Sowing the seeds

Reasons for wanting to engage learners more directly in assessment are plentiful. These include the ability for learners to make judgements of their own work, as this capacity will be essential for learners ’ future lives and careers (Boud & Falchikov, 2006). Excellent guides on how and why this might be done already exist (Falchikov 2005). A puzzle exists, therefore, in why we see so little evidence of assessment practices that engage the learner more directly. To encourage the wider adoption of these practices we must understand the challenges teachers face when considering significant changes to assessment. There are good reasons for believing that the most effective way to transform assessment practices would be to take a whole-of-program approach, with decisions about what, how, and where something is assessed being made after careful consideration of the program’s structure and intended learning outcomes. Whole-of-program opportunities, however, are infrequent, and even when they occur, they are not always recognised as opportunities for major refocusing of assessment. The reality for most courses is that choices about assessment are made by teachers on a local basis, within their subject silos, and without much consideration of program-level issues.This paper focuses on ways of engaging teachers in discussion of assessment using the work of Rust, Price & O’Donovan (2003), and of Boud & Falchikov (2006), to develop activities that engage the student directly in assessment by developing their ability to provide and respond to feedback. Contextualised support for teachers undertaking changes to assessment can be very effective in helping teachers negotiate the inevitable missteps and hiccups of unfamiliar assessment activities. This support is also sowing the seeds for a future occasion when their developing understandings of assessment can be employed to influence choices about assessment when whole-of-program opportunities arise