Recording: Nurturing and Norming Inclusive Assessment Practices: A Democratically-Engaged Approach

Presenters: Joe Bandy, Vanderbilt University; Patti Clayton, PHC Ventures and NCCCC; Sarah Stanlick, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (representing Imagining America’s Assessing Practices of Public Scholarship (APPS) team)

Overview: What does assessment mean to you? How does it appear in your work currently? How might we imagine and create assessment that can challenge systems of injustice, reclaim power, and transform our communities, especially in this time ripe for creative disruption?

In this session, we explore these questions together while also lifting up stories of counter-normative, transformative, and radically inclusive assessment work. This webinar highlights some stories of assessment done differently, engaged in values, and with the purpose of inclusion and transformation in mind. We explore together the concept of democratically-engaged assessment, which is an orientation to and framework for assessment that is explicitly grounded in, informed by, and in dialogue with the (contested) values and commitments of democratic civic engagement. Note that the team presenting represented the work of a larger team and the voice and input of community organizers, scholar-practitioners, thinkers, and citizens who have shared with us their first-hand experiences of what it means to reclaim one’s narrative and voice through democratically-engaged assessment practices.