Psychology Teaching Review, 13(1), 2007 23 © The British Psychological Society 2007 R ECENTLY THERE HAS been a greatdeal of research and commentaryon different forms of assessment (e.g.

ever, even though new forms of assessment have been introduced, essay writing remains a common feature in many psychology undergraduate programmes. There is little doubt that writing and marking essays is a time-consuming process both for students and lecturers, and this is an important issue given increasing student numbers and widening participation within HE. Norton, Brunas-Wagstaff & Lockley (1999) report that third-year psychology students spend an average of 29 hours in preparing an essay for submission. Likewise, psychology lecturers spend anything from 15 to 45 minutes in marking first-year essays (Norton, 1990). The inclusion of essay writing in degree programmes appears to be beneficial to students ’ success. Students tend to perform significantly better in coursework essays than they do in timed, unseen exams (Bridges et al., 2002; Murdan, 2005) and are less likely to fail modules that are assessed by written coursework only (Gibbs and Lucas, 1997). However, this level of success cannot be gen-eralised to all students. Better quality essays have been associated with those students who possess a good understanding of the assessment criteria (Harrington et al., 2003) but many students now enter university with very little understanding of what is required of them when writing an essay (Hartley & Chesworth, 2000) putting them at a clear dis-advantage. If institutions continue to assess learning through written essays, then stu-dents should be provided with the opportu-nity to learn essay writing skills and to practice them within their degree pro-gramme as such skills cannot be gained from descriptions of criteria alone (Harrington & Elander, 2003). This is especially relevant given widening participation within Higher Education. Students come from diverse edu-cational backgrounds (O’Connor, 2003; Coogan & Pawson, 2006), and one could argue that we are failing students if we make the assumption that they all enter university with the necessary skills required to write good essays. The constructivist approach to learning and teaching places emphasis on the student as an active construer of his/her own knowl