The ‘Marking Expertise’ projects: Empirical investigations of some popular assumptions

Abstract

Recent transformations in professional marking practice, including moves to mark some examination papers on screen, have raised important questions about the demands and expertise that the marking process entails. What makes some questions harder to mark accurately than others, and how much does marking accuracy vary among individuals with different backgrounds and experiences? We are conducting a series of interrelated studies, exploring variations in accuracy and expertise in GCSE examination marking. In our first two linked studies, collectively known as Marking Expertise Project 1, we investigated marking on selected GCSE maths and physics questions from OCR's June 2005 examination papers. Our next two linked studies, which comprise Marking Expertise Project 2, are currently underway and involve both CIE and OCR examinations. This time we are focussing on International (I) GCSE biology questions from November 2005 and GCSE business studies questions from June 2006. All four studies sit within a conceptual framework in which we have proposed a number of factors that might contribute to accurate marking. For any particular GCSE examination question, accuracy can be maximised through increasing the marker's personal expertise and/or through decreasing the demands of the marking task, and most relevant factors can be grouped according to which of these two routes they contribute to. In this article, we present a summary of some key aspects and findings of the two studies comprising our first project. We end by looking ahead to our second project on marking expertise, which is currently in progress.