Re-Imagining Exams: how do assessment adjustments impact on inclusion?– CRADLE Seminar Series #2: Review by Dr Juuso Nieminen

28 March 2022

Nothing about us without us! This cornerstone of inclusion work was strongly present in Dr Joanna Tai’s startling presentation ‘Re-Imagining Exams: how do assessment adjustments impact on inclusion?’, part of CRADLE’s Seminar Series for 2022. In the seminar, Dr Tai shared findings from the NCSEHE funded research project that sought to better understand the experiences of students with disabilities about exams and other high-stakes time-limited assessments. The project outlined ways forward by using co-design workshops among assessment stakeholders (academics, accessibility staff, and students). These workshops identified approaches by which exam design could be modified to be more inclusive.

What was striking about Dr Tai’s presentation was the momentum for more inclusive assessment practices. We already know that exams are not inclusive for students with disabilities (Fuller, Healey, Bradley & Hall 2004; Hanafin, Shevlin, Kenny & McNeela 2006; Ryan 2007; Edwards, Poed, Al-Nawab & Penna 2022). The misleading over-reliance on assessment adjustments has also been widely reported: it encourages the idea of disabilities as deficits, and students as a problem to be fixed (Waterfield & Whelan 2017; Nieminen 2021). This seminar went further by seeking out solutions. Dr Tai shared five practical tips for inclusive exam design (e.g., streamlining adjustment requests and setting reasonable conditions). Through these practical changes, inclusive assessment could be understood as an iterative development process. Changing assessment is notoriously tricky, but the research-based materials designed by Dr Tai’s team will help educators around the world to design more inclusive assessments.

Dr Tai outlined how inclusive changes occur at both the macro and micro levels. First, institution-wide strategies are needed for systemic change. At the micro level, any teacher could take part in inclusive change through a ‘Marie Kondo approach’: “Discard those assessment practices that no longer spark joy!”

Moreover, Dr Tai challenged us to rethink how we conduct research on inclusive assessment. The co-design element of the project reflects the principle of ‘nothing about us without us.’ All the assessment stakeholders, and students with disabilities in particular, were enabled to take part in assessment design. Such co-design does more than enhance the quality of the final product: inclusive assessment practices. It reframes students with disabilities as active and meaningful contributors in assessment design.

This is a revolutionary approach. While ‘nothing about us without us’ has been at the centre of disability activism, this principle has seldom found its way to educational research. Quite the opposite: we commonly understand students with disabilities as the objects of assessment research. This is seen, for example, in the vast amount of psychometric research that has identified effective assessment adjustments. There is a ‘double effect’ of objectification in assessment research, as students are also rarely seen as partners in assessment design in practice (Matthews et. al. 2021). Perhaps the inclusive assessment research community might benefit from the Marie Kondo approach as well: which methodologies spark joy?

Dr Tai’s seminar, then, signposts a new paradigm in inclusive assessment design in higher education. It shifts our thinking from ‘learning’ to ‘inclusion’, implying that inclusive assessment design is not only about higher academic performance but indeed about inclusion, belonging and social justice. A fundamental shift in how we understand the student role in assessment, and practical assessment design tips? Voilà – these might just be the ingredients to provoke much needed change in assessment!

It is certainly time to rethink assessment from the viewpoint of inclusion. As Dr Tai’s seminar showed, this work is best done not for students with disabilities but with them: it should not only be up to teachers and researchers to decide what sparks joy! After this dazzling seminar and the project it builds on, we can no longer blame a lack of knowledge for a lack of inclusive assessment design.

If you are interested in watching or listening to Joanna’s seminar, including the Q&A, please feel free to access the recording via the CRADLE YouTube channel.

Dr Juuso Nieminen is an Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong and his research interests include student-centred assessment design, feedback literacy and assessment for inclusion.

Don’t forget, CRADLE Seminar Series #3: Developing feedback literacy: case studies from multiple disciplines, by CRADLE’s Professor Phillip Dawson and Dr Joanna Tai and Development Partners Dr Kelli Nicola-Richmond and Dr Christine Contessotto, will be held on Tue 5 April 2022 at 1pm. Be part of the event by registering here.