Member spotlight: Studying for an Advanced Assessment Practioner Award with Desmond Parke

Member of The Assessment Network and assessment practitioner Desmond Parke has recently gained the Advanced Assessment Practitioner Award. He told us about his assignment, which explored how a creative approach to vocational assessment design played to the strength of his students.

Could you tell us a bit about your background in education and assessment?

"After leaving college, I started my career in the civil service but always knew I wanted to become an educator. I studied for my degree during the evenings and followed this up with a PGCE. I have worked in secondary schools and further education colleges teaching the full range of business courses on both vocational and academic studies.  

My introduction into assessment came when I landed my first role as an assessment/product manager. The role involved managing the qualification life cycle and assessment production process. I have worked at awarding organisations and my roles included assessment team manager and development manager. I am currently working in qualification design and development for a new qualification. The role involves developing the specification and end point assessment. 

I am also a board member for an alternative education provider where I have strategic input and responsibility for curriculum and end assessment."  

Why did you decide to pursue the Advanced Assessment Practitioner Award?

"I worked my way through the suite of CPD Assessment development courses from the Assessment Network at Cambridge. This allowed me to achieve the Assessment Practitioner Award. I suppose the Advanced Assessment Practitioner Award (AAPA) was a natural progression as I enjoyed learning more about assessment outside of the work environment. The AAPA provided the challenge as it involved a high-level structured programme of study, and the assignment enabled me to write an original piece of research on an assessment innovation."

Could you tell us about the subject you focused on for the assignment?

"Education is not one size fits all and when the opportunity to be innovative was presented, I looked at how I could design assessments that played to the strength of students while maintaining standards. There is some scope with internally assessed vocational assessment to be creative. My focus was on equality in education and making the higher skills and grades more accessible.

When teaching vocational courses, I was often presented with an ‘authorised brief’ from the awarding organisation, and this catered for one type of learner. This offered little room for innovation in design of assessments, presentation of information and lacked differentiation for learning styles. The usual standard was for students to write a report or deliver a presentation. I felt that some briefs also placed undue demand on students. I also taught students who had Education Health Care Plans, and some were better at verbal reasoning and practical tasks than writing detailed reports.

I looked at the performance of a cohort and noticed that some students were achieving consistently higher grades and I wanted to explore whether this was due to their innate ability. I observed that assessments are not always written with multiple-intelligence in mind.

The problem I intended to solve was to differentiate assignment briefs to cater for different learning styles and abilities and allow students to present equally valid forms of evidence for assessment. In addition, rather than having a series of discrete skills I wrote a brief which embedded a range of skills including higher order skills.

The assessment I designed incorporated a series of tasks including visual, auditory and kinaesthetic. This work involved writing a vocational context for an interview scenario. Each student was asked to work collaboratively to prepare for an interview to prepare for an interview, and each student was given a specific activity related to an aspect of the interview. The areas included;

• Identify the role of an interviewer and interviewee
• Outline how an interviewer and interviewee should behave
• Advise an interviewee about suitable attire
• Explain and give examples about the STAR interview technique
• Describe the role of members of a panel interview
• Students were then invited to present their findings to the class and other students made notes in their preferred style. 
• Students were given peer feedback and teacher feedback.

For the interview, students then assumed roles for the interview from the vocational context scenario. After the interview and feedback students were tasked to do some reflective writing and later shared this with the peers. My work was peer reviewed and compared to similar assignments to ensure it was valid and fit for purpose." 

What would you say the key piece of learning was from this project?

"Getting started and scoping what was meant by innovation and having the opportunity to discuss my idea with a staff member at Cambridge was helpful.

I would say that being able integrate strands from my own experience, learning and the suite of assessment courses including A101: Principles of Assessment and A104: Psychometrics in Educational Assessment gave me a focus of how assessment works in the classroom.

In my early career as a teacher my focus was sometimes on preparing students for the final tests, but not enough on the thought process behind the development of the specification and the assessment instrument. Being able to take a step back to consider the relevance of the construct and what I wanted students to get out of their assignment not only benefitted students but also myself as an education practitioner."

What are the current opportunities and challenges in your current role?

"There are many challenges and opportunities within my current role in development. The use of AI can be used positively and negatively. 

I have seen more students use AI to generate their ‘perfect response’ to a question and not having considered the relevancy of the information. I think that to some extent this is an erosion of traditional skills and could pose a problem for future employers. Therefore, assessments should consider this in their design. On the plus side there could be significant learning gains from the use of artificial intelligence (AI). 

Awarding organisations could also utilise AI in the development of qualifications and upskilling staff. New courses and roles could be created. I also think diversity is a challenge and the impact on people with protected characteristics when developing and designing qualifications must also be at the forefront of our minds.

Another challenge is using other type of assessment evidence so students who perform less well in exams can achieve thereby making assessments more rounded so a variety of evidence is considered valid. 

CPD and staff development are also important challenges - so that more education staff understand the integration of teaching and learning, curriculum development and assessment. This will not only improve student achievement but could also motivate and retain staff. This is a challenging and yet exciting time for education professionals!"