ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on assessment frameworks and the ways that current practices privilege particular epistemologies and ontologies. This theme has been central to all sections of the book and here we focus on the specific effects of assessment practices in light of our earlier arguments. In examining assessment practices, we are interested in uncovering the implications of current frameworks, and the assumptions behind them, for lifelong learning. We argue that the contemporary emphasis on outcome-oriented assessment instruments operates in ways to reprivilege certain identities and knowledges. Therefore, a dramatic shift is required that refocuses assessment on negotiated processes of recognition to challenge and dislodge the exclusive assessment frameworks that permeate lifelong learning. We need negotiated, creative and fluid practices that are collaboratively constructed to recognise those identities and validate those knowledges that have historically been Othered, misrepresented and misrecognised. In this part of the chapter we uncover the complex and subtle ways that certain identities are favoured by the hegemonic forms of assessment in formal educational institutions and the ways these perpetuate wider social divisions, exclusions and inequalities.
