Litigation and Learning: Tensions in improving university lecturers' assessment practice

Current debate about assessment in higher education raises educational and political issues. Lecturers who wish to make their assessment more reliable and rigorous, as well as more effective in improving students' learning, need more than technical help to do so. This paper reports findings from an action research project which focused on assessment practice at the University of Sunderland, UK. It highlights tensions between genuine educational concerns to improve practice and more instrumental pressures, for example, to defend one's assessment practice from challenges by students, colleagues and external bodies. It is argued that improvement, rather than mere change, will require the commitment of people who possess intimate day-to-day contextual knowledge of assessment, and who recognise its educational and political complexities. The findings highlight two areas for further research: ways of inducting and involving students in an 'assessment community', and institutional staff development designed to improve assessment practice.