Assessment Rubrics in International Education: Developing a Holistic Rubric to Provide Formative Assessment and Facilitate Student Adjustment to the International Baccalaureate Program

The literature on assessment rubrics is US-centric and neglects rubrics’ contribution in facilitating student adjustment to dissimilar educational paradigms. The Greek secondary education system does not incorporate assessment rubrics to inform student evaluation. As a result, student grades are based on unclear and hard-to-defend criteria, leading to higher levels of test anxiety and reducing student self-regulation. In contrast, holistic assessment rubrics are consistently employed by the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme [IBDP]. In this paper the pilot introduction of assessment rubrics in Greek secondary education is considered. The impact of formative assessment and holistic assessment rubrics on student adjustment to a radically different education system was assessed by designing and employing semi-experimental methodology. A qualitative, open-ended questionnaire was distributed to both a control group and an intervention group to assess, using mixed content analysis, how the assessment rubric informed student adjustment to international education settings. The results highlight the positive impact of introducing assessment rubrics to influence student transition to radically dissimilar educational paradigms and the policy implications for peripheral educational systems. In particular, and in contrast to established theoretical assumptions, the students sampled reported that higher order learning was enhanced thanks to analytic rubrics.