Assessment standards: the role of communities of practice and the scholarship of assessment

Abstract

This article considers the methods and difficulties of establishing, sharing and applying assessment standards within module teams working in a business school. Against a background of increasing reliance on explicit knowledge to establish standards in the HE sector the study looks at ways in which staff within module teams attempted to reach a common view of assessment standards through sharing tacit knowledge in order to make consistent judgements about student work. In so doing it identifies and questions the assumptions, myths and beliefs that bolster the culture around standard setting and marking/grading. The paper questions whether academic communities of practice provide an adequate framework to support the sharing of assessment standards. In particular it argues that the scholarship of assessment would support the development of a specialist assessment and assessment standards discourse within communities that could, in turn, support the sharing of assessment standards.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the staff who took part in the study and the following colleagues for their helpful comments about this article: Berry O’Donovan, Glauco de Vita, Judith Thomas, Chris Rust, Mike Brocklehurst and the anonymous referees.

Notes

* Head of Teaching and Learning, Business School, Oxford Brookes University, Wheatley, Oxon OXB 1HX, UK. Email: [email protected]

Based on the idea of a quilting bee (a group working on the production of one patchwork quilt at one time).