2.3 Engaging stakeholders

2.3 Engaging stakeholders

Stakeholders in assessment for learning for the changing nature of work can include:

 learners;  curriculum designers;  those who teach and/or assess what is to be learnt;  educational institution/provider (the educational institution)  professional bodies (where they mandate particular requirements or offer possibilities for continuing professional development that involves assessment);  employers;  supervisors, reporting managers and/or experienced colleagues in the workplace (learning and assessment may take place entirely in work settings, with or without an educational provider);  licensing bodies.

In the literature, engagement of stakeholders is discussed in relation to collaboration and/or partnerships (sometimes the terms are used interchangeably) and partnership models. In this report, we use the term “partnership” to indicate a wide range of possible models and arrangements, as there will be varying degrees of formality in any partnership and because partnerships are dynamic and can develop and change over time.

The value of collaborative partnerships address many of the points discussed in the following section; authentic experiences that enable learners to experience holistically the complexities of vocational/professional life at work, and developing practitioner ways of thinking and being. For example, Carter, Sidebotham, Creedy, Fenwick, & Gamble (2015) explain that their work-based programme to develop practising midwives is to prepare students for safe autonomous practice, to develop their decision-making skills in complex situations, and to increase their motivation because “all learning is perceived to be relevant to their future professional practice” (p. 328). These factors are important for developing confident and competent midwives, for stimulating deeper learning or forms of engaged learning, and for enabling students to grow professionally. The potential role of different participants in a collaborative partnership for assessment and learning is discussed later in this section.

The literature on work-based learning makes reference to partnerships or relations with employers and between supervisors, learners and assessors from an educational provider point of view. It is less common for reference to be made to other stakeholders listed above such as the professional bodies and licensing boards. However these stakeholders are part of the ecosystem which govern performance standards and thus are important “players” in learning and assessment design, as their stipulated requirements can provide affordances or limit possibilities for good assessment and learning design. Indeed, collaborative partnerships are at the heart of work-based learning (Boud, Solomon, & Symes, 2001; Smith & Betts, 2000).

Reeve and Gallacher (2005) state that in the United Kingdom (UK), the number of higher-education programmes involving work-based learning was once extremely low. Part of the reason for this, they suggest, is that developing partnerships or collaborative working relationships is highly problematic, with reports of breakdowns in communication over the aims of the partnership, different languages and cultures, problems in managing power relationships and limited development of trust. Different educational institutions/providers have different historical practices in relation to learning and assessment, which will potentially be at odds with the understanding of assessment and learning they encounter in different industry sectors and across different employers, where workplace conditions for learning and assessment (Vaughan & Cameron, 2010) could also vary. In work-based learning arrangements, these are issues that providers/educational institutions must deal with and make visible in the process of negotiation. Duckenfield & Stirner (1992) categorically state that for work-based

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