Assessment and student identity formation – CRADLE Seminar Series #4 2023
17 March 2023
Wednesday 5 April at 2pm
For our fourth seminar of 2023 we are pleased to welcome CRADLE Honorary Research Fellow Dr Juuso Nieminen. Dr Nieminen is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, and a Banting Fellow at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada. The seminar will set an agenda for understanding assessment from the viewpoint of student identities.
Be part of the event by registering now!
- When: Wednesday 5 April
- Time: 2pm – 3.30pm AEDT
- Where: Deakin Downtown, Tower 2, Level 12, 727 Collins Street, Docklands (Collins Square) or Online
- Cost: This is a free event
In 1977 Derek Rowntree described assessment not simply as a mechanism for evaluating student work but as an attempt to know a person. Rowntree’s provocative subtitle for his book Assessing Students asks: How shall we know them? In higher education, we indeed know our students precisely through assessment.
This seminar revisits this idea by setting the agenda of understanding assessment from the viewpoint of student identities. While assessment is most commonly introduced as a mechanism for evaluating student learning, the long-term effects of assessment on students’ identities have received less scholarly attention.
As students take part in assessment situations in higher education, how are their identities shaped?
Dr Nieminen synthesises the findings from a two-year postdoctoral research project on inclusive assessment. Based on empirical studies, policy analyses, conceptual studies, literature reviews and a book (in Finnish), the project sought to understand assessment and feedback from the viewpoints of inclusion, belonging and disability justice. What started as a project trying to understand the social consequences of assessment from the specific viewpoint of students with disabilities ended up as an attempt to conceptualise how assessment transforms all students.
The seminar will introduce the lessons learned about how assessment shapes student identities in relation to their abilities and disabilities. In doing so, assessment provides students with knowledge about their abilities. By participating in assessment practices throughout their studies in higher education, students use this knowledge to shape their professional identities.
Overall, the project aimed to understand the hidden and often unintended social consequences of assessment for student identities. It is argued that student identity formation needs to be considered in assessment design, particularly in the age of AI that asks us to focus assessment on human capabilities.
About Juuso Nieminen
Dr Juuso Nieminen is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, and a Banting Fellow at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada. He is also an Honorary Fellow at CRADLE. Juuso studies the social, cultural, digital, historical and political aspects of assessment. Why do we assess the way we do? As societies change, how does assessment change – or does it? Juuso’s research focuses on the student perspective in assessment. He is particularly interested in how assessment shapes students’ identities in higher education and beyond. Juuso has also examined the matters of disability inclusion and access in assessment and feedback.
