Principles for assessment in enabling education: A scoping review

Assessment is a powerful influence on how students experience higher education (HE). It frames what students learn and achieve (Boud, 2010), and has the potential to build students’ confidence and motivation or, conversely, to heighten their anxiety and fear (Christie & Morris, 2021).
Cognisant of these potential impacts, enabling educators have over time developed assessment practices that aim to improve the learning outcomes for enabling students. These practices include flexibility, alternative assessments, structured support and many more. However, due to the diversity of enabling programs and practices there is a lack of understanding about what constitutes best practice in designing assessments for enabling cohorts.
To inform a greater understanding of the principles underpinning enabling assessment, a scoping review (Arksey & O’Malley, 2005) of enabling education literature was conducted. Three databases and thirteen targeted publication sources were searched for peer-reviewed journal articles and reports pertaining to Australian enabling education and assessment over a ten-year period from 2012 to 2022. From the 765 sources located, 29 were selected for review.
This presentation reports on preliminary findings from this review in relation to three core questions: Where and how are assessments in Australian enabling education discussed in the HE literature? What pedagogical principles are explicitly connected to assessments in enabling education? And finally, where do opportunities exist for developing the literature base on assessment in enabling programs?