Abstract
In higher education, assessment is key to student learning. Assessments which promote critical thinking necessary for sustained learning beyond university are highly valued. However, the design of assessment tasks to achieve these types of thinking skills and dispositions to act in professional practice has received little attention. This research examines how academics design assessment to achieve these learning goals in Indigenous health education. Indigenous health education is an important area of learning for health practitioners to help address worldwide patterns of health inequities that exist for Indigenous people. We used a constructivist qualitative methodology to (i) explore learning goals and assessment strategies used in Indigenous health tertiary education and (ii) examine how they relate to higher education assessment ideals. Forty-one academics (from nine health disciplines) involved in teaching Indigenous health content participated in a semi-structured interview. Thematic analysis revealed learning goals to transform students’ perspectives and capacities to think critically and creatively about their role in Indigenous health. In contrast, assessment tasks encouraged more narrowly bounded thinking to analyse information about historical and socio-cultural factors contributing to Indigenous health. To transform students to be critical health practitioners capable of working and collaborating with Indigenous people to advance their health and well-being, the findings suggest that assessment may need to be nested across many aspects of the curriculum using a programmatic approach, and with a focus on learning to think and act for future practice. These findings accord with more recent calls for transformation of learning and assessment in health education.
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Acknowledgment
We would like to acknowledge the Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) who provided funding for the research project that developed the data source used in this paper. We would also like to thank academics involved in Indigenous health education in Australia and New Zealand for providing their time to be interviewed.
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Ethics approval (HREC protocol 1443255) for the study was obtained from The University of Melbourne, School of Health Sciences Human Research Ethics Advisory Group.
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Delany, C., Doughney, L., Bandler, L. et al. Exploring learning goals and assessment approaches for Indigenous health education: a qualitative study in Australia and New Zealand. High Educ 75, 255–270 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-017-0137-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-017-0137-x