INTRODUCTION

Rola Ajjawi

Assessment occupies an important position in higher education. In addition to

recognising student achievement, it influences student learning and creates sig-
nificant work (including bureaucratic and emotion work) for students and staff
and therefore, requires scrutiny. Assessment plays a key role in high stakes con-
sequential decisions that can limit or enhance students’ choices and directions.
Its key non-negotiable feature is determining whether students have met the
declared learning outcomes of their courses. Other features, such as particular
deadlines or methods of assessment, may be of practical importance, but they are
less central to the crucial decision. Not all students may be able to meet the key
requirement under the same conditions or with the same time constraints as oth-
ers, however. Assessment may therefore exclude students who can successfully
meet the necessary learning outcomes.
The central unifying value position of this book is that assessment should
not disadvantage students because of characteristics or abilities extraneous to
the outcomes being judged. While all students must meet the core standards,
they may not all be able to do so in the same ways or in the same circumstances.
They should therefore not be penalised for reasons beyond their ability to do
so. Assessment for inclusion as we discuss in this book seeks to ensure diverse
students are not disadvantaged through assessment practices.
We, like our students, have unique careers, personal attributes, and capa-
bilities, that constitute our achievements at work and outside of it. What we
produce as part of our work is judged in similar ways to others, but it is also
personalised based on our career trajectories, opportunities, roles, and so on.
However, in current assessment regimes, students are treated as mostly homog-
enous, under the erroneous operationalisation of reliability as sameness, fairness
or even equivalence. Authors in this book systematically show that assessment
based on apparently identical tasks or identical conditions can systematically

DOI: 10.4324/9781003293101-1
2  Rola Ajjawi

discriminate, whether, for example, against students with disabilities, or those

from low socio-economic backgrounds. Instead, they suggest that the values of
equity and social justice should undergird assessment practices throughout.
This book is a result of an international research symposium hosted by the
Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE), Deakin
University, Melbourne Australia in October 2021. International experts were
invited in the areas of assessment; critical disability studies; social justice, equity,
and inclusion; and higher education more generally. The authors in this collec-
tion are students, researchers, teachers, equity practitioners, and leaders in higher
education. Contributors to the symposium and this volume come from: Australia,
New Zealand, UK, USA, South Africa, Hong Kong, Finland, and Ireland.
The chapters here seek to disrupt some taken for granted notions of assess-
ment. They contend that assessment should recognise diversity in student learn-
ing, and endeavour to ensure that no student is discriminated against by virtue
of features other than their ability to meet appropriate standards.
The book is divided into three sections. These relate to the levels at which
considerations about assessment are framed. Assessment is a social practice and
therefore involves the complex interplay between individual, relationship, com-
munity, and societal factors. To affect sustainable change and mainstream assess-
ment for inclusion such that inclusion becomes an everyday consideration of
assessment, we need to pay attention to each level:

1. Macro contexts of assessment for inclusion: societal and cultural perspectives;

2. Meso contexts of assessment for inclusion: institutional and community
perspectives; and
3. Micro contexts of assessment for inclusion: educators, students, and inter-
personal perspectives.

Section I orients us to a diverse range of theoretical concepts and tools that

might help us to conceptualise assessment for inclusion. Each chapter challenges
assumptions about assessment seeking to disrupt the taken for granted or norms
of practice. The focus then shifts from the procedures of assessment (e.g. fairness)
to also include outcomes of assessment that are inclusive and just.

1. Joanna Tai, Rola Ajjawi, Trina Jorre de St Jorre, and David Boud – the
editors – outline the ways in which assessment can exclude students, offering
a conceptualisation of assessment for inclusion and arguing that assessment
needs to be reconsidered to ensure that students are judged on legitimate
criteria.
2. Jan McArthur draws parallels between her theorisation of social justice –
a broader orientation to assessment – and assessment for inclusion, argu-
ing that both share the same commitment to problematise, challenge and
rethink taken-for-granted assessment practices, and assumed guarantees of
quality and fairness.
 Introduction 3

3. Neera Jain takes up assessment for inclusion through the lens of critical
disability theory arguing against minor change, seeking instead to disrupt
notions of what is regarded as normal. A crip theory lens calls on assessment
for inclusion to design from disability and considers how the lived experi-
ence of disability can productively inform assessment.
4. Jessamy Gleeson and Gabrielle Fletcher introduce Indigenous perspectives
to trouble assessment and Western ways of knowing arguing for the contin-
ued expansion and development of the cultural interface such that required
structural conditions of assessment can enable collaboration and diverse
standpoints for all.
5. Sarah Lambert, Johanna Funk, and Taskeen Adam argue that the decolo-
nisation of education is necessary for assessment for inclusion to flourish.
The authors propose three dimensions: justice-as-content, justice-as-process, and
justice-as-pedagogy that would prompt the design of assessment for inclusion.
6. Juuso Nieminen critiques the prevalent approaches to promoting inclusion in
assessment, namely those of individual accommodation and universal design
from the point of view of their procedural focus. He argues that assessment
for inclusion needs to look beyond the institution towards authentically
engaging with society through a critical, political stance.
7. Ben Whitburn and Matthew Krehl Edward Thomas adopt an ontologi-
cal framework to assessment for inclusion, rather than the procedural, and
encourage paying attention to the implications of diversity in educational
design. They critique the notion that time manifests equally, reminding us
of the uneven temporal distributions of assessment.

