Assessment and evaluation: incentives, sanctions and power relations

Excerpt

Assessment and evaluation can represent constructive processes that promote student learning and teacher professionalism if individuals grasp the opportunity for reflection and growth that they bring about (please see Ford in this issue). In this case, the primary purpose of assessment and evaluation is to highlight strengths and uncover deficiencies in encouraging ways that promote learning and development (Scriven 1991). Scholars have also indicated other functions in terms of enabling transparency and providing insights into the performance of students, teachers and the school organisation to control and hold key actors accountable based on various formulated standards (Strathern 2000). Such procedures are sometimes tied to incentives and sanctions to induce desired behaviours. On the one hand, incentives or sanctions could boost performance; on the other, they may have consequences in terms of certain choreographed behavioural patterns adopted by individuals to comply with performance expectations (Webb 2006). …