This is a large, required course for all students in our Child Study and Education (CSE) MA program that trains students to become primary/junior school teachers. This is a one-semester course for me, but since the cohort is quite large (around 60 students per year), the students are split into two groups and I teach each half-group of 30 or so students for six weeks.

My section addresses how to think about assessment of the students, educational systems and of teachers. I cover a range of goals and approaches to assessment and emphasize the need to conduct assessments in rigorous ways with fairness being a major theme. As I do in all of my courses, I emphasize research methods as a way to approach this issue systematically, which supports the goal of conducting assessments fairly.