Fair and equal assessment in postgraduate training? A future research agenda (original) (raw)
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British Educational Research Association, 2023
This report presents findings on specific aspects of the composition and employment of academic staff in the discipline of education in higher education (HE) across the UK and in each of the devolved nations: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The findings are informed by analysing statistical data collected by HE institutions during the academic years 2015-16 to 2019-20, as reported to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). The study was conducted in order to gain an understanding of the state of the discipline of education in the interests of addressing inequalities. It explored where certain markers of sameness and difference – in terms of characteristics of sex, ethnicity, age, disability, religious belief and nationality – may have affected staff employment between 2015 and 2020. This included analysing the percentages of staff, the proportions of groupings, and the rate of change in employment conditions, as captured in HESA data during the period researched. This enabled the researchers to identify the differential and, where possible to ascertain, the intersectional impacts on the access, positioning, attainment, progression and attrition of education staff. Main findings are summarised below.
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This handbook aims to support higher education institutions with the integration of FAIR-related content in their curricula and teaching. It was written and edited by a group of about 40 collaborators in a series of six book sprint events that took place between 1 and 10 June 2021. The document provides practical material, such as competence profiles, learning outcomes and lesson plans, and supporting information. It incorporates community feedback received during the public consultation which ran from 27 July to 12 September 2021.
Policy Futures in Education, 2006
The article is based on recent research involving qualitative case studies of staff experiences of equality policies in six English, Scottish and Welsh higher education institutions (HEIs). Recent changes to UK legislation (e.g. on 'race' and disability) and a series of European Union employment directives (including on religion and sexual orientation) have caused more attention to be paid to equality policies and their implementation in higher education. The wider context for equality policies has also changed, from a predominant focus on individuals and redistributive equality policies to viewing inequality as a generic and relative concept which can be policy-mainstreamed, with greater concentration on organisational cultures and diversity and a focus on recognitional rather than redistributive approaches to inequality. The article uses the authors' recent research findings to consider how higher education institution employees who participated in the study understood notions of equality and diversity. There is a particular focus on whether different forms of inequality are seen to be interconnected, whether diversity is seen as desirable by most employees interviewed, the potential tensions and conflicts between equality policies applying to students and those concerned with staff and the visions of equitable HEIs of the future held by senior managers. It is suggested that whilst all HEIs studied had equality policies and senior managers who have benefited from equality training, nevertheless the shift away from redistributional notions of inequality (except in respect of occupational inequality) towards greater emphasis on recognitional forms, the tensions between student and staff equality issues, and the pursuit of organisational diversity may reflect a relative depoliticisation of the staff equality agenda in higher education.
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British Journal of Industrial Relations, 1997
Existing research evidence generally leads to the conclusion that females are disadvantaged in terms of access to job-related training. This paper reconsiders the evidence for Australia using data collected as part of the 1993 Survey of Training and Education. The findings indicate that while men could be expected to receive more training as a result of their labour market endowments, this is more than compensated for by a gender effect in favour of women. Comparison with results from an analysis of similar data for 1989 suggests a marked change in the pattern of training in favour of women.
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The thesis investigates the model of substantive equality and its reflection in Slovak higher education. It focuses on the opportunities of the disadvantaged groups such as ethnic minorities, women, students with disabilities and elder students to enter and pursue higher education. It examines admission, retention and curricula policies in regards to the disadvantaged groups in order to derive to what extent the universities apply principles of equal treatment, equal opportunities and promoting diversity. The findings show that while the accession policies strongly apply equal treatment and disability is the only category for providing equal opportunities. Different situation is seen in the retention policies which offer more space for considering students' different backgrounds and show greater extent of substantive equality. Nevertheless, the findings reveal that although the idea of substantive equality is applied in Slovak universities by providing social welfare to the disadvantaged students, its scope is largely limited to the socioeconomic background and disability. Therefore, the limitation of the substantive equality in higher education in Slovakia is that it does not acknowledge any other disadvantages for providing positive action. As in terms of promoting diversity through curricula, Slovak higher education is very responsive towards the programs that address the issues of disadvantaged students.
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Medical Teacher, 2013
Workplace-based assessment is more commonly given a lukewarm than a warm welcome by its prospective users. In this article, we summarise the workplace-based assessment literature as well as our own experiences with workplace-based assessment to derive lessons that can facilitate acceptance of workplace-based assessment in postgraduate specialty training. We propose to shift the emphasis in workplace-based assessment from assessment of trainee performance to the learning of trainees. Workplace-based assessment should focus on supporting supervisors in taking entrustment decisions by complementing their ''gut feeling'' with information from assessments and focus less on assessment and testability. One of the most stubborn problems with workplacebased assessment is the absence of observation of trainees and the lack of feedback based on observations. Non-standardised observations are used to organise feedback. To make these assessments meaningful for learning, it is essential that they are not perceived as summative by their users, that they provide narrative feedback for the learner and that there is a form of facilitation that helps to integrate the feedback in trainees' self-assessments.