CRADLE Seminar Series #9 2022: Assessment and learning for the long term: what do graduates say? – Monday 14 November – Join Us!

25 October 2022

Join us to hear from Dr Jan McArthur, a Senior Lecturer in Education and Social Justice at the Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University, UK. Jan will give a presentation on perspectives of students and using evaluative judgement for continuing to engage with knowledge and learning in the years beyond graduation.

Be part of the event by registering now!

• When: Monday 14 November 2022
• Time: 2pm – 3.30pm (AEDT)
• Where: Deakin Downtown, Tower 2, Level 12, 727 Collins Street, Docklands (Collins Square) or via Zoom
• Cost: Free

This presentation will discuss the extent to which we may, or may not, be achieving the goals of sustainable assessment – assessment for long term learning, and the extent to which this is an issue of concern. Using data from an international longitudinal and comparative study of chemistry and chemical engineering, this seminar will explore the ways in which these students reflect on their university assessment and how it can shape, challenge and improve our understanding of assessment and learning for the longer term.

Initially findings suggest that most graduates perceive a fairly weak connection between university assessment and the understandings of disciplinary knowledge they achieved. Far stronger is a sense of the connection between assessment and the development of so-called soft skills such as presentation skills and report writing. If we connect this finding with Ashwin’s recent manifesto calling for the reassertion of the educational purposes of higher education, focused on transformative engagement with disciplinary knowledge, where does this leave our understanding of the nature and purposes of assessment? Does it matter if students perceive assessment to have largely helped develop generic skills rather than engagement with disciplinary knowledge? Can assessment truly be regarded as essential for learning if this is the case?

Be part of this interactive presentation at Deakin Downtown (yes, in person at last!), or online! See where we are on the map below.

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About Dr Jan McArthur

Jan McArthur is a Senior Lecturer in Education and Social Justice in the Department of Educational Research at Lancaster University, UK. She is interested in inter-relationships between education and society and between theory and practice. Jan developed the idea of assessment for social justice to explore the key role that assessment practices do, and should, play in achieving greater social justice within and through higher education.

She is a Co-Researcher in the Centre for Global Higher Education and has used her role on the Understanding Knowledge and Student Agency and the Graduate Experiences of Employability and Knowledge projects to empirically explore some of the key ideas at the heart of assessment for social justice. Initial work in this area was published in Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education earlier this year. In a related field of interest, Jan is increasingly exploring what we mean by authentic assessment, through a social justice lens, and this work was published recently in Higher Education.

• Twitter: @JanMcArthur
• Twitter: @EdResLancaster
• Email: [email protected]

Register Now!