The future of assessment in legal education?

Assessment for learning: guide for law teachers

This is part of a guide, compiled by Alison Bone (University of Brighton) and Karen Hinett (UKCLE) in 2002, providing an overview of the chief issues involved in assessment and how it affects learning and teaching in law.

Higher education will continue to provide formal, credit bearing programmes, but true lifelong learners will be inspired and motivated to learn outside the confines of formal education.

Such a vision involves adopting a much wider definition of learning, to include self knowledge and awareness of one’s own limitations. Self and peer assessment provide opportunities for students to develop and practice their skills of evaluation and judgement, however the way in which such practices are implemented is crucial to the development of critical and truly independent learners.

Self and peer assessment must be integrated into current practices in ways which are relevant and appropriate the goals of the programme. Furthermore, there must be a genuine commitment to the development of evaluative skills. It is grossly unfair to imply through a peer assessment task that students have some part in the assessment process and then to negate their comments by exerting assessor authority and allocating a grade to the work.

Perhaps the dissolution of the classification system would help to ease the transfer of assessor power. Institutions such as the Open University in the Netherlands, which adopts a completely problem based approach to education, has fewer problems validating courses which involve self and peer assessment. However the ‘assessment revolution’ requires more than a commitment to learner-centred assessment practices it involves a re-appraisal of the skills, qualities and dispositions required of graduates.

Whether we succeed in developing the autonomous learners and lawyers we hope for depends on the extent to which we are willing to relinquish power as assessors and to help students to develop their own conceptualisations of quality.

References

Last Modified: 30 June 2010