Reflecting on current assessment practices in BA architecture at UAL, I often feel frustration at the inability to recognise students’ growth and learning curves when assessing their work. The evaluation system leaves little space to recognise their effort and transformation. Considering that each student has a different starting point and must face a different journey and set of challenges to achieve the desired ‘(Learning) Outcomes (University of the Arts London, 2024). By expecting all students to achieve the same fixed standard, the system defaults to being non‑inclusive, thus not reflecting the amount of progress each student has made.
Broadfoot (1996) describes the historical role of assessments as a mechanism to legitimise the selection and ranking of individuals. With industrialisation and the rise of meritocratic ideals, assessment came to regulate social competition and reproduce dominant values tied to capitalist society: productivity, efficiency, and standardisation, which enhanced competition and control (Broadfoot,1996). In examining my own practice, I also recognise how these ideologies shape my behaviour during marking and moderation.
Furthermore, my tendency to be overly strict when grading my students, while vouching for kind and generous grades for others’, may mirror the self‑criticism I direct towards myself, a behaviour shaped by my own educational experience. Tutors may unconsciously assess students through the lens of their own internalised lived experience and disciplinary norms, risking reproducing inequity. A key challenge is therefore to ask ourselves: How do we shift towards assessment that values growth, effort, and transformation, even when the final output does not meet the ‘set-standard’?
Transforming assessment requires rethinking its purpose. Rather than treating it as a tool for selection or control, we can re-envision it to nurture students’ development as self‑regulated learners (Nicol and Macfarlane‑Dick, 2006). Nicol and Macfarlane‑Dick (2006) argue that ‘good feedback’ should actively support students in developing internal feedback processes: setting goals, generating strategies, evaluating progress, and drawing from peer and tutor dialogue. Assessment methods including peer‑review, collaborative tasks, and iterative (re)submission can help foreground growth and interdependence. In this way, assessment can widen opportunity, rather than restricting it, while motivating rather than limiting aspirations.
Embedding “crip time” by integrating flexible submission windows and scaffolded briefs can also help destabilise normative expectations of pace and productivity (Jain, 2020). Transforming assessment also requires increasing students’ agency, inviting them to choose what they want feedback on and incorporating choice‑based approaches (Nicol & Macfarlane‑Dick, 2006).
Drawing on alternative assessment traditions, including Montessori, the spider‑net/radar chart model disrupts linear grading by offering a holistic visualisation of each student’s trajectory. Architecture students engage with multiple competences, technical skills, conceptual thinking, sustainability awareness, communication and critical thinking, making multidimensional assessment essential. Radar charts map performance across axes, forming a unique web that reveals strengths and weaknesses, supporting self‑evaluation and critical observation for personalised progress tracking in support of greater student ownership of learning (Archer, 2024).
Collectively, these steps could support a learning environment that is transparent, equitable, and growth‑oriented. Recognising improvement rather than outcome can help decentre comparison while realigning assessment with a more just educational purpose.
References:
Archer, N. (2024). Walking a desire track: Montessori pedagogy as resistance to normative pathways. Pedagogy, culture & society, pp.1–19. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2024.2355097 (Accessed: 8 March 2026).
Broadfoot, P. (1996) The Social Purposes of Assessment. London: Falmer Press, pp. 24–39.
Jain, N.R. (2022). Why Crip Assessment? Critical Disability Studies Theories to Advance Assessment for Inclusion. Assessment for Inclusion in Higher Education, pp.30–40. doi:https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003293101-5.
Nicol, D.J. and Macfarlane‐Dick, D. (2006). Formative assessment and self‐regulated learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in Higher Education, 31(2), pp.199–218. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070600572090.
University of the Arts London (2024) BA (Hons) Architecture Course Handbook 2024–25. London: Central Saint Martins.