Based on OVAL Research Working Paper 03-17
by David Boud and Geof Hawke
The Australian Centre for Organisational , Vocational and Adult Learning (OVAL)
University of Technology, Sydney

During the 1990s significant changes were introduced to the Australian VET system. That decade saw the introduction of competency standards, training packages and a focus on evidence-based assessment. The Australian VET system issues qualifications based on assessment, with or without any associated teaching. As a result, there are a number of “assessment-only” providers who do nothing but issue qualifications based on their assessment of an individual’s skills and knowledge against the standards.

Boud and Hawke point out that one effect of assessing for immediate competence is to focus the learners on completing the assessment task in ways that will meet the needs of the assessor rather than focusing on how they make their own judgements about what constitutes satisfactory performance.

Any one who advocates the concept of lifelong learning should be concerned that the way competency assessment has been interpreted and implemented in Australia may well be operating against the lifelong learning agenda. This view is supported by Boud and Hawke when they determined that current assessment practices undermine the capacity of learners to judge themselves. The reasons are that:

• “Learners are encouraged to look to others (their assessors) to make judgements and don’t develop their own ability to judge their own learning outcomes.
• Learners look to other learners to judge their standing rather than to appropriate standards
• Assessment tasks often emphasise problem solution rather than problem formulation
• Unrealistic and de-contextualised settings are used to assess learning
• Learner involvement in assessment is omitted and thus key stages in judging learning are rendered invisible, for example, establishing appropriate criteria for completion of tasks
• Courses often imply that all collaboration is cheating and thus de-emphasise learners working cooperatively.”

With this in mind, Boud and Hawke remind us that to date, assessment has been used for certification (summative) and aiding learning (formative). They argue that a third purpose is now needed – assessment to promote lifelong learning (sustainable assessment). “Learners need to learn how to establish their own standards and how to judge whether they are meeting them. They will never learn this if standards are always provided and they do not have practice in determining appropriate standards for themselves.” This is becoming increasingly important as workers are faced with new environments that demand they determine their own learning needs and ways of judging the effectiveness of that learning. Most work situations aren’t defined by competency standards; individuals need to determine their own criteria.

It should be noted that Boud and Hawke are not advocating the abandonment of competency standards or competency assessment. Rather, they’re promoting the augmentation of current assessment practices with sustainable assessment in order to “provide the bridge between traditional ideas of pedagogy and assessment, bringing the two together as parts of a whole.”
“Sustainable assessment is defined as ‘assessment that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of students to meet their own future learning needs’ (Boud 2000:151).” To determine if current assessment may be considered sustainable, it could be judged by asking the question: does it equip learners to be more effective in judging their own learning?

To gain widespread acceptance, sustainable assessment will need to be translated into practice and shown to be do-able, and to have a positive effect on lifelong learning. This may not be possible unless Australian policy makers consider the following questions proposed by Boud and Hawke.

• How must the standards for judgement that are currently set out in training packages change if lifelong learning capacity is a core goal?
• Can an assessment-only mode support lifelong learning? Is it inherently a counter-productive approach or is the problem with our current practice?
• What skills and knowledge must an assessor have to support sustainable assessment? Do the revised assessor standards ensure these?

You can download the full report at:
http://www.oval.uts.edu.au/working_papers/2003WP/2003wp0317boud.pdf