Accountability in grading student work: securing academic standards in a twenty-first century quality assurance context

This article, using a student outcomes definition of academic standards, reports on academics’ sense of standards as enacted through marking practices. Twelve lecturers from two UK universities were asked to ‘think aloud’ as they graded written assignments followed by a semi-structured interview. The interview data were used to investigate the source of tutors’ standards, their sense of accountability for their grading judgements, their use of artefacts and their attitude to internal and external moderation. The findings suggest that tutors believe there are established and shared academic standards in existence for their discipline and they endeavour to maintain them. There was no evidence of significant pressure or practice related to lowering of standards, although differences in tutors’ tacit ‘standards’ frameworks’ have the potential for bias. Whilst moderation has some power to secure standards within teams, the article discusses the implications of the research for assuring standards across universities and disciplines.

[1]  J. Jawitz.  Learning in the academic workplace: the harmonization of the collective and the individual habitus , 2009 .

[2]  Geoffrey Alderman,et al.  Defining and Measuring Academic Standards: A British Perspective. , 2009 .

[3]  Susan Bloxham,et al.  Learning to write in higher education: students’ perceptions of an intervention in developing understanding of assessment criteria , 2007 .

[4]  Jeff Jawitz,et al.  New academics negotiating communities of practice: learning to swim with the big fish , 2007 .

[5]  Susan Bloxham,et al.  Marking and moderation in the UK: false assumptions and wasted resources , 2009 .

[6]  G. Finnerty.  Qualitative Research Practice. A Guide for Social Science Students and Researchers , 2003 .

[7]  M. Price,et al.  Assessment standards: the role of communities of practice and the scholarship of assessment , 2005 .

[8]  Ginette Delandshere,et al.  Implicit Theories, Unexamined Assumptions and the Status Quo of Educational Assessment , 2001 .

[9]  D. Sadler.  Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems , 1989 .

[10]  Steven K. Van Dyke.  Dimensions of Quality , 1994 .

[12]  Patricia Broadfoot,et al.  Balancing Dilemmas in Assessment and Learning in Contemporary Education , 2008 .

[13]  Claire Wyatt-Smith,et al.  Im/proper Accountability: Towards a theory of critical literacy and assessment , 2000 .

[14]  Chris Rust,et al.  A social constructivist assessment process model: how the research literature shows us this could be best practice , 2005 .

[15]  Chris Rust,et al.  The experience of introducing a common criteria assessment grid across an academic department , 1999 .

[16]  D. Royce Sadler,et al.  Indeterminacy in the use of preset criteria for assessment and grading , 2009 .

[17]  Samuel Butler,et al.  Learning and Knowledge , 1979 .

[18]  C. Gipps.  Socio-Cultural Aspects of Assessment , 1999 .

[19]  Caroline Gipps,et al.  Chapter 10: Socio-Cultural Aspects of Assessment , 1999 .

[20]  D. Kahneman,et al.  Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment , 2002 .

[21]  Lee Harvey,et al.  Evaluation for What? , 2002 .

[22]  Chris Rust,et al.  Developing student understanding of assessment standards: a nested hierarchy of approaches , 2008 .

[23]  Hamish Coates,et al.  Defining and monitoring academic standards in Australian higher education , 2010 .

[24]  Lee Harvey,et al.  Fifteen Years of Quality in Higher Education (Part Two) , 2010 .

[25]  Susan Bloxham,et al.  Examining the tension between academic standards and inclusion for disabled students: the impact on marking of individual academics' frameworks for assessment , 2010 .

[26]  Susan Orr,et al.  Assessment moderation: constructing the marks and constructing the students , 2007 .

[27]  Mantz Yorke,et al.  Benchmarking Academic Standards in History: an empirical exercise , 1999 .

[28]  John Biggs,et al.  The reflective institution: Assuring and enhancing the quality of teaching and learning , 2001 .

[29]  Roger G. Brown.  The Current Brouhaha about Standards in England , 2010 .

[30]  J. Salmi.  The growing accountability agenda in tertiary education : progress or mixed blessing? , 2009 .

[31]  S. Shay.  The Assessment of Complex Performance: A Socially Situated Interpretive Act. , 2004 .

[32]  D. Royce Sadler,et al.  Specifying and Promulgating Achievement Standards , 1987 .

[33]  Suellen Shay,et al.  The assessment of complex tasks: a double reading , 2005 .

[34]  Peter Knight,et al.  The local practices of assessment , 2006 .

[35]  Susan Bloxham,et al.  Mark my words: the role of assessment criteria in UK higher education grading practices , 2011 .

[36]  D. Royce Sadler,et al.  Transforming Holistic Assessment and Grading into a Vehicle for Complex Learning , 2009 .

[37]  James Hartley,et al.  What price presentation? The effects of typographic variables on essay grades , 2006 .

[38]  D. Royce Sadler,et al.  Interpretations of criteria‐based assessment and grading in higher education , 2005 .

[39]  A. Wolf.  Competence-Based Assessment , 1995 .

[40]  Etienne Wenger,et al.  Legitimate Peripheral Participation in Communities of Practice , 2000 .

[41]  Kerry Harman,et al.  Learning to assess in higher education: a collaborative exploration of the interplay of "formal" and "informal" learning in the academic workplace , 2010 .

[42]  Exploring the nature of examiner thinking during the process of examination marking , 2008 .