Assessment close up: The limits of exquisite descriptions of achievement

Abstract This paper concentrates on the public and formal processes of reporting achievement. The topic is significant because employers, managers and graduate schools all use warrants when making selection and governance decisions. Should those warrants turn out to have, as we argue, local meanings, then selection and governance practices, amongst others, are compromised. Reports, or warrants, are seen as communications that tend to generalise about achievement, as when they say that a person is fit to practise. The argument is that assessment practices are not such that warrants can be treated as generalised statements of achievement. At best, they can reduce but not eliminate uncertainty about achievement. When viewed close up, assessment and reporting practices are seen as contexted acts of sense-making about fluxional social practices. Warrants should be interpreted accordingly.