Home of the Mastery Rubric

Mastery Rubric: Getting learners from here to there

leveraging the learning sciences for evidence-based decisionmaking

A Mastery Rubric is a 3-dimensional table, a true rubric – for a curriculum – that specifies the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) to be developed through the curriculum, and the levels at which these KSAs can be demonstrated (stages of performance). At the intersection of the KSAs and stages are performance level descriptors (PLDs). The KSAs are identified for a specific curriculum through a formal cognitive task analysis; PLDs are drafted and revised as a formal standard-setting exercise.

The Mastery Rubric is a construct; a Mastery Rubric has been created for eight different curricula (as of Sept 2021), with two others under development. The eight existing Mastery Rubrics (MR) are for:

The first five MRs are discussed at length in the forthcoming (2024) book, Practical higher education curriculum and instructional design with the Mastery Rubric.

The figure below shows the synthesis of core contributions from the learning sciences that are foundational for a Mastery Rubric (and the construct itself).

Mastery Rubrics synthesize learning sciences, making additional tools usable.
Figure (c)2020 RE Tractenberg

[1] Tractenberg RE, Lindvall JM, Via A, Attwood TK. (2019). The Mastery Rubric for Bioinformatics: supporting design and evaluation of career-spanning education and training. PLoS ONE 14(11): e0225256. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225256

[2] Tractenberg RE, Lindvall JM, Attwood TK, Via A. (2020, April 2) Preprint. Guidelines for curriculum and course development in higher education and training. Published in the Open Archive of the Social Sciences (SocArXiv), DOI 10.31235/osf.io/7qeht

[3] Bloom BS (Ed), Englehart MD, Furst EJ, Hill WH & Krathwohl DR. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: the classification of educational goals, by a committee of college and university examiners. Handbook I: Cognitive Domain. New York: David McKay.

[4] Messick S. (1994). The interplay of evidence and consequences in the validation of performance assessments.  Educational Researcher 23(2): 13-23.

[5] Knowles MS, Holton III EF, Swanson RA. (2005).The Adult Learner, 6E. Burlington, MA: Elsevier

[6] Tractenberg, RE. (2021). The Assessment Evaluation Rubric: Promoting Learning and Learner-Centered Teaching through Assessment in Face-to-Face or Distanced Higher Education. Education Sciences. 2021, 11(8), 441; https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/11/8/441

[7] G Wells & A Edwards (Eds.). (2015). Pedagogy in Higher Education: A cultural historical approach. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Higher education instructors, curriculum developers, and adminstrators are currently (2021) facing questions about accountability and in some cases, legitimacy. As the world recovers from the 2020 COVID-19 shutdown, people are wondering whether they need face-to-face higher education (e.g., parents are wondering if this is the optimal way to spend their incomes and if it will in fact benefit their children; states are wondering the same about tax dollars). In addition to strengthening arguments that “college education is worth it”, instructors also may have the opportunity to revisit their teaching materials to determine if they can be improved as support for either online or face to face courses. The Mastery Rubric (MR) is a curriculum development and evaluation tool – developed for use in higher, graduate and professional, and post-graduate education. It brings structure to a curriculum by specifying the desired knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) that the curriculum will provide, together with performance levels that characterize the learner, on each KSA, as the individual moves through stages of development. This tool unites a developmental implementation of Bloom’s taxonomy with a formal articulation of curriculum and instructional design objectives, to promote teaching that will move learners along the articulated path from novice towards independence and expertise with built-in features of psychometric assessment validity.

Whether you are creating new instruction, revising existing materials or assignments, considering how your course fits into the curriculum, or wondering how to integrate “new content” into an existing course or curriculum without having to remove critical content, a Mastery Rubric might exist to help these activities. Or, learning about the features of instructional design through Mastery Rubrics for constructs you already value/teach could help you think differently about what you teach, how you teach it, and how you know your students are learning what you intend.

This site was created to share information about Mastery Rubrics and about the new book about the construct, five specific Mastery Rubrics, and how to use them across curricula or for 1-2 courses.