Developing Evaluative Judgement in Higher Education

Effective evaluative judgment is essential for effective 21st century learning, employment and active citizenship, but traditional assessment practices are not always effective in constructing and further developing such capabilities among students. This comprehensive and thoughtful edited collection, authored by a stellar cast of Australasian contributors provides an original and pragmatic guide to using practices including self- and peer-assessment, rubrics and exemplars, and dialogic feedback to enhance learning in a digitally enabled world.​

Sally Brown, Chair of the Association of National Teaching Fellows, Emerita Professor, Leeds Beckett University

This edited collection challenges and assists us to design assessments which systematically reduce student dependence on their teachers as they learn to accurately judge and thereby improve the quality of their work in academic and professional settings. It pins down in practical terms how familiar practices such as feedback, rubrics, peer assessment and working with exemplars can be effectively employed to help graduates succeed once the scaffolding of criteria, marks and tutors have been left behind at university. By adopting a refreshingly new perspective on assessment purposes as well as encompassing small and large scale approaches, this book is at the cutting edge of assessment theory and practice.

Sue Bloxham, Emeritus professor of Academic Practice, University of Cumbria

Books with a long taxi-rank of contributors all too often underwhelm: what follows can be a bumpy ride with too many stop-offs and no clear destination. Not so this sparkling newcomer to the field of assessment in higher education. Happily, there's a compelling unifying theme in David Boud's seedcorn notion of evaluative judgment, and an impressive line-up of authors, each with insights that light up fresh pathways to understanding. Necessary intersections are explored with issues of standards and quality, but good use is also made of vantage-points that extend from the disciplines of the academy into the graduate workplace. The resulting journey is a delight to the mind's-eye.

Dai Hounsell, Emeritus Professor of Higher Education, University of Edinburgh, Fellow of the Society for Research into Higher Education

The book provides educators with a toolbox of practice strategies, illustrating how common pedagogical activities (for example, rubrics, exemplars and feedback) can be adapted to enhance students’ ability to evaluate what constitutes “good work” in their disciplines. These strategies will be useful for educators who wish to reframe their assessment designs for better development of students’ evaluative judgements.

Jiahui Luo, Educational Review