Assessment moderation: constructing the marks and constructing the students

Abstract

In this paper the author considers the positivist approaches in mainstream higher education assessment research. She contrasts this to emerging poststructuralist perspectives and goes on to report on a study into the assessment moderation practices in a higher education art department. In this research she explores the ways in which art and design lecturers talk about students’ grades in moderation meetings and reports on the different ways that groups of lecturers co‐construct meaning in relation to the practice of agreeing marks.

Notes

1. Each moderation meeting (M.M.) was assigned a number.

2. Speakers one and two alternate and each new line signals a new speaker. I have not attributed a speaker name to each input because I to seek to emphasize the co‐constructed nature of the dialogue. This data presentation privileges the group conversation as opposed to individual inputs.

3. Each lecturer was assigned an initial.