Progress Testing: A narrative review exploring the rationale for progress testing and its introduction into a Diagnostic Radiography

Abstract

Introduction In March 2020, the first diagnostic radiography degree apprenticeship programme in England was launched at the authors’ institution. As part of the programme development and design, the programme development team explored and then implemented progress testing into a strand of the programme.

The objective of this educational perspective is to scrutinise the literature around the use of progress testing in higher education programmes, namely medicine, to explain how and why this decision was reached.

Methods The initial search strategy was developed using the electronic databases CINHAL Complete and SCOPUS. Key words included ‘progress test’ and ‘medicine’ or ‘health’ or ‘education’ or ‘higher education’. Eliminating articles that were not relevant, and also identifying and adding additional articles by key authors and experts resulted in thirty-three key articles being considered for review.

Results The thirty-three articles were a mixture of review articles, empirical research, case studies and conference presentations. Five key themes were identified which are discussed in this article; the evolution of progress testing; advantages of progress testing, disadvantages of progress testing, developing a test framework and academic progression and student feedback.

Discussion Progress testing is now well established in pre-registration medical programmes globally. The advantages of progress testing and the use of frequent look rapid remediation appear to be undisputed. Key disadvantages with progress testing were identified as it being an administrative heavy assessment process as well as a perceived bias towards male students undertaking this type of assessment.

Conclusion Now this assessment practice is established within medicine, it seems reasonable to explore its use in other areas of healthcare, such as radiography.