Keywords

1 Introduction

This chapter examines the challenges and possibilities of assessment practises in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter questions the nature and purpose of assessment in higher education and explores how insights emerged from pandemic times inform what next practices might entail. In essence, the dominant perception of assessment is challenged, usually defined as “making judgements about what someone is capable of, based on some sort of demonstration or product” ranging from high-stakes examinations to low-stakes formative tasks, and it includes judgements made by educators, students, their peers, and others (Dawson et al., 2020, p. 3).

By contrast, ‘relational’ assessment is the focus, and development of this in ITE is outlined in this paper. Relational and sustainable assessment has emerged as one of the most significant lessons from COVID-19 times locally and globally, as teaching academics have attempted to connect students through assessment while enhancing their interaction and engagement in learning. Bakhtin’s (1986) dialogic approach to self, knowledge and the world informs the philosophical positioning of our chapter, which will be translated in how assessment literacy can be perceived from different theoretical lenses; from structural, to cognitive and social toward critical approaches. This will lead to a discussion of democratic assessment (Shohamy, 2001) which underpins the importance of ‘relationality’ and sustainability in assessment practices.

New understandings of the concept of ‘relationality’ and sustainability through the pandemic experience created opportunities for ‘democratic’ assessment in which, assessment can be perceived as a point of departure in the learning process for both students and teachers, and not a destination. As will be shown in the vignettes later in this chapter, this perspective acknowledges student’ diverse voices and agency and encourages assessment practices to promote not only instrumental aspects of learning, but also the epistemological and ontological layers of learning, connected to rethinking educational pedagogies.

Though this conceptual interrogation can be applied to any educational context across teaching programs locally and globally, with the focus on ITE in the Australian context, against the backdrop of the pandemic. There is an important role for pre-service teachers in creating and designing assessment practices for use in teaching placements, practicum, and professional practice. To prepare for such tasks, they need to experience a diverse range of assessment approaches during ITE (Hamodi et al., 2017). Thus, this chapter will explore the opportunities of such diverse approaches to assessment design and implementation within ITE programs.

The relational framework for assessment in practice is explored through the authors’ personal experiences and vignettes in applying or designing a more relational and sustainable assessment practice. This includes initiatives at the subject level, at program level for re-accreditation and at university level such as using an innovative co-design approach that enables multiple stakeholders to play an active and influential role in the development of assessment artefacts and practices. It concludes by projecting further opportunities and challenges to assessment locally and globally, leaving the readers with provocations to contemplate in relation to their own context of teaching and learning.

2 Theoretical Framework

At the philosophical level, Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1986) theory of dialog and heteroglossic narratives of the world inform this chapter. He conceptualizes self, knowledge and being as contested, diverse, and in dialog with each other. Bakhtin’s main philosophical claim is that language (including the language used in educational context and assessment) is inherently dialogic, and there is a dialogic relationship between language, culture and the formation of the self (Bakhtin, 1981, 1986). For Bakhtin, language is dynamic, multi-voiced and contextual. Dialog, therefore, is a “complex metaphor that incorporates the intricate relationship between speakers, between points of views, between social discourses, between past, present, and future that are held together in language” (Hamston, 2006, p. 56). This perspective acknowledges that the world is contested and full of tensions and struggles, which results in multi-voicedness (the existence of multiple voices in one utterance). Therefore, in each utterance and dialog, different ideologies are faced, worldviews, and conceptual horizons which interact with each other (Wertsch, 1991). In doing so, a heteroglossia emerges, reinforcing the integral role of unique, heterogenized narratives people tell/create as life-long students. True dialog, in Bakhtin’s terms, leads to transformation of the self, or what he calls “ideological becoming” (Bakhtin, 1981, pg. 341). Bakhtin’s notions which inform this chapter, in particular, are heteroglossic perspective to self, being and culture, and the process of ‘ideological becoming’. We will explore how our own assessment ideology and practices allows for the plyphonic and heterogeneity of ideas/perspectives coming to the fore. It is important to realize how heteroglossia is promoted in our assessment, to prevent the homogenization of students’ voices through use of templates which kills off people creativity and unique signature.

