An Editorial Perspective: A Field Without A Discipline? Mapping the Uncertain and Often Chaotic Route to Becoming an Assessment Practitioner

Nicholas A. Curtis, Robin D. Anderson, Ray Van Dyke   |    Volume Fifteen  |   

From the Editor:

For quite a while now, I have been engaging in informal conversations with a variety of colleagues about the nature of the assessment profession. “How and why do people become assessment professionals? Is it, in fact, a profession at all? Would it be more accurate to call it a role that many professionals fall into and, if so, would assessment benefit from structuring our field more intentionally as a stand-alone profession?” As interesting as these coffee conversations were, the answers to these kinds of questions are perhaps key to the future of our field. Our recent publication by Horst & Prendergast (2020) proposes a model for the content of assessment development. In an effort to supplement that work and encourage further discussion around these topics, three editorial members of Research & Practice in Assessment composed the following editorial perspective piece around the mechanisms of assessment training and development. We hope that this piece provides a springboard for more critical conversations in our field.

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