An Integrated Approach to Assessment as a Co-ordinating Framework

Abstract

<p>This is an invited chapter in review. It will appear as a chapter in the forthcoming . Research Handbook on Innovations in Assessment and Feedback in Higher Education from Elgar Publishing and edited by Carol Evans and Mike Waring. All assessments are events within a process that has the goal of making decisions about instruction, learning, curriculum, students, institutions, and consequences. Three underlying disciplines (i.e., psychometrics, psychology, and sociology) inform the evaluation of assessments. Error is ubiquitous in the selection of tasks that constitute an assessment, the administration, marking, reporting, and decisions contain a non-ignorable component of error that has to be mitigated. Psychological ego factors in the marker and the assessee can be maladaptive in generating responses to assessment demands; awareness of this validity threat is needed to support participants into adaptive effort. Environments, from cultural norms to government policies, create contexts that can contribute greater error and psychological ego into the system, especially when high-stakes accountability pressures, as opposed to low-consequence formative support, are implemented. I conclude with suggestions of how integration of these underlying disciplines can improve the credibility and quality of higher education assessment.</p>