Moreover, we discuss how assessment practices can be re-visioned to be perceived as a process through which students become more competent and confident not merely to pass the course but also to apply them in future pedagogic practices in teaching. This philosophical perspective is richly translated into assessment literacy perspectives across sectors and disciplines which in turn encourages us to think about relationality/dialogic lenses and democratic assessment.

The main questions addressed in the chapter are also unpacked from each theoretical perspectives elaborated below, i.e., analyzing the purpose of assessment in each perspective, identifying issues and obstacles in assessment practices in each approach, and exploring what hinders opportunities for students’ voice/identity. In particular, how this pandemic climate offered opportunities for moving from classic approaches to assessment toward more ‘democratic’ and ‘relational’ assessment is discussed. This in turn will highlight and speculate what ‘next practice’ might look like and how it can be informed by SoTL. It is worth noting that as we speculate around ‘next practice’, we are not looking at the notion of time in a linear fashion of past, present, and future; rather, we contemplate on the notion of time as iterative, and dynamic phenomenon where past, present, and future are constantly shaping and informing each other. COVID times afforded us with this retrospective contemplation of what we learn from the past experiences which might be revitalized or brought to the fore for the ‘next’ practice. Vignettes in the following section will highlight this dynamicity and emerging nature of insights across times.

3 Multi-layered Thinking Around Assessment Literacy: From Structural to Relational

Literacy in the current globalized world, is beyond a person’s ability to read and write; it also encapsulates the person’s ability to competently and confidently present themselves socially and critically (Gee, 2015). This has high significance in a multi-lingual, multi-cultural context such as Australia. The insights to the way assessment is theoretically conceptualized through different lenses are discussed and explored it under three categories for assessment literacy, namely: instrumental, epistemological, and ontological. These categories are important to be unpacked as it uncovers how in each approach the role of human connection and relationality is dismissed or marginalized at the expense of homogenizing voices or arriving at pre-defined goals through dominant approaches to assessment.

3.1 Instrumental Lens

This is based on skills-based approach to assessment, which is grounded in behavioral psychology, and emphasizes technical aspects of knowledge. According to Hyland (2006), this approach assumes that literacy is a set of atomized skills to be learnt by students and transferred to other contexts. Hence, the focus is “on attempts to fix problems with student learning, which are treated as a kind of pathology” (p. 120). Meaning is perceived as static and there is not much room for dialogic negotiation over multiplicity or complexity of meanings for the students to operate as inquirers in the world (de Silva Joyce & Feez, 2016; Pennycook, 2014) and they remain as voiceless outsiders. In assessment, this corresponds to surface features, such as Handbook description on assessment tasks or how to tick boxes required for passing a test. Though it is vital to have that pragmatic information for students, that level does not encapsulate the ideological underpinning of the assessment practices, nor promote knowledge around assessment itself. Critical scholars challenged this approach because of its focus on the de-contextualized features and myth of neutrality (Benesch, 1999) governing that ideology. That neutrality is exemplified in the ‘template-driven’ design of assessment tasks which promote the identical and homogenized outputs from students. This is in the form of ‘banking education’ system where students are perceived as passive recipients of information and they take that information back in the assessment.

3.2 Epistemological Lens

This is based on socialization approach which is grounded in a socio-cognitive paradigm, appreciating social and cultural aspects of learning and education. Though this approach brings awareness to the transformative nature of communities, and authentic learning is considered as contextual, it considers culture, knowledge and discourse as homogenized, uncontested and universal. In doing so, it fails to appreciate the complexity, diversity and heteroglossic identities/narratives that Bakhtin (1986) speaks of. In assessment practices, it can be considered as efforts made in having some peer-review or feedback or doing a group assessment. Communication is key here, but it does not always lead to diversity of ideas, instead, it may be a space in which inadvertently group members try to come up to a shared point and focus on similarities rather than differences. This is not to say that group work or peer feedback is not helpful but the ideology that informs that practice is important. This is what critical lens tries to underscore.

