Developing Evaluative Judgement in Higher Education: Assessment for Knowing and Producing Quality Work - Hardcover

Effective evaluative judgment is essential for effective 21st century learning, employment and active citizenship, but traditional assessment practices are not always effective in constructing and further developing such capabilities among students. This comprehensive and thoughtful edited collection, authored by a stellar cast of Australasian contributors provides an original and pragmatic guide to using practices including self- and peer-assessment, rubrics and exemplars, and dialogic feedback to enhance learning in a digitally enabled world.

Sally Brown, Chair of the Association of National Teaching Fellows, Emerita Professor, Leeds Beckett University

This edited collection challenges and assists us to design assessments which systematically reduce student dependence on their teachers as they learn to accurately judge and thereby improve the quality of their work in academic and professional settings. It pins down in practical terms how familiar practices such as feedback, rubrics, peer assessment and working with exemplars can be effectively employed to help graduates succeed once the scaffolding of criteria, marks and tutors have been left behind at university. By adopting a refreshingly new perspective on assessment purposes as well as encompassing small and large scale approaches, this book is at the cutting edge of assessment theory and practice.

Sue Bloxham, Emeritus professor of Academic Practice, University of Cumbria

Books with a long taxi-rank of contributors all too often underwhelm: what follows can be a bumpy ride with too many stop-offs and no clear destination. Not so this sparkling newcomer to the field of assessment in higher education. Happily, there's a compelling unifying theme in David Boud's seedcorn notion of evaluative judgment, and an impressive line-up of authors, each with insights that light up fresh pathways to understanding. Necessary intersections are explored with issues of standards and quality, but good use is also made of vantage-points that extend from the disciplines of the academy into the graduate workplace. The resulting journey is a delight to the mind's-eye.

Dai Hounsell, Emeritus Professor of Higher Education, University of Edinburgh, Fellow of the Society for Research into Higher Education

A key skill to be mastered by graduates today is the ability to assess the quality of their own work, and the work of others. This book demonstrates how the higher education system might move away from a culture of unhelpful grades and rigid marking schemes, to focus instead on forms of feedback and assessment that develop the critical skills of its students.

Tracing the historical and sociocultural development of evaluative judgement, and bringing together evidence and practice design from a range of disciplines, this book demystifies the concept of evaluative judgement and shows how it might be integrated and encouraged in a range of pedagogical contexts. Contributors develop various understandings of this often poorly understood concept and draw on their experience to showcase a toolbox of strategies including peer learning, self-regulated learning, self-assessment and the use of technologies.

A key text for those working with students in the higher education system, Developing Evaluative Judgement in Higher Education will give readers the knowledge and confidence required to promote these much-needed skills when working with individual students and groups.