Assessment, learning and judgement in higher education: A critical review

Abstract

The literature on assessment in higher education is now so vast that a comprehensive review of it would be ambitious under any circumstances. The goals of this chapter are therefore modest: it offers a brief review of four central concepts regarding assessment, learning and judgement that are considered problematic because they are subject to conceptual confusion, lack the clear empirical support which is often attributed to them, or give rise to contradictions between their theoretical explication and actual practice. The first of these concepts concerns how assessment is defined-the chapter thus begins by proposing a reversion to a simple definition of assessment and noting the relationships between assessment and learning in light of this definition. The second concept concerns the axiom that assessment drives student learning. The third concept concerns the widely held view that students' approaches to learning can be improved by changing assessment. The fourth and final matteraddressed is the contradiction between the prominence of feedback in theories of learning and its relatively impoverished application in practice.