Synopsis
In Five Principles for Rethinking Assessment with Gen AI, Leon Furze argues that assessment reform should focus on good pedagogical practice rather than policing AI use. While the AI Assessment Scale has become widely adopted, Furze emphasizes that the principles behind it—validity, authenticity, transparency—were important long before ChatGPT.
His five principles are: (1) Validity First—design assessments that generate trustworthy evidence of learning through content, construct, and consequential validity while balancing security with accessibility; (2) Design for Reality—create authentic assessments that reflect real-world workflows where AI may legitimately be used, and acknowledge the “brutal reality” that GenAI is more capable and harder to detect than most educators think; (3) Transparency and Trust—communicate clear expectations about AI use, provide teachers with substantive professional development, and trust that students want guidance and will generally choose to do the right thing; (4) Assessment is a Process, Not a Point in Time—move away from one-shot high-stakes assessments and challenge the “stuck thinking” that end-of-school exams should dictate all upstream assessment; and (5) Respect Professional Judgement—resist rigid rules and surveillance technologies, trust teacher expertise over time, and ensure assessment doesn’t create unsustainable workload.
Furze concludes these principles are pro-learning, not anti-AI, and reflect practices that matter regardless of whether students use generative AI.
Originally published at: https://leonfurze.com/2025/08/18/five-principles-for-rethinking-assessment-with-gen-ai/
Links
- https://leonfurze.com/2025/08/18/five-principles-for-rethinking-assessment-with-gen-ai/
- https://leonfurze.com/2023/04/29/the-ai-assessment-scale-from-no-ai-to-full-ai/
- http://aiassessmentscale.com
- https://leonfurze.com/2024/08/28/updating-the-ai-assessment-scale/
- https://leonfurze.com/2025/08/09/ai-in-the-writing-process-a-problem-of-purpose-2/
- https://leonfurze.com/2024/05/13/genai-strategy-attack-your-assessments/
- https://leonfurze.com/2025/06/12/how-i-use-the-aias-part-1/
- https://leonfurze.com/2025/06/13/three-dimensions-of-expertise-for-ai/
- https://leonfurze.com/2025/07/24/stuck-thinking-and-end-of-school-exams/
- https://leonfurze.com/2024/04/09/ai-detection-in-education-is-a-dead-end/
- https://bsky.app/profile/leonfurze.com
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