Dr Maddalena Taras

National Teaching Fellow 2013 Dr Maddalena Taras has a passionate interest in assessment and student learning. As a University Teaching Fellow, she developed, implemented and evaluated an innovative model of student self-assessment. This was used across Faculties, subject areas and levels at her own institution, where it has played an important part in enhancing the student learning experience. Maddalena has published and presented extensively in the UK and internationally. Her theoretical work includes a comprehensive framework for summative and formative feedback and self-assessment, and she has also explored and evaluated established theoretical approaches both within HE and across sectors, making an important contribution to current debates on this aspect of learning and teaching. This work has highlighted how cross-sector tutors' understandings interlink with specific cultural contexts within discourses of assessment for learning, the theoretical claims which are made within sectors and how these can be understood within wider inclusive educational principles. She has examined linguistic and cultural contexts of assessment and tutors' perceptions and understandings, clarifying how our perceptions of assessment can influence our beliefs and practice and how these relate to the choices we make in supporting our students' learning. This ongoing work will expand to include the relationship of assessment and feedback to the whole student learning experience. In addition, it further lends itself to better exploring of students' beliefs about feedback and assessment and how tutors and students can come together to build shared understandings through dialogic collaborations and partnerships. Linguistic and cultural influences on perceptions of assessment are also a relatively unexplored area, and particularly how they affect our practices. Understanding assessment and feedback within personal and institutional discrepancies in practices and discourses is an area within which she has made tentative initial steps. The common thread within Maddalena's activities explores how to align practices with discourses, theories and empirical evidence and provide students with a truly learner- and learning-centred experience. Maddalena has published and presented extensively in her field including articles, book sections, conference dissemination and a book. Most recently she was co-editor: Merry, S., Price, M., Carless, D. and Taras, M. (eds) Reconceptualising Feedback in Higher Education, London and New York: Routledge.