Carol Evans

Griffith University

Chapter 26 is available at: https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollbook/book/9781800881600/9781800881600.xml Bringing together emerging and world-leading scholars from across the globe, this prescient Research Handbook presents cutting-edge research methodologies within the field of higher education assessment and feedback. It explores how students sho...

In this chapter the impact of a pedagogical intervention designed to support students’ self-regulatory skills (SRS) development within an Ocean and Earth Science undergraduate degree programme at a research-intensive university in the UK is explored. The specific vehicle for this intervention involved devising formative geological field skills trai...

Introduction Students need to acquire high level self-regulatory skills if they are to be successful within higher education, and academics need support in facilitating this. In this article we explore how the current research gap between knowledge of self-regulatory assessment and feedback (SRAF) practices, and academics’ professional training in...

Self-regulatory assessment and feedback approaches have massive potential to support the development of students’ high level self-regulatory skills in higher education. Such approaches can enhance understandings of the learning process, and enable higher education institutions to better serve the individual learning needs of all students, while ens...

This chapter describes the development and impact of assessment interventions designed to support students’ acquisition of self-regulatory assessment literacy and feedback skills within the context of Graphic Arts at one UK Russell Group university. The interventions were underpinned by the EAT assessment framework (Evans, 2016, 2022) with the inte...

In this chapter we explore how by adopting a principled approach, generative artificial intelligence (AI) such as ChatGPT and other large language model based chatbots can be used to support students’ development of assessment and feedback skills. We argue the importance of a principled approach to the integration of generative AI into higher educa...

In this chapter the impact of a pedagogical intervention designed to support students’ self-regulatory skills (SRS) development within an Ocean and Earth Science undergraduate degree programme at a research-intensive university in the UK is explored. The specific vehicle for this intervention involved devising formative geological field skills trai...

Introduction The quality of student engagement in assessment within higher education affects learning outcomes. However, variations in conceptions of what quality in engagement looks like impacts assessment design and the way that students and lecturers engage with each other in the assessment process. Given that assessment is an important driver o...

This detailed report is the result of an extensive systematic review of the literature across the globe on the state of disability inclusion for students within higher education. It draws on over 11,000 articles, analysis of instiutional data sets and stakeholder interviews. Further information can be found on inclusivehe.org

The Disability Inclusion Institutional Framework was developed from an extensive systematic analysis of disability inclusion using articles from across the globe. It also involved extensive analysis of UK institutional data reports and interviews with expert stakeholders. The resulting framework was developed to support institutional approaches to...

The Equity, Agency, Transparency (EAT) Framework (2022) is the updated version of the orginal EAT Framework (2016). This framework was developing from extensive systematic review of the assessment literature leading to identification of 12 key areas of practice that impacted the efficacy of assessment for individuals and organisations. The framewor...

Enhancing students’ assessment literacy is essential in enabling all students to manage their learning successfully. Understanding of the assessment standards required and how to meet them impacts students’ learning outcomes within higher education (HE). However, there are many different conceptions of what assessment literacy comprises, making it...

Evans, C., with Rutherford, S., Vieira, F., and Erasmus+ team (2021). A self-regulatory approach to assessment. Cardiff: Cardiff University. This resource was developed to support implementation of self-regulatory approaches to assessment. It is underpinned by the Equity, Agency, Transparency (EAT) conceptual assessment framework which promotes a...

The EAT Framework is an example of a research-informed integrated approach to assessment within higher education. There is a pdf and additional word version of the EAT Framework which have been adapted for use in an ERASMUS project based on supporting the development of students' self-regulatory capacities. The Framework Wheel/Web in this version...

This is the 2020 extended version of the EAT Framework with additional information on developing assessment practice for attainment of fellowships

The EAT Framework provides an integrated approach to assessment. It is based on extensive systematic reviews of the literature and evolved from Making Sense of Assessment Feedback in Higher Education (Evans, 2013) published in the highest ranked international education journal. It provides a pragmatic approach to implementing evidence-informed asse...

Over the last 20 years there has been significant growth in the volume of higher education pedagogical research across disciplines and national contexts, but inherent tensions in defining quality remain. In this paper we present a framework to support understanding of what constitutes internationally excellent research, drawing on a range of concep...

This article provides a comprehensive summary of individual and organisational factors impacting students' assessment feedback skills. It also provides a thorough overview of relevant theories and how they can support enhancements in assessment practice within higher education. Importantly, it brings understanding of individual differences to the f...

