Assessing professional practice capabilities

The unique and fluid nature of clinical workplaces emphasises an urgent need to develop pedagogies and assessment practices specifically designed to both facilitate and measure student learning in these composite and often challenging
contexts. Positioning students as drivers of their own learning and assessment is one such pedagogy that is explored in this chapter. The focus across this book has been the development of professional practice capabilities in workplace contexts. Professional practice has been identified as a complex, dynamic, embedded and embodied way of working requiring a broad set of capabilities including knowledge, skills and qualities such as empathy and ethical courage. These professional practice capabilities extend beyond notions of competence and incorporate the development of professional identity. This chapter builds on these holistic understandings of professional practice, practice capabilities and professional identity to better understand and challenge contemporary models of clinical practice assessment. In particular, the ability of current clinical assessment to develop as well as evaluate a broad range of professional practice capabilities required for contemporary professional practice is explored. The nuanced understanding of clinical education in terms of professional practice capabilities and how these capabilities are developed in clinical workplaces described throughout this book is used to examine the efficacy of contemporary clinical assessment practices and identify opportunities for transformation of student assessment during clinical placements. In particular, assessment practices that foster students’ lifelong learning and ability to critique current practices are explored.