignoring or under-emphasising in the process the role of existential components (Dobson and Haaland 1993). This is one of the main reasons for my not adopting it.
- 3.
Dr. Brendyn Semmens is a highly accomplished and respected director of several schools and early childhood centres in South Australia’s State education system.
- 4.
Sadler (2008) also argues for the necessity of creating an assessment environment that permits the emergence of such intuitive components not easily expressed in a verbal manner.
- 5.
Med muntlig få vi innsikt i hva student kan og hvordan de resonnerer om begreper.
- 6.
Krathwohl (2002) and Pintrich (2002) present a revised Bloom taxonomy http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html.
- 7.
As a disposition towards academic culture (Bourdieu 1996a: 99).
- 8.
The expressive as opposed to causal relation has its own genealogy. To take two exponents: Benjamin (2003: 99–115), in his famous exchange with Adorno, refused to identify causality in connection with commodities, and saw instead the expressive manifestation of capitalist phenomena in different forms. Nietzsche (1973: aphorism 14) noted that, while we can be sure of effects which are open to endless interpretations, it is far from clear what is to be pinned down in each instance as the single or multiple causal explanation of a phenomenon. My earlier reference in this book to multi-directionality in the talk of narratives also questions the linear view of cause and effect (see also Dobson 2005).
- 9.
The grading sheet and descriptors are reproduced in Appendix II in Norwegian and English.
- 10.
Tversky and Kahneman (1974: 1124) reflect upon judgments and how ‘people rely upon a limited number of heuristic principles which reduce the complex tasks of assessing probabilities and predicting values to simpler judgmental operations’. The principles are: representativeness, availability, adjustment and anchoring.
- 11.
The sociologist Bertaux (1981: 37–38) reflected upon the concept of saturation: ‘A process of saturation of knowledge … We may say that our sample is representative, not at the morphological level (at the level of superficial description), but at the sociological level, at the level of sociostructural relations (rapports sociaux).’ The former is more quantitative, for example the number of people who are voting for a particular party. The latter is concerned with how voters go about making and determining their choice. In the context of the viva, saturation indicates something of the qualitative character of how judgments are reached, rather than answering the question ‘how many?’.
- 12.
Yaphe and Street (2003: 767) focus upon the role of ‘first impressions’. In their model they proposed stem questions followed by exploratory and confirming questions.
- 13.
Derrida never argued either/or: either oral or writing. He looked for the space between the two and its deconstruction to expose différance, as a grounding principle (Steinnes 2008). Nevertheless, his work can be regarded as a long exegesis upon a number of classical texts, such that his inclination was scholarly and towards writing/reading/text, for example Rousseau’s Emile in Of Grammatology (1976).
- 14.
Professor Bruce Johnson in personal correspondence, 22 April 2015.
- 15.
- 16.
Another popular term for this is interpersonal competence (Memon et al. 2010).
- 17.
See Dobson (2011) where I explore group assessment.
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Dobson, S. (2018). (Re-)Theorising 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_8
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