Why an assessment framework?
المؤلف:
Sally Kift
المصدر:
Enhancing Teaching and Learning through Assessment
الجزء والصفحة:
P305-C26
2025-07-25
430
Why an assessment framework?
"If you want to change student learning then change the methods of assessment" (Brown et al., 1997, p.9)
It has become clear that, to motivate today's time-poor students to embrace any new learning, particularly learning that extends beyond strict content objectives and seeks also to inculcate skills and values, the importance of that new learning must be reflected in the assessment regime. This is simply another way of saying that assessment tasks must be aligned with the articulated learning outcomes and that getting the assessment "right" is crucial to the efficacy of curriculum renewal and students' learning engagement (Elton & Johnston, 2002). It falls to the A/Dean, learning and teaching's to marshal such arguments, which are not necessarily readily nor well understood in the specific discipline context, to ensure these issues become a major area of Faculty concern. It was through exactly this process that my Faculty's attention was focused on the quality assurance of assessment practices through curriculum alignment that embraced learning outcomes around skilled behavior.
Under the A/Dean's L&T's curriculum management aspect, the development of an assessment framework to inform the Faculty's quality assurance of the learning, teaching and assessment of generic and discipline specific skills was the subject of a successful grant application for funding from the University in 2002. For the purposes of trialing and evaluating the framework, the Faculty identified four areas of generic skills development (project areas) that had proved extremely challenging in terms of developing valid and reliable assessment practices, specifically:
1.the embedding of indigenous content and perspectives;
2.the development of oral communication (with particular emphasis on negotiation, advocacy, tutorial participation, and client interviewing for internal and external students);
3. the infusion of ethical values and knowledge;
4. teamwork in large and small classes in which both internal and external students are enrolled.
These project areas were chosen because they were representative of social, relational and cultural skills that had been identified as either problematic in their own right (because assessment has been hampered by perceptions of subjectivity or cultural bias) or problematic because of difficulties experienced in formulating valid and reliable assessment tasks (particularly in large group teaching and in flexible delivery modes). As these difficulties are not discipline-specific, the project's outcomes were hoped to be transferable to other contexts and all project team members were encouraged to (and did) publish their scholarship in teaching and learning research and development in this regard.
Over 20 faculty teachers were engaged in the project and more than thirty-five teaching scholarship publications were disseminated by members of the project team over the course of the project and since its completion. The assessment framework developed was a shared achievement and has informed many of the assessment practices now embedded in core Faculty units.
While some of this work may well have occurred in an ad-hoc way over time, the central position is that such wholesale and principled curriculum renewal (as set out in more detail below in its assessment aspect) is only possible when driven by a curriculum management role such as that of an A/Dean, in which resides both the administrative power and responsibility to assure that desirable change is embedded in course documentation and the discipline credibility to mentor the entire process. Crucially also, the A/Dean has a central role to play in the deployment of a communication strategy to sell the (inevitable) requirement for curriculum QA in the Faculty and discipline context. It should not be assumed that discipline experts enmeshed in current practice necessarily accept the validity or value of this work. Therefore, the strategies and arguments deployed to enable the adoption of an assessment framework in the author's Faculty context will now be briefly addressed, before turning to the detail of the
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