STUDENTS CAN SELF ASSESS THEIR KNOWLEDGE AND SKILL. DON'T PRESUME THEY CANNOT

The awareness that comes from self-assessment practice often determines the tasks people undertake, the persistence they expend, informed adjustments they make, and the quality of the final outcomes. Despite growing evidence for the critical importance of self-assessment to learning, the long-held presumption that "students can't self-assess" still persists on websites and in academic publications and conferences. Knowledge surveys, instruments based on self-assessment first developed for teaching the geosciences, were past critics' favored targets. Self-assessment's deprecation rested in several presumptions: (1) students will not self-assess honestly; (2) students lack capacity to self-assess; (3) affect does not include informed feelings of cognitive mastery, and (4) "How students feel doesn't matter." Further, psychology's "Dunning-Kruger effect" explained the nature of self-assessment for over a quarter century with claims that: (1) most people are overly optimistic about their abilities, (2) the least knowledgeable people overestimate their ability to the greatest degree, and (3) those with true expertise not only know themselves better, but tend toward humility and generally underestimate their abilities. The "effect" from its inception rested on mathematical arguments now proven untenable. The presumptions thrived in part because early contradicting results were poorly indexed, seldom cited, difficult to find, and at times even disrespected and suppressed. There are few cases in science, other than perhaps the history of early suppression of plate tectonics in the U.S., where wide literacy became disconnected from known evidence for so long. In this poster, we employ a dataset of paired measures collected with validated instruments from over 9000 participants. We trace the origins of the presumptions, their ascent to unwarranted credibility and conclude that self-assessment accuracy is too important to becoming educated not to develop proficiency in it by design.