Astin's Assessment for Excellence: The Philosophy and Practice of Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education is the most-cited source of philosophy of educational assessment, yet those citing Astin misinterpret and misuse his philosophy, instead allowing his statistical theorems to stand in as a default philosophy of educational assessment. Fuller shows literature fails to reveal the epistemological, ontological, and axiological foundations of assessment, leaving such foundations tacit and unformed and resulting in a variety of dilemmas for higher education assessment practice, namely the often-noted inability of higher education assessment to result in change meaningful or valuable to students' learning.

Fuller highlights Astin's notion of assessment as a humanizing act, borrowing from critical discourse analysis methods to locate and explicate the significance of five of Astin's (1991) metaphors. Each of these metaphors is examined and cultural stories contextualizing each are offered to highlight specific aspects an emerging philosophy of assessment. Astin's metaphors are drawn from a life lived in both of C. P. Snow's Two Cultures—science and the humanities—and his metaphors unify the two cultures, proposing higher education adopt a humanizing, aesthetic form of educational assessment.

Given his analysis of the literature and his historical argument that metaphor is indeed philosophy, Fuller suggests Astin's metaphors as a reasonable, though limited, starting point in exploring the philosophical foundations of assessment. He concludes by speaking directly to assessment practitioners, proposing implications to higher education and society at large possible when re-envisioning assessment practiced as both science and art form with a humanizing aesthetic, offering potential benefits to reconceptualizing assessment practice.