Eyes on the prize: Creating lifelong learners through engagement with assessment

Peter Wolstencroft and Georgina Gretton, Liverpool John Moores University, UK In his seminal RSA (Royal Society of Arts) lecture, Sir Ken Robinson summed up the prevailing view of assessment as one where to every question there is one answer… and it is at the back of the book (Robinson, 2010). Assessment, in the world that Robinson describes, is seen as summative and is populated with predetermined outcomes that students feel they have to meet. In compulsory education systems such as that of the UK, learners progress year on year, regardless of performance. As a consequence, this inevitability breeds a view of assessment as a series of hurdles to be cleared, rather than organically occurring indicators of learning that can prompt engagement towards enriching the learning process (Earl, 2014). The alternative approach that we suggest is to move the focus from assessment back onto learning. Rather than viewing learning as a vehicle to secure assessment outcomes, learners should be enc