Currently reading: Tai et al. (2022) on “Assessment for inclusion: rethinking contemporary strategies in assessment design”

I just read this really interesting and important article about “assessment for inclusion, which seeks to ensure diverse students are not disadvantaged through assessment practices” by Tai et al. (2022). Traditional assessment practices often discriminates against people in so many different ways that I had not really carefully considered before.

Tai et al. (2022) provide a lot of scary examples for how traditional assessments can be problematic:

• Closed book exams mean that memorisation of content and quick recall under stress are rewarded, even when those are not necessarily intended learning outcomes
• Only allowing certain notes or texts into the exam means, for example, rewarding students that have experience and skill producing good notes, that can afford to buy and bring the textbook, or that have more experience and practice with this type of exam format
• Prescribing a specific mode puts some at disadvantage, for example handwriting can be physically exhausting and more challenging for people with dyslexia, thus measuring other skills related to the format rather than the intended learning outcomes and potentially punishing unrelated mistakes in, for example, spelling
• Similarly, focussing on language skill disadvantages those studying in their second (or fifth) language
• Time limits favour people who operate well under stress
• Inflexible deadlines favour people who do not already have time stress from other factors, for example through caring responsibilities, having to work for a living, etc
• Assessment technologies might put people with older hardware, less practice with handling the assessment hard- or software, or requiring assistive technology that doesn’t necessarily work with the assessment technology at a disadvantage
• Teachers setting intended learning outcomes and criteria without discussions with students might propagate problematic oversights in what ways of knowing etc are deemed desire- and acceptable
• Not allowing for substitution of assessment tasks for others that equally well show the desired learning “reduces opportunities for distinctiveness and creativity”

In summary, Tai et al. (2022) write “It is naïve to assume that offering the same assessment to all students provides equal opportunities for achievement: the conditions under which assessment takes place are never identical because of students’ unique personal histories and lived realities. In requiring that students perform the same tasks and be judged against the same standards, assessment fails to acknowledge the value of different perspectives, skills, personal attributes and experience.”

So why have people not changed anything yet? There are three main concerns that Tai et al. (2022) find:

1. “This is a necessary part of how we do things here”. Traditions are strong, and cultures difficult and slow to change! But paradigms can be questioned and changed, and implicit learning outcomes and assumptions can be made explicit
2. “We need to assess these learning outcomes” — when Tai et al. (2022) instead argue that “an unreflexive interpretation of outcomes and the way they should be assessed can lead to inadvertent exclusion. Students might very well meet requirements if they were defined in other equally legitimate ways” (my emphasis — there are often so many different, equally legitimate ways to do things!!)
3. “Students will cheat if we don’t assess in this way”. I am getting a bit fed up with the obsession on students cheating. I really enjoyed reading about the “integrity enforcement pyramid” by Ellis & Murdoch (2024) the other day because of their differentiated approach, but sometimes I feel that certain teachers are projecting when they expect students to cheat or take the easy way out at every opportunity. Anyway, people need to consider how proctoring or eye-tracking also introduces discrimination

Tai et al. (2022) suggest exploring both authentic assessment and programmatic assessment, which are both commonly mentioned as good practice for good assessment. They also suggest “assessment for distinctiveness”, which I hadn’t thought about in those terms before*: Giving students the opportunity to build a profile for themselves so they can show how they are different from their peers (in typically very large cohorts that study together and typically come out with very similar profiles otherwise, yet end up in very different roles right after university, requiring very different skill sets. So why not develop and show that explicitly already within university?). I love that perspective!

I think the main take-away for me is that, as with all other choices, too, “Choices in assessment design are never neutral, as each may promote or constrain inclusion differently, and affect different people“. No solution here, but a good reminder to keep a lot of different perspectives in mind when thinking about assessment!

*I tend to think about assessment in my academic development context in terms of sustainability: “reduce, reuse, recycle” — how can the artefacts produced in my courses be re-used in other ways? Can a report also be submitted as conference proceedings? Can a final presentation happen in front of an audience of peers so people get recognition and have an influence on the discussions around them? What format would people like to do an artefact in so they can use it for a teaching portfolio or as an episode on their podcast? So I love the “assessment for distinctiveness” perspective!

Featured image from a sunset dip two days ago. Now that we are back to grey and rain I am even more glad that I made time for that!

Tai, J., Ajjawi, R., Bearman, M., Boud, D., Dawson, P., & Jorre de St Jorre, T. (2022). Assessment for inclusion: rethinking contemporary strategies in assessment design. Higher Education Research & Development, 42(2), 483–497. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2022.2057451