Principles underpinning graded assessment in VET: a critique of prevailing perceptions

Abstract

To help achieve national consistency ofassessment and reporting in the Australian Vocational Education and Training sector, there is a need to develop a set of national principles for graded performance assessment This paper challenges a number of prevailing principles from both a theoretical and assessmentperspective, namely that grades must be criterion referenced (Williams & Bateman, 2003), meaningful (Rumsey, 2003) and applied once competence has been achieved (Williams & Bateman, 2003). This paper argues that the use of generic criteria cannot be defended in terms of their validity and reliability and that a clear understanding of the underlying developmental continuum of learning is re..