3.3 Ontological Lens

This is based on the critical approach to literacy and grounded in Freire’s (1993) critical pedagogy and critiques a positivistic paradigm to education or a ‘banking’ model of education (p. 248) which encourages passivity in students and does not afford any opportunities for students to develop an authentic and autonomous voice in society. Unlike the socialization model, this approach emphasizes students’ experiences, or more critically, the unequal power relations which structure those experiences. That is where Lea and Street (1998) see literacy as something we do which is an activity “located in the interactions between people and stories they weave together” (Barton & Hamilton, 1998, p. 3). The core focus here is on individual’s signature and voice as they are in communication with others. In other words, the community of practice and social groups are considered as spaces for becoming aware of one’s unique views and positionality, making it contested and debatable within the community and beyond (Janfada & Thomas, 2020). In this view, assessment is seen as a space for manifesting one’s own unique journey of becoming a more proficient, competent, and literate person locally and globally.

Scholarship in literacy approaches elaborate on the way students’ needs are considered in academic contexts. According to Benesch (1999), in dominant skill-based approaches, students’ needs are seen as students’ ‘lack’ of certain competence which results in students’ attempt to assimilate to and accommodate the existing hierarchy. In other words, it “narrows human capacities to fit particular forms” (Simon, 1992, p. 142). This is when using one template to measure everyone learning is based on rigid, pre-determined and monologic criteria. Benesch (1999) talked about rights analysis which calls attention to the importance of taking into consideration students’ opportunities for negotiation and resistance both within and beyond the classroom. In other words, within specific social contexts, students can exercise their right to challenge dominant discourses and pre-existing sets of expectations. For teachers, this process involves a complex discovery of what is possible, desirable, and beneficial at certain moments and in certain contexts for students. Hence, the concept of students’ needs becomes more complex and is focused, not simply on what students need to do, but also on who they want to become.

Shohamy’s (2001) key ideas around democratic assessment tackles the fundamental ideological questions in assessment policy and practice. She states in democratic assessment, (a) tests are not considered as instruments of power and thus not reaffirming societal power, (b) rights of elites are equally considered as ordinary students in multicultural societies, no loser or winner is identified, (c) collaboration and cooperation in assessment process are encouraged, (d) assessment shall mediate ideologies and practices in more open, democratic and negotiable ways, and prevent the use of tests as powerful mechanisms capable of imposing draconian policies that have no empirical base.

Shohamy also poses important questions which will act as speculative questions for the readers of this chapter and address them from our own experience and expertise. These questions are:

  • How can assessment play a role in changing old notions of homogenous and uniform policies and practices?

  • How can tests be introduced to create more constructive, open and updated policies?

  • Where is it all happening? diverse multilingual and multicultural societies, but assessed through monologic tests/assessment

4 Assessment in Initial Teacher Education in the Australian Context

The literature on assessment in teaching courses acknowledges the need for more relevant formative approaches to assessment in initial teacher education (ITE). In particular, it emphasizes that if graduate teachers are to implement robust assessment strategies in their own teaching, they need to experience a range of assessment approaches during ITE other than traditional ones (Hamodi et al., 2017). These include a range of formative assessment approaches such as self-assessment, peer assessment, self-grading, and negotiated grading (Hamodi et al, 2017). However, Thomson et al., (2021) in a critique of university assignments, found that 70% of assignments only required a single communication mode and this was usually in the form of a written response. They found “less than a third of the assessment pieces were multi-modal. And only 11% enabled students to practice their spoken, written and visual communication skills in an integrated way” (Thomson et al., 2021). There is a strong focus in universities on summative assessments which researchers have found can impact negatively upon students’ learning (Harris & Dargusch, 2020). What is seen as ideal in terms of university assessment can sometimes be difficult to achieve due to a range of external mandates are placed on universities in terms of assessment requirements for pre-service.

ITE providers have been mandated to implement the Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA) which enables pre-service teachers to demonstrate their learning against the Australian Institute for Teaching and School leadership (2017, AITSL) 37 teaching standards, and which ITE providers can report on. This would be considered a high-stakes summative assessment that all pre-service teachers in Australia are required to pass to be eligible to graduate and commence teaching. At the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, this is referred to as the Assessment for Graduate Teachers (AfGT) and each pre-service teacher completes this high stake summative assessment as part of their final teaching placement.

