Fairness in Classroom Assessment: A Systematic Review

The aim of this study was to identify the components of fair classroom assessment and formulate a conceptual framework for it by following the steps proposed by Okoli and Schabram for a systematic review. For this purpose, three databases including ERIC, Elsevier, and Springer were systematically searched. As a result of this research, 39 sub-themes for fair classroom assessment were obtained in the form of 7 themes of "educational fairness", "interactional fairness", "procedural fairness", "distributive fairness", "egalitarian fair assessment", "equitable fair assessment" and "validity". Based on the theoretical definitions provided in the social justice approach and measurement theory, these scattered themes were presented in the form of an integrated and coherent model for fair classroom assessment. This model has a process view of fairness in classroom assessment; thus, the violation of the assessment indicators in each of the stages of "gathering", "using" and "interpreting", in addition to reducing the perception of fairness of one of the seven themes, affects the fair classroom assessment. Also, the violation of fairness in each of these stages affects fairness in the next stage. The presented model will help teachers and professors in recognizing the indicators affecting each of the themes of fairness in the classroom assessment and by increasing their assessment literacy will help them in planning and implementing assessment and educational processes and designing tests that provide a fairer classroom assessment. This model and its concepts can also help assessment researchers to develop a tool for evaluating fairness in classroom assessment and provide the basis for quantitative research to examine the effectiveness of the paths identified in the model.