Exploring the potential for and promise of incorporating distributive and procedural justices into post-secondary assessment of student learning

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ABSTRACTThis paper explores the potential of incorporating constructs of distributive justice and procedural justice into summative assessment of student learning in higher education. I systematically compare the process used by managers to evaluate employee performance in organizations – performance appraisal (PA) – with processes used by professors to assess student learning in academe. These procedures are remarkably similar in terms of objectives to facilitate and measure performance/learning, criteria for defining desired performance/learning, the procedures used by raters to evaluate performance/learning, and the procedure used by employees and students to assess fairness of their PA/grades. I then summarize empirical research regarding distributive justice (DJ) and procedural justice (PJ) in organizations. Finally, I posit how positive attitudes and behaviors associated with DJ and PJ in organizations might transfer to benefit students, professors, administrators, and universities in academe.