Complex, Performance-Based Assessment: Expectations and Validation Criteria

Abstract

In recent years there has been an increasing emphasis on assessment results, as well as increasing concern about the nature of the most widely used forms of student assessment and uses that are made of the results. These conflicting forces have helped create a burgeoning interest in alternative forms of assessments, particularly complex, performance-based assessments. It is argued that there is a need to rethink the criteria by which the quality of educational assessments are judged, and a set of criteria that are sensitive to some of the expectations for performance-based assessments is proposed.