Cambridge Assessment Network and Research has published an article ‘So broad, yet so narrow’ – Exploring professional learning in assessment.
Gemma Escott, a Professional Development Manager for a group of 16 Higher Education Institution, says, “I had interviewed for a position to do e-learning, but when I arrived the Director asked me to take over the assessment. My first reaction was, assessment in what sense? Because coming from an English teaching background, we don’t do assessment as such.
That’s when I started to learn about precision and construct and construct relevant variants. Because these students take summative high-stakes exams, the results of the exams aren’t just for the teachers, they actually matter, each and every one. So you have to make sure you are spot on with your constructs, otherwise it could hurt the chances of the students.
After about 18 months our Director General was made the Minister of Education and he took a team of us over to the Ministry to start working on a reform project developing an enrichment program for English. That was a huge jump, from 6 or 7 vocational schools to a whole country. The things I had to take into consideration were vastly different and the level of responsibility was massive.”