Traditionally in England, exam results in General Certificates of Secondary Education (GCSEs) (and before them O levels) and A levels have been reported as letter grades, with A (or A*) as the top grade, then B, C etc. The reforms gave the opportunity to revisit the arguments for different formats of reporting, and Cambridge Assessment contributed…

In this column, the author revisits who we are as assessment professionals, how we are trained, what our role is, and what our responsibilities are--to ourselves as a community, to our colleagues in education, at our institution, and to those we serve-- especially from an equity lens. They also share a few strategies to address the gaps they see.

The 2014 "Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing" describe universal design as an approach that offers promise for improving the fairness of educational assessments. As the field reconsiders questions of fairness in assessments, we propose a new framework that addresses the entire assessment lifecycle: universal design of…

Assessment literacy is an essential competency area for professional counselors who administer tests and interpret the results of participants' scores. Using factor analysis to demonstrate internal structure validity of test scores is a key element of assessment literacy. The underuse of psychometrically sound instrumentation in professional…

The Alaska Science Assessment is administered annually statewide to students in grades 5, 8 and 10 and is a summative assessment designed to measure a student's knowledge of the "K-12 Science Standards for Alaska," which were adopted in June 2019. Summative assessments are designed to provide a snapshot of student, school, or program…

In this occasional paper, we invite readers into a conversation about the need for and usefulness of a set of learning objectives or competencies for the field of assessment. We briefly discuss the slow solidification of the field of assessment as a discipline, the diverse paths of entry into the field of assessment, and the increasing need for…

In Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programmes, non-linguistic content is taught and assessed in an additional language. Hence, CLIL teachers, most of whom are content subject specialists, may encounter difficulties in evaluating students' content knowledge independent of their L2 proficiency and in aligning objectives, instruction…

Well-developed professional development opportunities are a crucial component in ensuring that faculty engaging in assessment are equipped to do this work well. Creating these opportunities requires clear expectations of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to conduct assessment work. Additionally, the knowledge and skill requirements of…

In this article, the authors share their reflections on how different experiences and paradigms have broadened their understanding of the work of assessment in higher education. As they collaborated to create a panel for the 2024 International Conference on Assessing Quality in Higher Education, they recognized that they, as assessment…

The research and practice of social scientists who work in a myriad of different specialty areas involve developing and validating scores on instruments as well as evaluating the psychometric properties of existing instrumentation for use with research participants. In this article, the author introduces The MEASURE Approach to instrument…

The present systematic review examines Glenn Fulcher's contributions, works, philosophy, and research in language testing and assessment. The data includes his published articles, book chapters, books and interviews (except the one in this special issue) relevant to language testing and assessment from 1987 to March 2022. This study is conducted…

Classroom language assessment aims to gather various types of information related to student language learning and use and use it to inform a range of formative-summative decisions, including how to provide feedback to help students improve their learning efficacy, what teaching adjustments are needed, and whether students have demonstrated their…

Educational measurement and evaluation experts generally agree that increasing stakeholders' assessment literacy will yield a variety of positive benefits, especially broadening the range of assessment formats teachers use to measure students' mastery of high level, more cognitively complex learning outcomes. But in the context of education…

This framework marks the first in a series of five reports detailing the work of the Optimizing Assessment for All (OAA) project at Brookings to strengthen education systems' capacity to integrate 21st century skills (21CS) into teaching and learning, using assessment as a lever for changing classroom practices. In a world of rapid advancement and…

This discussion paper provides an outline of how stakeholders across the Irish higher education sector were supported to develop a national understanding of assessment and feedback through local and national conversations. Within the context of a national enhancement initiative and utilising a conversational approach, a collective effort was made…