Prioritising a self-regulatory assessment and feedback approach in higher education

Abstract

Self-regulatory assessment and feedback approaches have massive potential to support the development of students’ high level self-regulatory skills in higher education. Such approaches can enhance understandings of the learning process, and enable higher education institutions to better serve the individual learning needs of all students, while ensuring assessment is fit for 21st- century 4th industrial needs. Taking a self-regulatory approach to assessment and feedback brings understanding and awareness of how best to utilise self-regulation research to support learning, and discernment in how best to design assessment environments to enable this. Self-regulated learning is one of the most prevalent educational theories explaining student achievement but transfer of such understanding into the design of assessment in higher education is still relatively limited. To promote such transfer, we explore what a self-regulatory approach to assessment and feedback looks like, the research informing it, promising areas of research moving forward, and implications for enhancing the quality of professional development to support the embedding of self-regulatory approaches to assessment and feedback within higher education.