Abstract
This research focuses on the assessment literacy, that is, the understandings of assessment terminologies and how they relate to each other, in academic staff developers in the UK, collected via questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Academic staff developers have been trained and certified to support new higher education lecturers in learning, teaching, and assessment practices, and provide continuing professional development for more experienced staff. Results showed inconsistent and differing understandings between and within individuals. These inconsistencies may reflect the lack of consistency of terminology in the literature. This lack of common understanding has far-reaching implications and needs reconciling to enhance personal and collective assessment literacies, particularly since our respondents have responsibility for training the next generation of academics.
Highlights
Recent work (Taras, 2008a; Taras and Davies, 2014) on assessment literacy has examined university lecturers’ beliefs and opinions relating to assessment in university departments of education and science in the UK in order to explore their understanding of assessment issues.This paper reports on a similar study investigating whether understandings and opinions of assessment are clear, cogent, coherent, and shared among a group of UK academic staff developers
The present study focuses on staff developers, who play diverse national roles in UK HE and present their views and understandings to future generations of educators
The results are presented under the headings of ‘Understandings of summative assessment (SA)’, ‘Understandings of formative assessment (FA)’, and ‘Understandings of the relationship between SA and FA’, and interview data are used to comment and expand on questionnaire data
Summary
Recent work (Taras, 2008a; Taras and Davies, 2014) on assessment literacy has examined university lecturers’ beliefs and opinions relating to assessment in university departments of education and science in the UK in order to explore their understanding of assessment issues.This paper reports on a similar study investigating whether understandings and opinions of assessment are clear, cogent, coherent, and shared among a group of UK academic staff developers. With the development of ‘Assessment for Learning’, there appeared its counterpart, commonly called ‘Assessment of Learning’ This dichotomy normally signals, on the one hand, the use of assessment to support learning, and, on the other, to provide a final judgement on work. Cross-sector links – that is, between the compulsory sector and the post-compulsory sectors – through international journals, conferences, and collaborations, require a better and clearer understanding of sectorspecific differences (Havnes and McDowell, 2008; Pryor and Crossouard, 2008; Taras, 2008b), in assessment processes, terminologies, and protocols. Basing the whole of assessment discourse on functions seems to be inappropriate
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