Leading Assessment for Inclusion

• Introduction
• Definitions of assessment for inclusion
• Concepts to guide assessment for inclusion
• Assessment Design Principles
• Assessment Design Cycles
• Assessment in Practice
• Opportunities and Challenges for Changing Assessment
• Promoting assessment for inclusion: everybody has a role
• Assessment for Inclusion Resources

Assessment should benefit all students’ learning and retention. However, current systems do not take into account the diverse characteristics, backgrounds, and situations of students. Instead, universities rely on accommodations – which are only available to specific groups – to make case-by-case adjustments, rather than proactively improving assessment designs in ways that are socio- culturally, and research informed, for the purposes of inclusion.

This resource is an outcome of a project which explored assessment policy and practice across the university sector. It introduces assessment for inclusion concepts, drawing on curated resources and case study examples, to offer introductory considerations for anyone in higher education interested in being a leader in assessment for inclusion, at all levels from the classroom through to institutional decision makers.

This focus on the distributed leadership of assessment for inclusion aligns with the idea that more than what individuals can achieve alone, it is also how people can lead, promote, inspire, and support others to do the same. This resource has been created with the intention to raise questions for sharing with colleagues, to facilitate the discussion of problems with inclusion in assessment, and to support the development of context-appropriate strategies around assessment design and implementation.

This resource was designed to support students in the Graduate Certificate of Higher Education Learning and Teaching at Deakin University, specifically in the assessment unit, EEE741 “Designing and Implementing Assessment for Learning in Higher Education”.