Hillen et al.: (2018): Assessment and Evaluation Culture in (Higher)Education. Accepted Paper.

The project intends to conduct a comparative approach to better understand the culture of assessment in higher education institutions. Starting with a well developed, frequently applied and validated English-language 14-item survey instrument, measuring the ‘culture of assessment’ in higher education, the project addresses two core challenges. First, the field of evaluation and assessment contains a diverse set of concepts, and these concepts often do not translate easily from one language to another. We had to address the language challenge because one knows that language mirrors a nation’s culture, that is, “… language fixes concepts” (Le Metais, 2001, p.201). Second, while the concept ‘culture of assessment’ is a well-established concept and approach in American education, in Europe the concept of ‘culture of assessment’ is used less frequently or is interpreted and applied in distinct ways. For instance, in Norway a ‘vurderingskultur’ is strongly related to learning approaches. This conceptualization started with the Norwegian educational policy initiative in 2010 and following (Directory of Education, 2010, 2011a,b, 2012, 2014, 2015). One core objective of these whitepapers is to stress the aspect of ‘assessment for learning’ by feedback. Moreover, the concepts of ‘evaluation and “reporting found in the Norwegian language reflect some important aspects of assessment that are not necessarily addressed by ‘assessment’.