The impact of holistic assessment using adaptive comparative judgement on student learning

The shift in philosophy in Irish technology education has brought with it new challenges for practitioners, curriculum developers and awarding bodies. With the emphasis on technological capability the technology student must not only demonstrate the acquisition of knowledge, skills and problem solving abilities in context, but must also construct the meaning that defines a technologically capable person. Traditionally in Technology Education, the over emphasis on product outcomes measured by summative criteria creates a dichotomy between the curriculum objectives and the inference drawn by assessment. Valuing the process of learning and the wide range of skills and experiences uniquely developed by the individual poses a significant challenge to the relevance of assessment constructs. This study tracks the experiences and performance of 406 initial teacher education students as they develop a personal construct of technology capability and democratically converge on cluster qualities that support valid assessment. The research integrates assessment with learning by using holistic peer judgement facilitated by an Adaptive Comparative Judgement model of democratic assessment. Independent of mandated assessment criteria, the student defined personal construct of capability determined the nature and quality of their peers work. Across the three years of this research, ACJ is presented as a valid, reliable and effective method of discriminating qualities of capability to generate a valid ‘measure’ of what to value in design driven education. The study presents an empirical insight into the iterative, dialectical, non-linear nature of design based education and highlights the significance of appraisal skills in facilitating autonomy, diversity and personalised learning.