How Developments in Psychology and Technology Challenge Validity Argumentation

Validity is the sine qua non of properties of educational assessment. While a theory of validity and a practical framework for validation has emerged over the past decades, most of the discussion has addressed familiar forms of assessment and psychological framings. Advances in digital technologies and in cognitive and social psychology have expanded the range of purposes, targets of inference, contexts of use, forms of activity, and sources of evidence we now see in educational assessment. This article discusses some of these developments and how concepts and representations that are employed to design and use assessments, hence to frame validity arguments, can be extended accordingly. Ideas are illustrated with a variety of examples, with an emphasis on assessment in higher education.