Assessment as a matter of inclusion: A meta-ethnographic review of the assessment experiences of students with disabilities in higher education

Abstract

Assessment plays a crucial role in student learning in higher education. Until rather recently, the role of assessment in relation to inclusion has been unexplored. In this study, we conduct a research synthesis of 42 studies published between 2010 and 2022, including 868 student participants, to map the assessment experiences of students with disabilities in higher education. Specifically, we conduct a meta-ethnographic review to synthesise qualitative studies and capture the participants' lived experiences of assessment. Our analysis considers how these experiences reflect both inclusion and exclusion. We theorise these elusive terms through the ideas of access and participation. Most of the studies considered the students' imminent physical, perceptual and social access to assessment, such as in the cases of inaccessible examination halls or digital assessment systems. A smaller subset of the studies considered inclusion/exclusion as a matter of students’ social participation as fully accepted members of academia. In these studies, assessment was described as providing the students with opportunities to belong to academia, whereas experiences of exclusion portrayed assessment as a mechanism for social segregation and discrimination. Overall, our review shows that assessment is a primary barrier to the inclusion of students with disabilities in higher education. We propose that the predominant discourse of inclusion in assessment needs to widen from considering immediate access to assessment into considering how assessment regulates the full participation of diverse students in higher education. We discuss the implications of inaccessible assessment for all students and suggest that, ultimately, both access and participation are matters of student identity. Our review has important practical implications for the design of inclusive assessment in the current higher education contexts in which student cohorts are becoming increasingly diverse.