Exam fairness

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the ambiguous concept of exam fairness, highlighting the limitations of traditional fairness notions and proposing the need for an external criterion to evaluate fairness in assessments.

Contribution

It clarifies the conceptual confusion surrounding exam fairness and suggests moving beyond fairness of treatment and opportunity by introducing an external evaluative criterion.

Findings

Fairness of treatment reflects existing rules, not fairness itself.

Fairness of opportunity leads to equal grades, which is impractical.

An external criterion is necessary for meaningful fairness assessment.

Abstract

It is widely agreed that exams must be fair; yet what this exactly means is not made clear. One may mean fairness of treatment, but this merely propagates the fairness or unfairness of pre-existing rules. Fairness of opportunity on the other hand necessarily leads to identical grades for everyone, which clearly makes it inapplicable. Neither view is helpful to make decisions on competing claims: fairness of treatment ignores the problem and fairness of opportunity holds all claims to be equally valid. To escape this deadlock one needs an external criterion to replace fairness viewed as student-student comparison. Keywords: assessment; bias; engineering education; examinations; grading; justice; tests