The politics of assessment: challenging the legacy of neutrality

Assessment is profoundly political, yet assessment scholarship has given limited attention to matters of power, equity and social justice. In this paper, we call for scholarship on assessment, feedback and grades to embrace a socio-political turn, bringing critical analyses of assessment from the margins to the mainstream. Critical approaches provide novel opportunities for assessment scholarship to better understand how assessment takes place and shapes the lifeworlds of students and teachers in higher education, and to transform assessment towards more just and inclusive futures. It is about time, we argue, to disrupt the long legacy of neutrality in assessment and all its remnants still embedded in our day-to-day practices and assumptions. In an age characterised by wars, inequities, climate crises and disparities of wealth, how can assessment be apolitical? Assessment scholarship must position itself more firmly within the political world. Doing so will require socio-political theories and sensitivities.