Slide 9 of 24
Notes:
In order to capture the real experience
we have to avoid the bureaucratic slide into ‘covering one’s back’ by leaving
legally watertight but educationally meaningless audit trails. This
involves a transformation of the cultures that have arisen to cope with
the current states of affairs in the clinical and Higher Education workplaces.
Transforming culture includes appropriately resourced professional development.
To increase reliability and validity, evidence so far suggests that only
an assessor who is present in the clinical area for a sustained period
of time is in a position to assess practice (together with relevant theory
and understanding of how it applies to practice). It also indicates that
lecturers perceive the building of networks of trust through visits to
clinical areas to support and advise mentors as slowly but steadily improving
the validity of the assessment activity. One of the tasks for Phase 2 of
the evaluation is to see whether these perceptions are confirmed when we
observe mentors doing assessment in the clinical environment. As one
interviewee said,
"I think the only way that you can really look at it is
actually to observe it happening (-) it’s much easier to do than to talk
about it"
However, it depends on the purpose of assessment as to
whether it is 'easier to do than to talk about it'. Assessment can be designed
for many purposes. How do we design it, or make it work, for educational
purposes alone?
