Justice, fairness, ethics, and validity
I study how arguments for validity must account not only for technical quality, but also for social consequence, human dignity, and the fair distribution of educational opportunity.
David Slomp
Justice-oriented literacy assessment for a digital and AI-mediated world.
I study how writing and literacy assessments can be designed to be valid, fair, ethical, and publicly accountable across classrooms, institutions, and professional contexts.
Research themes
My work is organised around four connected questions: what literacy assessments represent, how they distribute opportunity, how they function in digital and AI-mediated environments, and how they can serve public life more responsibly.
Writing expertise in digital and AI-mediated contexts
I examine how writing expertise changes when communication happens across tools, media, languages, and socially complex settings—and how assessment can better represent that complexity.
Consequences of assessment design and use
My work on the Integrated Design and Appraisal Framework links construct representation, theory of action, and consequences of use in order to rethink the design of writing and literacy assessment programs.
Policy, teacher practice, and public accountability
I work with educators, governments, and professional organisations to move assessment beyond narrow test-based accountability and toward more humane, publicly accountable systems.
Current direction
My current program of research, Justice-Oriented Literacy Assessment for a Digital and AI-Mediated World, brings together design-based work on formative assessment, international collaborations on writing assessment, and new models of ethical and equitable validation. The work is concerned with a basic but consequential question: how do we design assessments that expand access to learning rather than constrain it?
Featured writing
These pieces offer a good entry point into the questions that organise my research.
Prioritizing equitable social outcomes with and for diverse readers
A framework for developing and using justice-based reading assessment that shifts attention from narrow measurement toward equitable social consequences.
Justice-oriented, antiracist validation
A proposal for continuing to disrupt white supremacy in assessment practices by treating justice as central to validation rather than peripheral to it.
An Integrated Design and Appraisal Framework
A principled model for linking construct representation, evidence, consequences, and design decisions in workplace and writing assessment.
Ethical writing assessment
A foundational statement of the design principles that continue to shape my work on ethics, validity, and socially responsible assessment.
Public engagement
My scholarship extends beyond academic publication. It informs policy, professional learning, media commentary, teacher-facing scholarship, and editorial leadership in writing and literacy assessment.
- Partnerships and advisory work with Alberta Education, ETS, the Hawaii Department of Education, the International Literacy Association, and the National Council of Teachers of English.
- Media and public writing in outlets including CBC, the National Post, the Edmonton Journal, the Calgary Herald, the Lethbridge Herald, and University Affairs.
- Editorial leadership through Assessing Writing and the forthcoming Handbook of Writing Assessment: Current Complexities, Future Directions.
Graduate mentoring
I supervise graduate research in writing and literacy assessment, fairness and justice, digital literacies, AI-mediated feedback, and the consequences of assessment policy and practice.
Students I have supervised have received national and institutional awards, including the Language and Literacy Researchers of Canada Master’s Thesis Award, the J. Estill Alexander Future Leaders in Literacy Award, School of Graduate Studies Silver Medals, and SSHRC doctoral funding.