Section II orients us to specific facets of assessment for inclusion that necessitate

reflexivity, accountability, and care. These chapters focus on what communi-
ties and/or institutions can and should do to foster more equity in assessment
through policy, ethical, legal, and validity frameworks.

8. Penny Jane Burke highlights how unequal power relations and taken-for-
granted values and practices shape assessment, which makes inclusivity an
ongoing challenge. She introduces the concept of “Communities of Praxis”
as a framework to engage with these challenges and work collaboratively
towards developing possibilities for inclusive assessment.
9. Matt Brett and Andrew Harvey through an analysis of the higher educa-
tion assessment policy landscape, identify misalignments and advocate for
stronger institutional accountability, monitoring, and regulation as well as
education for all staff on the legislative requirements and moral imperatives
of inclusion.
10. Phillip Dawson argues that to be more inclusive in assessment we need to
re-think cheating, anti-cheating approaches, and inclusion in terms of how
they influence validity. If dominant assessment practices entrench exclusion,
they are as much of a threat to validity as cheating is.
4  Rola Ajjawi

11. Bret Stephenson and Andrew Harvey examine several examples of Artificial
Intelligence-enabled assessment and explore the ways in which each may
produce inequitable or exclusionary outcomes for students. They show that
technological solutions to equity and inclusion are often of limited value.
12. Christopher Johnstone, Leanne Ketterlin Geller, and Martha Thurlow:
track the historical landscape of Universal Design in higher education in
the United States. They propose a dialectical approach that considers both
accommodations and universal design of assessment as separate approaches
that are complementary but also could be influential to one another.
13. Trina Jorre de St Jorre and David Boud critique the ways in which assessment
treats students as if they were homogenous and highlight that assessment for
inclusion should provide equal opportunities for students to succeed but it
also needs to be equally meaningful to them.
14. Thanh Pham critiques how current assessment practices which focus on
employability skills disadvantage international students due to taken for
granted assumptions about communication and behaviours. The chapter
calls for legitimatising marginalised knowledge in assessment for inclusion.

Section III orients us to practice-based approaches to making assessment more

inclusive. These chapters foreground research and scholarship that influences
changes in curricula and draw recommendations for improving inclusion and
equity in assessment as well as warning of potential pitfalls.

15. Sarah O’Shea and Janine Delahunty critique limited notions of success
(as simply passing) through empirical research with first in family students.
Participant rarely focused on grades alone. They show that assessment for
inclusion should reflect varied and relevant notions of success – through
de-emphasising grades and engaging students as partners in design.
16. Nicole Crawford, Sherridan Emery, and Allen Baird draw on 51 interviews
conducted with regional and remote students to show how the multiple eco-
systems of the university serve to exclude students in assessment. Assessment
for inclusion should value and draw upon the numerous assets and expertise
of students.
17. Roseanna Bourke, through a case study of self-assessment from her own
practice, shows that alternative assessment designs are necessary for assess-
ment for inclusion. Whilst these may not be popular initially, they can lead
to a greater focus on learning.
18. Geraldine O’Neill showcases her program of research in assessment choice,
highlighting the challenge of introducing multiple assessment methods for
staff and students, and offering a 7-step process on how to design, imple-
ment, and evaluate this approach in practice.
19. Joanne Dargusch, Lois Harris and Margaret Bearman adopt a students-
as-partners approach to change assessment practices towards greater inclu-
sion for students with disabilities. To achieve more inclusive assessment,
 Introduction 5

they argue, universities must overcome a tendency to generalise about stu-

dent needs and provide many more opportunities to include diverse student
voices in assessment design.
20. Shannon Krattli, Daniella Prezioso and Mollie Dollinger also present a
students-as-partners project exploring how assessment could be more inclu-
sive and equitable to diverse students. They recommend empathetic relation-
ships between staff and students; ensuring assessment materials are consistent
and clear; and that learning resources are located in one place at the begin-
ning of the course unit. This chapter is co-authored and co-researched with
students.

Finally, in Chapter 21, Rola Ajjawi, David Boud, Joanna Tai, and Trina Jorre de
St Jorre – the editors – close the book with concluding remarks and ways for-
ward, identifying common refrains that persist throughout the chapters, across
their various perspectives and foci.
We hope this book prompts all those who are part of the higher education
sector to engage in more critical conversations about assessment and reflection on
its purposes and designs towards inclusion and social justice, and to make it valid
for all students. We also hope that it speaks to academics and professional staff
responsible for the design and delivery of assessment to prompt ethical reflexiv-
ity, collaboration, and compassion. We hope that any students who are reading
this book can draw on ideas presented here to improve their own assessment
experiences, to get involved as partners and to advocate for others. And finally,
we hope that researchers expand their ways of knowing when researching assess-
ment – taking stronger theoretical understandings and applying critical lenses to
assessment. The editors would like to thank all the authors for their generosity
and careful scholarship in developing their chapters and engaging in open peer
review and revisions.