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Prologue

1.1 General Introduction: The Functions of Assessment

Recently I had a cause to enquire of a friend how he was recovering from an operation on his heart. He mailed a reply, which said, "They opened my chest, split my sternum, pried my rib cage apart, turned off my heart and lungs and let a machine do the work, replaced my aortic valve with a device fashioned from a cow's pericardium, cut out a piece of my ascending aorta and replaced it with a Dacron tube, restarted my refurbished heart and lungs, pulled my sternum back in place, and stapled my chest back together. Miracle 1-I'm still alive after all that. Miracle 2-three weeks later, and I'm almost fully functional unaided and what mild aches and pains I have are managed well with gabapentin (a nerve pain pill) and Tylenol."

"These docs are magicians [.]."

I am sure I would have felt the same. I am not sure that I would have considered it magic but I would certainly have thought it incredible even though hospital "soaps" lead me to believe that such operations are normal every day activity, much more exciting than operations on the brain! Be that as it may, the decision I would have to make, that is, to have or not to have the operation as my friend had to make would have been made on the basis of trust in the surgeons. Such trust is acquired from the understanding that the surgeons have considerable experience at doing such operations and have a not inconsiderable training that enables them to understand that experience as enabling learning so as to better utilize that experience in the future. That understanding is reinforced by the knowledge that at all the stages in that training the surgeons have been examined or assessed (as some prefer) in formal situations to ensure they can do the job. Moreover, we expect those examinations to be psychometrically reliable and valid so that we can safely assume that the candidate will perform like that in the future. When we go to the surgeon's clinic, we expect to see his credentials, for that is what the accumulated certificates are, hanging on a wall. Should we not expect that from engineering educators?

Fortunately, we do not often have to trust surgeons but there are others in whom we have to place continuing trust, for example, the members of our family. Like them are the teachers to whom we trust our children. In the United Kingdom and the United States, that trust expects the teachers to act in loco parentis in activities that go well beyond the classroom although this is not the case in some European countries like France and Germany, where the teaching role is a teaching role without any social attachments. A great deal more is expected of teachers in boarding schools. Just like the surgeons, the trust extended to teachers is helped by the knowledge that they have had a similar training although not as long. They have acquired the knowledge that will enable them to teach a specialism; we expect a person who teaches mathematics to have a qualification in mathematics. But just as we expect surgeons to have gained a high level of craft skill, so many of us expect teachers to have developed the craft of teaching, or as it is more properly called pedagogy. I say many rather than all because there are individuals, politicians among them who think teaching is an intuitive activity that anyone can do. Their expectations do not stretch much beyond the experience of the teaching in their own school which they took to be easy. They find it difficult to believe that there is a serious activity of pedagogical reasoning that requires training on which experience can be built. As Shulman (1987) wrote, any explanation of pedagogical reasoning and action requires a substantial number of categories (i.e., Comprehension; Transformation [preparation, representation, selections, adaptation and tailoring to student characteristics]; Instruction; Evaluation [including testing]; Reflection, and New Comprehensions). Fortunately, the "many" do expect teachers to have credentials that document they have been trained in the theory and practice of teaching, and that to include assessed practice in real classrooms. There is a creeping realization that teachers exert very powerful influences over our children like no other they will experience, and these experiences can be for good or ill.

One of the primary functions of examinations is to aid the credentialing process. Thus, before a person can become a consultant, they have to perform junior roles and be mentored by senior doctors who all the time are monitoring their performance. There may even be performance tests to be taken. All of these tests are to judge their competency both of knowledge and performance. Knowing that they have had years of training is the first step in establishing trust. Much less is required of teachers although some countries require a period of probation and in some countries they are regularly evaluated by government inspectors in their classrooms.

Examinations and tests-assessments-perform many interrelated functions. For example, while an important function of assessment is to ensure that the goals of the program are being met, the certification of that achievement provides an individual with a credential.

Credentials are also summative: they bring together all that has been learnt in training and they are gained only if a person demonstrates mastery of both skill and knowledge in some way or another. Examinations and tests (assessments) also function as motivational agents: they make some students very competitive, but all students benefit from the role of examinations and tests as formative agents, that is from the feedback they get about their performance the intention of which is to highlight their strengths and weaknesses. Related to the concept of credentials is the idea of a profession and belonging to a profession. In Britain and the United States, not so much in Europe, value is attached to belonging to a profession. Professions give prestige, status, and esteem (Hoyle, 2001) and in these countries, credentials initiate a candidate into the "tribe" and in some circumstances, they enable the "tribe" to regulate entry into itself. In the United Kingdom, groups seek professional status by increasing the level of qualifications required; for example, nurses are now required to possess a university degree in nursing. To be a professional is a valued goal, notwithstanding the sociological view that the term profession has lost its meaning (Runté, 1995).

There has been a long-standing debate about whether or not teaching is a profession. Heywood and Cheville and Heywood (2015) have been bold enough to ask if "engineering educators are professional." One outcome of the debate about the teaching profession has been a distinction originally drawn by Hoyle (1975, Exhibit 1.1) between restricted and extended professionalism that irrespective of whether teaching is profession or not indicates what we might expect from good and poor teachers. Logically, it would extend to teaching in higher and engineering education in particular.

Restricted Professionality in Engineering Education Extended Professionality in Engineering Education Instructional skills derived from experience Instructional skills derived from mediation between experience and theory Perspective limited to immediate time and place Perspective embracing broader social context of education Lecture room and laboratory events perceived in isolation Lecture room and laboratory events perceived in relation to institution policies and goals Introspective with regard to methods of instruction Instructional methods compared with those of colleagues and with reports of practice Value placed on autonomy in research and teaching Value placed on professional collaboration in research and teaching Limited involvement in nonteaching professional and collegial activities High involvement in nonteaching professional and collegial activities Infrequent reading of professional literature in educational theory and practice Regular reading of professional literature in educational theory and practice Involvement in continuing professional development limited and confined to practical courses mainly of a short duration Involvement in continuing professional development work that includes substantial courses of a theoretical nature Instruction (teaching) seen as an intuitive activity Instruction (teaching) seen as a rational activity Instruction (teaching) considered less important than research Instruction (teaching) considered as important as research Assessment is a routine matter. The responsibility for achievement lies with the student Assessment is designed for learning. Achievement is the coresponsibility of the institution, instructor (teacher), and student

EXHIBIT 1.1 Eric Hoyle's characteristics of extended and restricted professionals among schoolteachers adapted for teachers in higher education (Hoyle, E. (1975). Professionality, professionalism and control in teaching, in V....