The adoption of the TPA by universities is a direct response to growing interest in the ITE sector and the preparedness of graduates for teaching. This can be directly related to the increased criticism of teachers’ practice based on student declining performance as reported in large-scale testing regimes such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Program of International Student Assessment (PISA) and the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement’s (IEA) Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). In the Australian context, the results from these assessments have directly been attributed to poor classroom teaching which in turn is traced back to poor teaching preparation. A 2014 report into ITE (Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group, 2014) identified the need for ITE providers to ensure a final summative assessment was implemented that provided pre-service teachers with the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge of the links between academic and practical skills and thereby ensuring they are classroom ready, this resulted in the mandating of the TPA for all ITE providers within Australia.

In 2021, as part of the re-accreditation process of the Master of Teaching at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, a range of assessment options to enable students to demonstrate their knowledge were explored, as opposed to the standard essay that has often been the dominant mode of assessment in ITE programs. The re-accreditation process occurred during the COVID pandemic, and this provided a backdrop to think about how assessments could be done differently. The following section outlines three examples that illustrate relational and sustainable assessment in practice. They highlight the importance of the inclusion of collaborative voices in assessment. This re-imagined approach to assessment is part of potential change in the landscape of ITE.

5 Relational Assessment in Practice

In this section, three examples that illustrate relational assessment in practice are provided. These examples consider Bakhtin’s (1986) dialogic approach and Shohamy’s (2001) democratic lens to assessment, that takes into account pre-service teachers’ diverse voices and agency and encourages assessment practices to promote not only instrumental aspects of learning, but also the epistemological and ontological layers of learning and being.

5.1 Relational Assessment in Two Subjects: Global Literacies and Curriculum Design in Plurilingual Context

As part of introducing teaching and learning initiatives and pedagogical interventions, the design of two subjects—Local Literacies in Global Contexts and Curriculum Design in Multilingual Era—reflect the ideas captured in this chapter. The focus on individual identity, creation of unique learning space for each learner, promoting heteroglossic perspectives to knowledge, language, and self was explicitly evident in both subjects, specifically in their titles, resources, assessment practices, relationality and students’ engagement, and pedagogical practices toward pre-service teachers’ life-long learning and expansion of their learning to their workplaces as potential/actual educators and teachers locally and globally (Janfada, 2021).

The title of both subjects suggest that local stories are equally significant as global ones; they suggest awareness on living, being, and teaching in a multicultural and plurilingual context of education which needs competent and confident global citizens. Consulted resources from different theoretical and pedagogical paradigms offer depth and breadth for pre-service teachers and to consider heteroglossic views and choose resources agentively as relevant to their purposes. In the latter subject, the driving principles, aligned with Bakhtin’s theory, is on van Lier’s (1996) AAA principle (Awareness, Authenticity, Autonomy). In his influential book, Interaction in the Language Curriculum, Van Lier (1996) firmly reinforces the dialogic nature of teaching, learning, and language education. He establishes the AAA principles, namely, Awareness, Autonomy, and Authenticity to underscore the multi-voiced narratives that teachers as curriculum designers can bring to their classrooms. He argues that this occurs, only, if they become critically aware of what drives their practice, ideologically, politically, and socio-culturally; seek for authentic texts and authentic practices for particular people, context and times and exercise their autonomous pedagogical action which serves students best. Thus all class discussion, and group work shed light on these principles. At the end of the subject, in dialogic discussion and reflection with students’ works the fourth ‘A’ as ‘Agency’ was added. If the classroom is a space that truly endeavors to be dialogic in nature, based on relationality, it challenges conventional understandings of ‘assessment’ and its dynamic nature; in this light, both teacher and learner must be able to exercise agency, albeit interchangeably and with some barriers of circumstance.

Both subjects acted as windows to open up new horizons to learn ‘language’, ‘culture’, and ‘self’ in the dialogical sense, rather than being assimilated into it. Moreover, local and global identities, or self and other can continuously and dialogically be constructed among students and pre-service teachers, between pre-service teachers and the lecturer (me) as well as within the lecturer as both insider and outsider. Beyond that, the dialogic nature of language, culture, and ‘self’ helps students in the process of authoring, which contributes to the (re)formation of the self. As Fecho and Clifton (2017) remarked, “to cultivate agency in a dialogical self is also to cultivate awareness of selves in dialog, in flux, and in progress” (2017, p. 134).

