Looking back by Cees van der Vleuten

Dear Pim, looking backward I feel rewarded by the fact that we have covered so much through the interaction between research and educational development. In assessment we have covered three different paradigms.

The first one is the positivist psychometric perspective. Key words: standardization, objectification, bias, uniformity, summative assessment. As a result of the introduction of Competency-Based Medical Education (CBME) and work-based assessment we needed to assess complex competencies that can only be assessed with holistic human judgment.

This sparked the second paradigm. Key words include: formative, narrative, subjective, constructivist, interpretative, relationships. Finally, in recent years we see a third paradigm which is the combination of the first two into a system approach to assessment.

Programmatic assessment is an example of this perspective. It combines the best of both worlds. Key words are: mix of methods, data points, aggregation, triangulation, competence committees, coaching, remediation. However, I do think that many educational practices are still in the first paradigm. It is not easy to escape from that framework.

Cees van der Vleuten