Governing ‘the disabled assessee’: a critical reframing of assessment accommodations as sociocultural practices

Abstract

Assessment accommodations, such as extra time or personal space during examinations, have been traditionally studied through psychological perspectives. In this study, a critical approach is used instead to reframe assessment accommodations as sociocultural practices in the context of higher education. Drawing on discursive-deconstructive reading, this study addresses student positioning in documents and texts concerning assessment accommodations in the context of Finnish higher education. Deconstructed from these documents are the positions of ‘assessee’ and ‘impaired’. It is shown that both positions limit students’ agency by drawing on the medical model of disability. The study underlines the specific role assessment has in constructing disabilities in higher education. Further, the study calls for critical research to address – and challenge – the ableist agenda of rendering the structural issues of assessment into disabled students’ medical and psychological states. Points of interest Assessment accommodations, such as extra time or personal space in testing situations, are commonly used in higher education to allow everyone to participate in assessment. This study takes a critical approach towards assessment accommodations by analysing their social and cultural consequences. Documents concerning assessment of disabled students were analysed in the context of Finnish higher education. In the documents, the students were positioned as ‘assessees’ because they were seen as the targets of assessment – which, according to the documents, mostly consisted of examinations. The students were largely positioned as ‘impaired’ through the medical language used across the documents. The students were also seen as ‘special’ and ‘different’ compared to ‘other’ students. The documents largely saw disabled students as the problem to be fixed, rather than the examination-driven assessment system itself. I argue that this is an ableist agenda.