Educational assessment is used throughout the world for a range of different formative and summative purposes. Wherever an assessment is developed, whether by a teacher creating a quiz for their class, or by a testing company creating a high stakes assessment, it is necessary to decide how long the test should be. Specifically, how many questions…

A standards-based assessment system provides opportunities to join curriculum intentions to demonstrations of complex learning. In this article we use New Zealand's senior secondary qualifications system--the National Certificates of Educational Achievement (NCEA)--to illustrate how adaptations of existing structures might help to better reflect…

Learning and assessment that drives learner success should be a key tenet of all initial teacher education programmes. Initial teacher education providers in Aotearoa New Zealand must use an assessment framework to ensure that graduating teachers meet the Teaching Council standards. As a part of a review of their assessment practices, academic…

For over three decades, the discourse of quality has permeated the field of research, and there has been increasing policy interest for research assessment. In light of three conceptual perspectives and relying on a systematic literature review, this paper explores four non-traditional dimensions of criteria for assessing the quality of research…

There is growing interest in using comparative judgement to assess student work as an alternative to traditional marking. Comparative judgement requires no rubrics and is instead grounded in experts making pairwise judgements about the relative 'quality' of students' work according to a high level criterion. The resulting decision data are fitted…

Proficiency in educational assessment has come to be viewed as a core competency for all teachers. This article identifies a novel means of strengthening teachers' capability in one key aspect of educational assessment: what is variously termed "assessment for learning," or "formative assessment." It explores how involvement in…

In Q&A Pam Hook reflects on what drew her to SOLO taxonomy and why she is so motivated to develop its classroom-based use to enhance student learning. She explains what SOLO is and how it can help students to articulate their learning outcomes, understand the learning process, and set new learning goals over time. I also asked her to highlight…

Higher education is one of many fields of practice that have undergone a so-called "dialogic turn" whereby processes of co-creation proliferate as a means of generating knowledge. According to dialogic ideals, co-creation harnesses the transformative potential of dialogue across difference and empowers participants as co-learners or…

Approximately 15% of New Zealand children will experience a traumatic brain injury during their school years. Given that educators play an important role in facilitating the successful school re-entry and recovery of these students, it is paramount that educators have adequate knowledge of childhood traumatic brain injury. This study used an…

With increasing competition for postgraduate research scholarships, awarding processes demand attention and scrutiny. We examine inter-rater reliability for two prestigious New Zealand scholarships, the Shirtcliffe Fellowship and the Gordon Watson Scholarship. For each scholarship, five assessors (three academic; two non-academic) independently…

Ellis (2003) identifies four key criteria that distinguish a "task" from the types of situational grammar exercises that are typically found in the more traditional language classroom. This study investigates how well teachers were able to design tasks that fulfilled these four criteria (Ellis, 2003) at the end of a year-long…

In this article we explore how examiners assess a thesis that includes published work. An online survey was used to gather data on approaches to assessing publication-based theses (PBTs). The respondents were 62 supervisors who had experience examining PBTs across a range of disciplines at a research-intensive university in New Zealand. Nearly…

Assessing student learning in ways that offer students, institutions and systems with sound information is a considerable challenge for higher education. Despite demonstrable progress, a disconnect remains between methods used for assessing learning, improvement and accountability. This muddled situation is illustrated through a review of…

External quality audits have been introduced in many parts of the world including Asia Pacific, Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. While external quality audits have been introduced for more than a decade in some countries like New Zealand, the United Kingdom (UK), Denmark, and Sweden, there is limited research on the extent to which such…

Phonological awareness, or the ability to detect or manipulate the sounds in words independent of meaning, has been identified as a key early literacy skill and precursor to reading. For the purposes of this review, "phonological awareness training" refers to any practice targeting young children's phonological awareness abilities.…