These values and principles unfolded in the way assessment is designed and promoted. Informed by Bakhtin’s (1986) and Shohamy’s (2001) dialogic and democratic lens, the subjects encapsulate the instrumental, epistemological, and perhaps most importantly the ontological levels. In essence, tasks were scaffolded in order to provide them with increasing level of Awareness, Authenticity and Autonomy through weekly reflections on scholarship and their practices, discussing them with peers and, demonstrate their own agentive voice in making a change in their context locally and globally. Not only did they include the individual as well as group’s work, it also allowed for multi-modality and multi-literacy practices across languages, countries, and educational contexts. One significant task in both subjects is for students to share their (potential) transformation as a result of the subject: this transformation could be at any level (being/self, knowledge, teaching, languages). This was designed to reinforce the idea of unpredictability and emergence in the process of learning, beyond the pre-set learning outcomes. Moreover, in this collaboration, there was no More (or less) Knowledgeable Other (MKO) (Abtahi, 2017; Vygotsky, 1978), rather ‘differently knowledgeable’ professionals could bring their thoughts together to explore and expand pedagogical possibilities across times and places.

Last but not least, the assessments were perceived not as a destination or final point in the subject, rather as a point of departure which meant pre-service teachers need to think about the purpose of writing an assignment in relation to their future professional life, or identity as a teacher/educator and how this might inform their vocational literacy.

5.2 Co-design as an Example of Relational Lens to Assessment Practice

Learning is a social process where multiple stakeholders or community partners interact with one another to challenge and develop new knowledge and ideas (Wenger, 1998). Learning is not static, nor is it a process of transmission, instead through the social environment, learning is dynamic and, in fact, co-created. Knowledge co-creation, however, is not only a process that emerges from the interaction and construction of multiple perspectives and/or artefacts (Paavola et al., 2004) but also where new knowledge is socially validated through the interaction of multiple stakeholders (Kangas, 2010).

If pre-service teachers are to implement robust assessment strategies in their own teaching, they need to experience a range of assessment approaches during ITE (Hamodi et al., 2017) and have opportunities to validate these approaches through interaction with others (Kangas, 2010). In a higher education context where stakeholders tend to have more say (Mahat & Dollinger, 2019), co-design is one way for graduate teachers to experience the dialogic, social, and critical (Bakhtin, 1986) approaches to assessment design, which in turn embraces the structural, cognitive, social, and critical level of learning.

Co-design can be defined as “a highly-facilitated, team-based process in which teachers, researchers, and developers work together in defined roles to design an educational innovation… for addressing a concrete educational need” (Roschelle et al., 2006, p. 606). A bottoms-up collaborative approach to design with those at the chalk face (or rather, interactive white board or computer monitor) that ‘fit’ into real learning contexts have important and measurable outcomes.

In one case study example, a workshop activity that used design thinking principles of ‘Discover, Reflect, Ideate, and Evolve’ to co-design innovation with teachers (Mahat & Imms, 2021) was used. The process begins by taking stock of current practice and learning contexts. This was done by ‘Discovering’ different student personas and how this reflects the diversity of the student body in one case study school. Here, the complexity, diversity and heteroglossic identities/narratives that Bakhtin (1986) speaks of become very important as pre-service teachers consider the variety of students’ needs and learning approaches.

This was followed by ‘Reflect’ on the students’ experiences by mapping a day in the life of these students. The Conversational Framework (Laurillard, 2012) and the ABC learning design approach (Young & Perović, 2016) was used as a basis for these pedagogical activities and assessments. In this workshop, 11 types of pedagogical activities were explored: Direct instruction, Focus, Hands-on learning, Group discussion, Student Agency, Creative Brainstorming, Physical Practice, Presentation, Transitions, Reflection and Research, to underpin the six learner types articulated by Laurillard (2012).

Using Lego and art and craft materials, teachers then ‘Ideate’ a prototype learning environment based on the desired learning activities of students. In this context, the learning environment consisted of physical and virtual environments, as well as formal and informal learning spaces in which students learn that offer a range of teaching and learning modalities (Mahat & Imms, 2020, 2021). Finally, teachers ‘Evolve’ by co-designing an action plan to change one teaching practice and assessment for students. The action plan includes measurable tasks, timelines, resources required, and desired outcomes for the change in practice.

