In 2009, the New Teacher Project's "The Widget Effect" documented the failure of U.S. public school districts to recognize and act on differences in teacher effectiveness. We revisit these findings by compiling teacher performance ratings across 24 states that adopted major reforms to their teacher evaluation systems. In the vast…

The Objective Structured Clinical Exam (OSCE) is a widely used method of assessment in medical education. Rater cognition has become an important area of inquiry in the medical education assessment literature generally, and in the OSCE literature specifically, because of concerns about potential compromises of validity. In this study, a novel…

As part of a mixed-methods doctoral project, this study drew on an interview, bracketed by two surveys, with experienced Australian reviewers. It explored questions about the contributions of peer review, the need and possibility to improve it and the driving factors for reviewers to contribute voluntarily. The respondents emphasised the essential…

What it means to be a "professional" in further education (FE) in England has been the subject of ongoing debate over the last two decades. In an attempt to codify professionalism, New Labour developed a package of reforms, crystallised by the introduction of professional standards and qualifications and a new inspection framework under…

Along with a more humanitarian movement in language testing, accountability to contextual variables in the design and development of any assessment enterprise is emphasized. However, when it comes to writing assessment, it is found that multiplicity of rating scales developed to fit diverse contexts is mainly headed by well-known native testing…