What is a Mastery Rubric?
A rubric is a well-known type of tool to create and assess work in educational settings; they are almost universally task or assignment specific. Successful rubrics describe the features that must be included in a work product, and also the criteria against which the features of that product will be evaluated. The application of the rubric construct to the curriculum is achieved through a Mastery Rubric (MR). A 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. A Mastery Rubric helps get learners from here (wherever they are) to there (wherever the instruction or curriculum is intended to enable their achievement).
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. The MR as a construct promotes development in the target KSAs as well as assessment that demonstrates this development, and encourages reflection and self-monitoring by learners and instructors throughout individual courses and the entire curriculum. A Mastery Rubric represents flexible, criterion-referenced, definitions of “success” for both individuals and the program itself, promoting alignment between the intended and the actual curricula, and fosters the generation of actionable evidence for learners, instructors, and institutions. The methods that are used to create a Mastery Rubric highlight the theoretical and practical features; the effort required; as well as potential benefits to learners, instructors, and the institution.
The Mastery Rubric construct was created in 2005 to promote catalytic and equitable learning for higher education, graduate, post-graduate, and professional education. Even for adults at later stages of their formal education, metacognition is learnable and improvable. Mastery Rubrics can empower the self-directed learner to see what the next-level performer should be able to do – or, what they should be able to demonstrate they can do at their current level.
What is available at MasteryRubric.org?
Mastery Rubrics can strengthen higher, graduate, professional education and educators: evidence-based decision-making is possible in higher education, and a Mastery Rubric can support this. Whether using a Mastery Rubric specific for the curriculum topic, or the one for teaching and learning, or just understanding what is essential from the learning sciences for effective higher education teaching supports learning and learner centered instruction. Mastery Rubrics empower instructors and learners, and make deliberate practice assessable.
The MR is intended to support development, evaluation, and revision (if needed) of the curriculum, and a curriculum-based MR can also help develop, evaluate, and revise individual courses as well. One Mastery Rubric, for Ethical Reasoning, has been utilized extensively in two books (2022) intended to promote Ethical Reasoning in Statistics and Data Science. One is for anyone who does or will work with data (but is not yet a practitioner): Ethical Reasoning for a Data-Centered World. The other is for practitioners or those about to enter the domain: Ethical Practice of Statistics and Data Science. A third book will focus on the Ethical Practice of Statistics and Data Science for Public/Civil Servants and in the Government Setting (forthcoming in 2025). More on this specific Mastery Rubric can be found at the Ethical Reasoning website!
