ABSTRACT
Assessment is not working, or at least it is not working as it should. In our attempt to generate forms of assessment capable of addressing all the purposes for which we use assessment, we have produced a Frankenstein that preys on the educational process, reducing large parts of teaching and learning to mindless mechanistic processes whilst sapping the transformative power of education. This may seem an overstatement of the current position. However, there is considerable evidence upon which we can condemn much of today’s educational activity as mechanistic processes. Moreover, available evidence makes it clear that assessment has a key role in sustaining the current situation. We have evidence of the actual damage that our current obsession with summative assessment is doing to individual learners. Such damage concerns not only the impact on individuals as learners; it also embraces the effects that assessment can have on individuals more generally—on their emotions, their self-esteem, and their aspirations. There are well-documented ways in which teachers, schools, and colleges can implement assessment in more constructive ways. In attempting to do so, they have to manage the dilemmas in systems where societal needs for accountability and explicit standards, and the vested interests in ostensibly meritocractic educational systems, are in some conflict with supporting the needs of learners and their educational attainments.
