The Era of Assessment Engineering: Changing Perspectives on Teaching and Learning and the Role of New Modes of Assessment

Assessment of student achievement is changing, largely because today's students face a world that will demand new knowledge and abilities, and the need to become life-long learners in a world that will demand competencies and skills not yet defined. In this 21st century, students need to understand the basic knowledge of their domain of study, but also need to be able to think critically, to analyse, to synthesize and to make inferences. Helping students to develop these skills will require changes in the assessment culture and the assessment practice at the school and classroom level, as well as in higher education, and in the work environment. It will also require new approaches to large-scale, high-stakes assessments. A growing body of literature describes these changes in assessment practice and the development of new modes of assessment. However, only a few of them address the critical issue of quality. The paradigm change from a testing culture to an assessment culture can only be continued when research offers sufficient empirical evidence for the various aspects of quality of this new assessment culture (Birenbaum & Dochy, 1996). This book intends to contribute to this aim by presenting a series of studies on various aspects of quality of new modes of assessment. It starts by elaborating on the conceptual framework of this paradigm change and