Assessment relationships in higher education: the tension of process and practice

By C. Crook, H. Gross, R. Dymott. 2006

86 citations recorded by the source corpus.

It is argued that the auditing demands of quality assurance have encouraged a greater proceduralisation of university coursework assessment. Interviews with academics from a cross-section of Psychology departments illustrated how assessment had acquired the tightly scripted character of an organisational process. Yet undergraduate focus group conversations suggested that this proceduralisation obstructed the experience students sought from assessment as a form of educational practice. It is argued that educational contexts can create a distinctive form of process/practice tension. In particular, formalising assessment into a process may conceal students' unease, inhibit the expression of that unease, and create a distracting focus on study products rather than study practices. A striking interpersonal dissociation of author and reader (student and tutor) was apparent in the organisational processes documented here. This was identified as the source of significant student discontent, and the likely starting point for its repair.

Subfields: Education

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7d8b5301a7689c93ea1086fa70360fe289f21d0c

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In Education

1. Rob Wass
2. Karen Handley
3. Jill Millar
4. M. Price
5. Sue Bloxham *
6. T. Harland
7. Richard Bailey *
8. Mark Garner

Citations in the corpus

• An assessment arms race and its fallout: high-stakes grading and the case for slow scholarship (2015, background): “While such knowledge is undoubtedly important, the learning experience may not provide enough time to allow the student to develop good study practices leading to higher order learning outcomes (Crook, Gross, and Dymott 2006).”
• Is the feedback in higher education assessment worth the paper it is written on? Teachers' reflections on their practices (2010, background): “Crook, Gross, and Dymott ( 2006 ) consider feedback in the wider experience.”
• Marking and moderation in the UK: false assumptions and wasted resources (2009, background): “Students, for the main part, do accept the grades they are awarded even if they recognise that staff give credit for different qualities when marking (Crook, Gross, and Dymott 2006 ).”
• Feedback: focusing attention on engagement (2011, background): “We echo Crook, Gross, and Dymott’s ( 2006 ) call for an awareness of tensions between the ‘tightly scripted’ (95) proceduralisation of assessment and, on the other hand, the social practice of assessment.”