Assessing students in practice: expectations, impressions and social judgements.

Practice learning and assessment is pivotal to the delivery of a competent workforce at the point of professional registration (Eraut 1994, Gallagher et al 2012). However few empirical studies have examined how competence based practice assessment decisions are made despite concerns having been raised that assessors fail, or may be reticent, to judge student performance as unsatisfactory. This phenomenon, euphemistically described as ‘failure to fail’ (Duffy 2006), is also noted where faculty are involved (Luhanga et al 2008), and is not limited to nursing (Finch 2009). This keynote will provide an overview of a mixed methods study (Burden 2014) investigating assessment of student competence using judgement and decision making theory. The findings, will be used to stimulate debate regarding the nature of competence based assessment across a range of practice based professions and consider new and creative approaches to assessing student practice.