Building a Scholarship of Assessment
Chapter One
An Emerging Scholarship:
A Brief History of Assessment
Peter T. Ewell
This chapter offers a brief historical and analytical review of the
assessment movement, from approximately 1985 to the present. It
first examines some major events and forces influencing assessment's
evolution as a "scholarship," including demands for curricular
and pedagogical reform, shifting patterns of accountability,
and changes in instructional delivery. It also examines significant
scholarly themes and issues that have arisen in assessment's short
history in such realms as epistemology, methodology, politics, and
the use of information. The chapter concludes that assessment
scholarship has become rich, robust, and strong. Whether it can
or should continue as a distinct conversation outside the mainstream
of higher education is more debatable.
Forerunners
The intellectual roots of assessment as a scholarship extend back
well before its emergence as a recognizable movement. Some of
its most visible forebears relate to undergraduate learning and the
student experience in college. Others, such as program evaluation
and "scientific management," helped direct i ... read full excerpt from Building a Scholarship of Assessment ebook
