Repositioning assessment as care work in the age of AI

Assessment in the so-called Age of AI has brought into view a need to (re)consider the historically present injustices of assessment practice, the known challenges of AI, and the need for care in institutions that place instructors and students in cruelly optimistic positions about how to engage with AI responsibly. This theoretical paper presents assessment as care work based on the work of Bozalek and Tronto and then unpacks three hypothetical scenarios using the framework. The goal is to show how assessment as care work can prompt discussions about response-ability as well as questions about what really needs to be assessed and why it is not the assessment or the AI that deserves our focus, but the students and our care.