
Rebuilding Public Confidence in Educational Assessment
Mary Richardson (Author)
Educational assessment is important. But in the twenty-first century it is easy to feel that schooling and other phases of education are shaped entirely by certain assessments, and that assessment is only about exam results. The idea that test grades can accurately describe the aims and outcomes of education is unfair and reductive. Yet it is a pervasive and persuasive discourse. This book is about such discourses – the stories we tell each other – and how they impact public trust and confidence in educational assessment. It explains the roots and nature of assessment discourses, and proposes a restructuring of the debates in order to rebuild public confidence. It aims to challenge dominant assessment discourses and demands a more nuanced, informed debate about what happens in and beyond schools, and how this influences public thinking.
Questioning the status quo needs buy-in from policymakers, teachers, parents and students, and from the broader public: from journalists, you, me, our friends and our children. Using examples from international settings to explore the nature of trust in assessment discourses, Rebuilding Public Confidence in Educational Assessment shows how these discourses can be reframed so that all aspects of the assessment system – policymaking, school planning, home practice with students – can be undertaken with confidence.
List of figures and tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Talking about education and assessment: understanding discourse
2. Public understanding of assessment
3. Assessment and the value of education
4. Student experiences of assessment
5. Depicting assessment in public places
6. Introducing assessment literacy
7. A new road map for assessment?
References
DOI: 10.14324/111.9781787357242
Number of illustrations: 7
Publication date: 23 May 2022
PDF ISBN: 9781787357242
EPUB ISBN: 9781787357273
Hardback ISBN: 9781787357266
Paperback ISBN: 9781787357259
Mary Richardson (Author) 
Mary Richardson is a Professor of Educational Assessment at IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society. She has had a varied career including educational theatre production, campaigning work in the charitable sector and policy research before moving into academia in 2005. Since then, she has taught undergraduate and postgraduate students alongside leading a range of research projects focused on themes of assessment, curriculum and children’s rights. Mary’s research interests are driven by a commitment to changing the way we see, think and talk about educational assessment; she wants this very public endeavour to be understandable and better understood.
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