ABSTRACT
The association between learning and assessment in the workplace is an important one (Billett, 2000). The development of professional expertise and competence in professions occurs primarily in the workplace. Novice trainees acquire the knowledge and skills required to become independent practitioners by working alongside and learning from their peers and seniors. As training progresses, supervisors are able to informally observe trainees performing the required tasks and demonstrating their experiential learning. Based on several such observations, over time, supervisors are able to make an overall judgement on competence. These assessment processes occurring alongside routine work are not necessarily unstructured; however, they are implicit and often left unrecorded (van der Vleuten, 1996). Over the last decade, however, assessment has become more formalised and structured in a number of specialisms, including medicine, through the introduction of a wide range of workplace assessment methods.
