"But is it fair?": An exploratory study of student perceptions of the consequential validity of assessment

In the "Impact of Assessment" project, we have been studying the effects of alternative ways of assessing student learning through a number of case studies of assessment in practice. Amongst the criteria used to evaluate methods of assessing student learning, validity and reliability are normally considered to be of key importance, though there are many others such as feasibility, acceptability and intelligibility. The concept of validity has been extended in recent years (Messick, 1989, 1995) to include aspects such as the effects of assessment or testing on the teaching and learning context and the social consequences of the use of assessment information. In this article we focus on such aspects of validity by drawing on qualitative data to illuminate the impacts of assessment practices on student perceptions of learning and on their learning behaviour.