The dynamics of co-design often elicit strong emotions among teachers, moving them between divergent, expansive thinking exercises and convergent, solution-oriented modes of thinking (Mahat et al., 2017). The focus on human values requires collaboration of individuals with varying experiences, which enabled different pedagogical and assessment approaches to emerge from prep-service teachers’ collective knowledge and from multiple perspectives. The process positioned pre-service teachers as active constructors of knowledge, conceptualizing and creating pedagogical and assessment artefacts that are transformed and improved through divergent ideas and continuous iteration. The co-design process also produced relevant pedagogical and assessment artefacts that are situated in real world contexts, and enabled graduate teachers to reflect in and on practice that may have a measurable impact on their own students.

Admittedly, this case study was not an example of co-designing assessment approaches within ITE. It is an example of how, as academics and lecturers of ITE, co-design was used with pre-service teachers to think more broadly about teaching and assessment practices in schools. This case study enabled pre-service teachers to collaborate with each other and consider the alignment between the myriad of learning approaches of students to learning activities and consequently assessment practices in order to support the development of learning outcomes of our students. This community of practice enabled pre-service teachers to become aware of their unique views and positionality (Janfada & Thomas, 2020), challenging and developing new knowledge and ideas with each other. This process of co-design goes a long way to reinvigorate the teaching profession and the transformation of educational practices.

5.3 Thinking Critically About Questions in Assessment Policy and Practice

Teachers having the requisite knowledge and skills to assess effectively is described in the literature using the term assessment literacy. De Luca and colleagues (2019) describe assessment literacy as the professional capacity to integrate and utilize assessment to effectively facilitate student learning. Additionally, they describe the more recent commentary as teachers having “assessment competency,” and “assessment capability” (p. 1). Commencing in 2023, In their final year of the Master of Teaching (Primary) Course at Melbourne Graduate School of Education, pre-service teachers engage in a literacy subject designed to promote critical reflection on the ways language and literacy is assessed in primary schools thereby enabling them to build their own assessment literacy. The subject will require final year pre-service teachers to think critically about literacy assessment practices and explore the notions of authentic assessment (Clay, 2002), that is related to the real world, and ethical assessment that is fair and just (Gee, 2003).

Throughout the subject the pre-service teachers will engage in a critique of literacy assessment tools and processes and using a set of criteria from Renshaw and colleagues (2013). They will evaluate the literacy assessment tools and processes they have seen being used on their placement as well as a range of literacy assessment tools and processes they will be introduced to throughout the subject.

The assessment for the subject will require the pre-service teachers to engage in their own investigation and critique of a literacy assessment tool or process. They will engage in using the tool or process in schools with a group of students. They will reflect on the assessment and drawing upon assessment literature, they will evaluate the assessment tool/process. This task will enable pre-service teachers to think critically and be meta-cognitive about assessment, and they will then share this knowledge with their pre-service colleagues through a presentation.

This is a clear example of assessment being seen as a departure not a destination. The knowledge the pre-service teachers gain through this assessment is something graduating teachers can take into their teaching career and further enhance their assessment literacy through engaging in critical reflection.

6 Conclusion: Possibilities and Challenges

While ITE programs around the world differ in significant ways, these programs tend to include multiple, coherent, and complementary components associated with developing effective teachers (Darling-Hammond, 2017), as is the case of Australia. This coherence around the different components of ITE reflects an increasing neoliberal emphasis on accountability and homogeneity considering criticism of teacher quality. The importance of exploring possibilities within such compliance regimes provides critical opportunities for heteroglossia and multi-voicedness in the assessment process, and to continue to cultivate innovation in ITE.

Whilst the digital world has afforded a range of technologies that have enabled ITE providers to do assessment at a massive scale, the COVID-19 pandemic has made it more critical than ever for ITE providers to approach assessment practices differently. These forms of digital assessment—a much broader concept than ‘e-assessment’—require a broader set of “disciplinary voices” (Dawson et al., 2020, p. 3) than traditional approaches to assessment. This provides an added challenge to the complexity of the design of assessment practices.

