Abstract
While educational policy can be a lever to drive change in university assessment practices, it needs to be transparent to all stakeholders. This paper explores transparency related to time in Australian university assessment policies, examining techno-rational, socio-cultural, and socio-material discourses to make visible assumptions about students from diverse equity backgrounds and how they are assumed to experience time in assessment. The study presented here adopted an innovative multi-method analysis of public-facing Australian university policies drawing together four approaches: (1) accessibility analysis of time-related policy; (2) corpus analysis of time-related terms and their co-location in meaning making about time in policy documents; (3) socio-critical analysis of What the Problem is Represented (Bacchi, 2009) to be in constructions of participants and time in assessment policies; (4) thematic analysis of policy leaders’ and educators’ accounts of policy enactment and practice. Findings indicated that, while time was a salient concept, high levels of variability in provisions relating to time were evident between policies. There was also significant variation in how universities talked about time and how students could access more time. Some policies assumed that adjustments give certain students unfair advantages. Others acknowledged students’ entitlement to adjustments but had ableist overtones, with students expected to self-advocate within existing assessment systems. This paper demonstrates how multiple analyses can complement each other and bring to the surface the inner workings of assessment policy and practice. We argue that the methodology makes possible a temporal awareness that provides for temporal justice, that is, recognition and transparency around time and its powerful role in the lives of students from equity backgrounds, as a foundation for action directed at access, inclusion, and academic success.
Context and implications
Rationale for this study: Australian universities increasingly implement assessment policies designed to provide students with equitable access to time. However, the transparency and accessibility of these provisions remain underexamined. This study employed multiple methods to analyse policy and interview data describing policy leaders’ and educators’ efforts to enhance transparency during implementation.
Why the new findings matter: The findings provide evidence that current assessment policies undermine equity for students by utilising hidden deficit discourses and creating inaccessible processes. This research reveals previously unexamined ways transparency is compromised, offering critical insights for universities to begin addressing barriers that perpetuate disadvantage for diverse students in assessment policy and practices. Transparency serves equity when all students are supported to understand, access, and complete assessment on an equal basis.
Implications for policymakers, educators, and researchers: For policymakers, this study highlights the need to review existing assessment policies for discourses that obscure the processes and expectations around assessment and in practice serve to disadvantage students from equity backgrounds. It also foregrounds the importance of including diverse stakeholders, including equity students, in policy ideation/drafting rather than just review. Analyses suggest that educators have a significant role in trying to mediate and make policies transparent for students who may need access to additional time to demonstrate what they know and can do. For researchers, the novel combination of research methods for policy analysis led to a more complete picture of policy transparency. Future research must include diverse students’ voices to investigate their experiences relating to assessment policy and time. Consideration of temporal awareness and temporal justice as theoretical standpoints in interrogating equity in relation to time will strengthen approaches to transparency in assessment policy.