ABSTRACT
Assessment for professional practice is ‘high stakes’, its primary function is to provide assurance to the profession, its clients and the public that those permitted to practice are competent and safe to do so. This driver has led to a perception that professional assessment is narrowly instrumental and competency led. However, the examples here illustrate that professional assessment, at its best, is innovative, sophisticated and holistic. The chapter draws heavily on skills and abilities within the affective domain to support judgements about the fitness for practice of the candidate as an individual and whole person as well as providing the individual with insights into what it is to be a practitioner in that field. The multimodal, multi-faceted and interrelated, triangulated approach provides reliability and validity and therefore confidence in the judgements made.
Given the increasing demands on universities from agendas like employability, the perceived skills gap, grade inflation, quality and standards, and value of awards over time, it is argued that drawing upon models of professional assessment may assist in enabling academic assessment to meet the increasing demands being placed upon it.