In this chapter, the inclusion of preservice teachers’ voice is presented as essential to design an approach that enables preservice teachers to play an active and influential role in assessment. It can provide a pathway in which they can not only follow their areas of interest and expertise, but also develop their teacher identity with the notion of agency by actively pursuing learning considering their teacher goals (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009). This is particularly important considering restrictions in teacher-student interactions during the pandemic (Konig et al., 2020). The inclusion of student voice is not an emphasis on a laissez-faire approach but should be purposefully included and valued to allow each pre-service teacher to develop their identity as teachers whilst fostering creativity, developing expertise, and feeding forward into their contribution to the profession as a graduate teacher. Nguyen and Yang (2018) emphasise the importance of pre-service teachers undergoing shift in identity, particularly as they transition from university student into their role as a teacher. They also emphasize the role of agency as discussed by Beijaard et al. (2004), and its importance in identity construction through negotiation and tension between agency and structure (Miller, 2009). Purposefully planning to include the voices of pre-service teachers within assessment practice in ITE, particularly in assessment feedback (Nieminen et al., 2021), provides a shift from a traditional focus on an instrumental lens, to embrace a more dialogic and democratic approach in which agency is cultivated and multi-voicedness can be realized.

Cobb and Couch (2018) challenge ITE providers in their role stating, “ITE providers, can play either a reproductive role by reproducing the ideas and practices produced by governments, or a transformative role by disrupting oppressive ideologies and shaping new ideas and knowledge” (p. 40). It can be difficult to challenge mandates in a climate that is dominated by requirements that have a focus on standardization. However, the pandemic has illustrated that rather than merely following policy mandates, schools and universities can be on the front foot in terms of innovation and disruptions to teaching and learning. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how ITE providers and pre-service teachers rapidly adapt to new contexts of teaching and learning online in such unexpected circumstances (Flores & Gago, 2020). The pandemic has not only raised questions about the nature of teaching and ways of supporting the learning and assessment of students but also “challenges teacher education to (re)think ways of (re)educating teachers for scenarios that are unpredictable and unknown” (Flores & Swennen, 2020, p. 453). In addition to increased collaboration between teachers, Darling-Hammond and Hyler (2020) discussed the importance of strengthening collaboration between departments in universities to support pre-service teachers. In particular, teachers need to learn how to support their work with formative assessments (Darling-Hammond et al., 2020), especially when teacher-student interaction is absent or significantly reduced (Konig et al., 2020). In terms of assessment, ITE providers developing assessments for pre-service teachers, need to be prepared to disrupt oppressive ideologies and have a clear set of guiding principles that inform assessment practices, such as those from Shohamy (2001) articulated earlier. This would ensure that ITE providers are not merely technicians blindly implementing policy but become innovators in the field of assessment.

When investigating this complex terrain of assessments in higher education, any synthesis can never truly capture all perspectives. This chapter focuses on one ideological underpinning of assessment practices, i.e., the importance of dialog and voice, and in the specific context of ITE. The theoretical and practical sections in this chapter unpacked some of the nuances and complexity of the issue and offered some pragmatic and tangible suggestions for ITE. The intent is not to illuminate the implications of assessments in higher education generally. Speculative questions and provocations to engage the readers in constant dialog with their own practice and practices of others locally and globally and to re-examine the ever-increasing neoliberal approach to ITE are also offered.

Firstly, how can educators embrace relationality in the design and implementation of assessment to enable it to be seen as a departure rather than a destination? In this chapter, three examples of such instances were provided. Rather than addressing underlying symptoms, the challenge is to engage in continual critical dialog that embrace relationality more holistically and consistently across ITE. In thinking more broadly, how then do educators implement this relational approach across faculties and institutions?

Secondly, how can assessment be redesigned to promote heteroglossia, and incorporate polyphonics? Co-design is discussed as one method of incorporating pre-service teachers’ voices in assessment practices. The challenge here is ensuring that these voices are ‘heard’ and insights are reflected in assessment practices. In thinking more broadly about polyphonics, educators also need to include collaboration and cooperation in the assessment process with various stakeholders in ITE, including placement schools.

Finally, concepts of identity and agency are considered by asking, how can pre-service teachers be encouraged to challenge dominant discourses of market orientated pedagogies, and consequently develop their teacher identities through being agents of change as they move into the profession? This speaks to teaching as a profession that demonstrates respect and professionalism in teachers’ interactions with their own skills, knowledge and practices, as well as with the skills, knowledge and practices of others. Educators need to move from relying primarily on reiterating what is already present in current ITE so that they can imagine a world where our students are academically and developmentally ready to face any challenges.