An institutional approach to addressing differential learning outcomes of students using a research-informed inclusive integrated assessment framework (EAT)

This report was the outcome of a cross-institutional approach designed to support student self-regulation in assessment. Impacts of using a research-informed assessment framework to support reduction in student differential learning outcomes is outlined. Significant impacts on staff and students are noted along with key lessons for organisations co...

Managing complex assessment interventions within higher education is especially challenging given transparency, accountability, equity, and value for money agendas impacting higher education (Caspersen, Smeby, & Aamodt, 2017; Mountford-Zimdars, Sabri, Moore, Sanders, Jones, & Higham, 2015). Institutional responses to such agendas directly impact wo...

If little care is taken when establishing clear assessment requirements, there is the potential for spoon-feeding. However, in this conceptual article we argue that transparency in assessment is essential to providing equality of opportunity and promoting students’ self-regulatory capacity. We begin by showing how a research-informed inclusive peda...

Feedback literate students are more likely to generate internal feedback to monitor their progress towards learning goals and they may therefore exhibit greater self-regulatory skills. However, any relationships between feedback literacy (FL) and self-regulation (SR) may in fact be indirectly explained by assessment literacy (AL) or dependent on in...

Internationally, the political appetite for educational measurement capable of capturing a metric of value for money and effectiveness has momentum. While most would agree with the need to assess costs relevant to quality to help support better governmental policy decisions about public spending, poorly understood measurement comes with unintended...

Overview The aim of this project was to explore how a holistic authentic assessment feedback framework could support students' development of self-evaluation skills. This approach was informed by an explicit and shared understanding of what constitutes effective assessment feedback (Evans, 2013) using a self-regulatory interdisciplinary assessment...

This article outlines how we can apply understanding of how individuals process information to inform curriculum design. Key elements of a cognitive styles pedagogy are discussed with relevance to the design of higher education curriculum globally.

br/> Supporting early career teacher (ECT) research literacy is essential in promoting research-integrated professional practice, however it remains an area in much need of development. This article discusses the importance and process of developing ECTs’ research literacy, through establishing strong collaborative links between universities and pr...

This article reviews the effectiveness of two projects: NQT and Beyond; Developing Resilience in Learning and Teaching, and the underpinning conceptual framework (PLSP) in supporting early career teachers’ (ECTs’) development of their research literacy. Evidence of effective integration of research into practice is illustrated through reference to...

The UK Government’s Green Paper (BIS in Fulfilling our potential: teaching excellence, social mobility and student choice. BIS, London, 2015), White Paper (BIS in Success as a knowledge economy: teaching excellence, social mobility and student choice. BIS, London, 2016a) and Higher Education and Research Bill (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/...

Forward Transforming Assessment: Key considerations Professor Carol Evans University of Southampton c.a.evans@soton.ac.uk This case study series, emanating from the 2017 HEA Transforming Assessment in Higher Education symposia, led by Sam Elkington is indicative of the vast amount of work being undertaken across the higher education sector to inf...

This research investigated the statistical predictive power of organisational commitments for academics’ teaching approaches. Participants were 268 academics working in six elite universities in Beijing, mainland China. Results showed that academics’ organisational commitments as measured by the Organisational Commitment Inventory significantly pre...

Information technologies (IT) have made intense changes in human society. During the 21 st century IT has seen the rapid and unprecedented development of a variety of mobile devices. The development and widespread use of mobile technology has led to its integration into the education sectors, resulting in the concept of mobile learning (m-learning)...

There have been significant advances in our understanding of cognitive styles, however the effective translation of these into practice has been limited, especially within the school context (Evans & Waring, 2012). Cognitive style represents individual differences in cognition that help an individual to adapt to the particular environment (see Kozh...

There has been a considerable growth in research considering the role of peer feedback within higher education over the last 10 years (Gielen, Dochy, & Onghena, 2011). However, there are mixed opinions regarding what peer feedback involves and its value in relation to enhancing student learning outcomes. Furthermore, for those supporters of holisti...

This chapter explores student teachers’ (STs’) emotions and emotional regulation of feedback in learning to teach informed by socio-cultural and constructivist theoretical frameworks and the methodological issues and challenges involved in investigating these constructs

Executive Summary Aims and Methodology The principal aim of this research project was to produce asystematic review of the academic literature on high-impact pedagogical strategies and student engagement in learning within higher education in order to provide answers to the questions outlined below: • Which pedagogies are commonly used in disci...

