Edinburgh Napier University

  In universities, where the choice of methods of assessment is devolved, such methods can differ by subject area, by course and by institution. Yet while devolution offers scope to reconfigure assessment approaches, there may be correspondingly greater difficulties in keeping track of where and how changes in
assessment practices are taking place. The growing volume of publications on developments in assessment offers one important means of keeping abreast, but how such publications are used and valued depends to a substantial extent on one's professional standpoint. Practitioners may prize relevance to practice and the significance of the topic or issue studied, while researchers may be more concerned with the research process rather than its product.
Against this backdrop, the aims of this analytical review were:
• to map documented innovations by type of innovation, by discipline/subject area, and by genre or form of publication, while being alert to the variety of potential users of the literature and the end-uses to which it might be put
• to collate and evaluate, within and across the types of innovation
differentiated, the conceptual perspectives and frameworks utilised, the nature of the evidence deployed, and wider issues and concerns raised. The review cannot, however, make an unqualified claim to comprehensiveness, given that its timescale placed constraints on the range of subjects and years of publication covered.