How far can we aspire to consistency when assessing learning?

Abstract

How far can consistent assessment capture all the worthwhile features of educational achievement? Are some important components of learning necessarily open to a range of potentially inconsistent judgments by different assessors? I argue for a cautiously affirmative answer to this question, drawing on analogies with aesthetic judgments and a rehearsal of the holistic characteristics of some assessment criteria. I also employ recent treatments of moral particularism and of concepts of incommensurability to oppose the drive for consistency in assessment required by a high stakes accountability regime.

Keywords::

• assessment
• learning
• reliability
• validity
• consistency
• aesthetic judgment
• incommensurable

Notes

^1. ‘Where a conventional Western composition will seem to unfold as a thread through time, Messiaen's discontinuous music rather provides an environment within which time itself can be observed, “coloured”, as he would say, by rhythm; time suspended, in his slow movements, or time racing forwards, in his scherzos and dances, or, most frequently, time changing its rhythmic colour from moment to moment. Instead of affirming the orderly flow of everyday existence, this is music which acknowledges only two essences: the instantaneous and the eternal’ (Griffiths 2006).