What Kind of Learning Does Self‐assessment Drive? Developing a ‘nose’ for quality: comments on Klenowski (1995)

Klenowski (1995) identifies three aspects of ‘self‐assessment’. The present commentary examines these from the point of view of the development of learning‐to‐learn or ‘learning acumen’, which, it is proposed, comprises resilience, resourcefulness, reflectivity and responsibility. The minimal sense of self‐evaluation, in which students merely learn to monitor their performance in terms of externally specified criteria, may raise attainment without improving learning acumen, and may even damage it. What constitutes ‘good work’ is, in many domains, not reducible to the application of predetermined criteria. Self‐evaluation is essentially an intuitive process. Learning to see self‐evaluation as ‘marking one's own work’ by applying a checklist of criteria prevents the development of this intuitive ability.