Are assessors professional?

Abstract

Student assessment is changing for educational reasons,in response to modularization and as a result of emerging policy.These changes have an impact on the professionalism of academics. Perhaps assessment was in the past a professional activity and has been proletarianized. In contrast, perhaps assessment was never genuinely professional and should be seen as being in a pre-professional phase. This article argues that assessment should have a key place in the regeneration of academic professionalism around the key role of the academic as educator. Improved assessment practice needs to draw upon a wider range of types of knowledge; it requires an institutional environment which encourages collegiality and communication; it should have, embedded within its codes, the values of equity, integrity and justice.