An Expanded Ethical Decision-making Model to Resolve Ethical Dilemmas in Assessment

The current study expanded a newly developed ethical decision-making model for assessment using interview data collected from seven instructors from elementary school to higher education on their experiences of dealing with ethical dilemmas in assessment. The expanded model has the following new merits: One additional critical incident involving an ethical dilemma and two more types of conflict elements emerged. In addition to specific guidelines, more general guidelines to resolve ethical dilemmas were included. Most importantly, the impacts of decision-making on instruction, student learning, and future assessment inform teachers that appropriate assessment decisions should work with other teaching practices. Teachers can use this model to improve assessment practices in professional development sessions or assessment courses.