What do academic staff think about assessment and how can it help inform policy making and approaches to professional development?

Institutional assessment policies risk being perceived by those who must work
with them as managerialist, an ideology that has been argued by Vincent (2011)
as having a destructive effect in universities. One of the problems is that
institutional policies tend to draw on generic pedagogical principles promulgated
in the literature (e.g. assessment for learning; authentic assessment; dialogic
feedback). They do not take account of the discipline specific or
practitioner/professional nature of assessment. Research shows, however, that
differences do exist (Neumann, et.al., 2002) so in order for institutional initiatives
to succeed, it would seem sensible to explore Shay’s (2008) suggestion that they
explicitly feature disciplinary forms of knowledge. The research reported here is a
large scale assessment survey carried out at two institutions, designed to find out
what academics from different disciplines with different learning and teaching
orientations think about assessment design, marking and feedback. The
anonymous survey, consists of two closed item questionnaires; one exploring
assessment design beliefs and practices and the other measuring attitudes to
marking and feedback. In one institution, a further section has been added asking
specifically about two recent assessment initiatives specific to that institution. At
the end of the survey, participants have been given the opportunity to add
anything further that they think is relevant in an open text box. The Initial
analysis from this survey will be presented with an articulated reflection on how
such data can help inform and strategically target professional development,
operationalize assessment policies and inform institutional teaching and learning
strategy.