The Explication of Quality Standards in Self-Evaluation

Education aiming at students' competence development asks for new assessment methods. The quality of these methods needs to be assured using adapted quality criteria and accompanying standards. As such standards are not widely available, this study sets out to examine what level of compliance with quality criteria stakeholders consider satisfactory. Two professional education programmes specified the implicit standards they applied in a self-evaluation procedure designed to evaluate the quality of their Competence Assessment Programs (CAPs). They specified similar cut-off scores, but different descriptive standards. Analysis revealed that this was due to their experience with competence-based education and the quality of their own CAP, but influences of the selected method and the understanding of the quality criteria were also found. As such, the specified standards are local, but meaningful for the programmes' quality assurance. Implications for self-evaluation and standard-setting procedures are discussed. (Contains 3 tables.)