Earlier Practice Notes use the term Assessment Model to describe the way an assessment is structured and performed.
I have come to think that Assessment Approach is a better term.
The distinction matters because a Reference Model and an Assessment Approach are not the same kind of thing.
A Reference Model describes what we assess against. It makes explicit our understanding of the subject: its purpose, expected qualities, characteristics, relationships, constraints, or other aspects relevant to judging it.
An Assessment Approach describes how we perform the assessment. It determines how we investigate the subject, what evidence we seek, how we collect and interpret that evidence, and how we arrive at justified judgments.
Put simply:
Reference Model = what we assess against.
Assessment Approach = how we assess.
Calling both of these things models creates an unnecessary symmetry between them. The Reference Model represents an understanding of the subject. The Assessment Approach is the means by which we investigate reality in relation to that reference.
This Practice Note therefore introduces a terminology change.
From this point onward, I will use Assessment Approach rather than Assessment Model.
Earlier Practice Notes will remain unchanged. Where they use Assessment Model in this sense, it should generally be understood as what I would now call an Assessment Approach.
This is not a change to the underlying ideas in those notes. It is a refinement of the language used to express them.
And perhaps there is a broader principle here as well.
A developing body of knowledge does not need to rewrite its past every time its language improves. Earlier thinking can remain visible while later notes clarify, refine, or supersede it.
The history of the terminology then becomes part of the history of the understanding.
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