What is meant by pedagogy? How does our conception of pedagogy inform good teaching and learning? Pedagogy is a complex concept of which student and practising teachers need to have an understanding, yet there remain many ambiguities about what the term means, and how it informs learning in the classroom. Understanding Pedagogy examines pedagogy...

The central message of this book is that styles “people’s preferred ways of processing information and handling tasks” (p. 4) can be changed. Fundamentally, Zhang argues that if styles are malleable they can be taught. Using intellectual styles as an umbrella concept to encompass all style constructs (e.g., cognitive styles, learning styles, learni...

The key aims of this article are to relate the construct of cognitive style to current theories in cognitive psychology and neuroscience and to outline a framework that integrates the findings on individual differences in cognition across different disciplines. First, we characterize cognitive style as patterns of adaptation to the external world t...

The articles in this special issue of Reflecting Education: Building Learning Capacity for Life emanated from the eighteenth international Education, Learning, Styles, Individual differences Network (ELSIN) conference held in Billund, Denmark in 2013. ELSIN is the only multidisciplinary international research organisation specifically promoting the...

In this chapter, we examine learning careers and communities of practice, and we focus on one of our groups of students: part-time home students in full-time work who were enrolled on the first year of a Master’s programme at a British university. Discussions about social and academic integration and the complex relationship between the two in the...

The four transitions we are considering here are: movement from a pure to an applied disciplinary context, from an international to a British national context, from full-time work to full-time work and part-time study, and from an historically under-represented background in higher education to an academic setting. The first of these transitions re...

There is a growing focus on the key role that assessment plays in learning and we would therefore expect assessment policies and practices to feature strongly in understandings of transitions through taught postgraduate study. The significance of formative feedback in higher education has been widely discussed and our Transitions study has provided...

In this chapter we focus on another and different group of students; those from ‘non-standard’ backgrounds either full- or part-time, and therefore, when they became participants in our study, were in either their study year or their first study year across a range of courses on a Master’s programme at a British university. Widening access to and p...

Our central concern throughout this book has been to deepen our understanding of the difficult and complicated idea (and practice) of a learning transition. Students undertaking postgraduate study are required to perform in a different way or at a higher level than previously. Patrick, a student on a postgraduate programme of learning, provides an...

In this chapter we identify and explore those features of transitions which are relevant to postgraduate study. These include: the transition’s structure/agency relations; its compliance capacity in relation to formal rules, regulations and norms; movement through time (all transitions are characterised by movement from one time moment (Ta)to anoth...

In this chapter, we attempt to understand and place in context learning and assessment as a part of the life-course. We have already suggested that the life-course can be understood in five ways. The first of these is as a stepped system of statuses where the learner moves from a lower status to a higher status: a series of status steps, where stat...

Having developed a set of policies and resource deployments from the initial analysis of the data we collected in our study, we tested these by conducting a number of small-scale intervention/evaluation projects in three different higher education institutions. Each project had a series of stages or phases of activity: an area of practical concern...

In Chapter 3 we suggested that student identities are formed and reformed throughout the transitional process. We further suggested that students, by virtue of their position or role, are located within: official rules and arrangements of resources; stories, narratives, arguments, and chronologies; structures of agency; and discursive structures, a...

Preface 1. Introduction 2. The Four Transitions 3. Transitions: Attributes, Essences and Distinctions 4. Learning Careers 5. Identities, Pathologies and Power Relations 6. Academic Literary Practices 7. Assessment Careers 8. Feed-forward and Feedback Strategies 9. Participatory and Transformative Learning Pedagogies 10. Pedagogies for Transitions A...

Learning Transitions in Higher Education draws on a study of student transitions in higher education institutions to both unpack the concept of a transition and develop teaching and learning approaches to enable learners to progress their learning careers. Its focus is on issues which are now central to the concerns of higher education researchers...

There is much that is still not known about how individuals manage their learning within and across learning contexts. In considering individual learning differences, whether discussing styles (cognitive and/or learning), approaches to learning, and/or patterns of learning, (abbreviated to SAP), there are over-arching themes that apply to all these...

The construct of field independence (FI) remains one of the most widely cited notions in research on cognitive style and on learning and instruction more generally. However, a great deal of confusion continues to exist around the definition of FI, its measurement, and the interpretation of research results, all of which have served to limit our und...

This article presents a thematic analysis of the research evidence on assessment feedback in higher education (HE) from 2000 to 2012. The focus of the review is on the feedback that students receive within their coursework from multiple sources. The aims of this study are to (a) examine the nature of assessment feedback in HE through the undertakin...