Assessment in Geography Education

Abstract

An archaeologist is one who digs through layers of rock and soil to uncover and study what people did in the past from the things they left behind. For this encyclopedia entry, the authors assumed the role of archaeologists digging through databases and bibliographic references to uncover research about assessment in geography education, drawing from empirical studies where possible. They drew on Foucault’s book The Archaeology of Knowledge, using archaeological analysis as the chosen methodology to provide a close examination of themes in assessment in geography education from different authors, as well as showing how assessment foci have changed (or not) over time. Chronological succession is used for the most part, except for introducing important overviews or reports or where papers cluster within a subtheme. The chosen time frame is from the 1980s to the present. This period was chosen to go back beyond two big shifts in assessment in education. First, the 1990s saw the promotion of large-scale (inter)national high-stakes testing as a regime to provide comparative data between states/countries. The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) are examples of these. Second, the formation of the assessment-reform group of the British Educational Research Association, which promulgated assessment for learning as a concept and practice, was in the late 1980s. The themes presented in this archaeology of assessment literature in geography education are as follows: Theme One: Overviews/Reports and a Special Issue on Assessment in Geography Education, Theme Two: Large-Scale International Assessments, Theme Three: National Assessment and Data, Theme Four: Teacher/Formative Assessment, Theme Five: Assessing Knowledge and Skills through Mapping, Theme Six: Developing Valid and Reliable Instruments to Assess Spatial Thinking, Theme Seven: Assessment in Geography Textbooks, Theme Eight: Assessment Rubrics and Marking, and Theme Nine: Emerging Trends in Geography Education Assessment.