Student self-assessment: a meta-review of five decades of research

Abstract

Student self-assessment has received considerable research interest. While several review articles have mapped self-assessment studies, there remains a need to synthesise the insights from field and the differing views and approaches within. In this critical meta-review, we conduct a discourse analysis of 28 earlier review studies concerning self-assessment, spanning five decades of research. We ask: What is known about student self-assessment? How have review studies produced knowledge about self-assessment? Analysing our data corpus, we deconstruct four discourses: psychological discourse (self-assessment as a clinical intervention); educational discourse (self-assessment as a contextual, relational practice); performance discourse (self-assessment as a performative practice); and societal discourse (self-assessment as a societal practice). These four discourses represent different forms of knowledge production. Through these discourses, self-assessment research has continued the history of promoting a reflective, rational and autonomous human subject in educational settings, but ironically, often through the occlusion of the self.