Assessment Matters 2 : 2010

When I was corresponding with one of the authors in this issue, Emeritus Professor James Popham, I received an advertisement for his latest book in a document called “Popham eflyer”. As educationalists are wont to be, particularly those in assessment and evaluation research, I am at times somewhat distracted by the swirling notions of effect sizes in educational research. Consequently, I misread the name of the file as “Popham effect”. Effect size is a statistic that gives an estimate of the… Read more

The aim of this article is to clarify some key concepts in the current Norwegian discourse on assessment, the importance of which is essential in working with teachers on developing competence in assessment for learning. Competence is reflected in teachers’ assessment practice, which includes the ability to design a cohesive assessment activity. This is a complex task, which is illustrated by two scenarios presenting the link between the many decisions teachers have to make during the… Read more

Given the recent movement toward standards-based education there is a heightened need for teacher competency in the area of assessment and evaluation. However, despite demands for teacher assessment literacy, there are few instances of mandatory assessment courses in preservice teacher education programmes. Further, there is generally a lack of research guiding the development of effective assessment curricula for initial teacher learning in this area. This study presents one institution’s… Read more

In a world where schools are accountable for ensuring that all of their students are academically well prepared to enter “the knowledge society”, using assessment in the service of learning is a critical skill for teachers. This article contends that in order to prepare teachers to use assessment for learning, we need to understand student teachers’ values about and conceptions of assessment, as well as how they learn to use assessment during their teacher education programmes. We review the… Read more

Assessment for learning (AfL) practices observed in case studies in a North Queensland school were analysed from a sociocultural theoretical perspective. AfL practices of feedback, dialogue and peer assessment were viewed as an opportunity for students to learn the social expectations for being an autonomous learner, or central participant, within the classroom community of practice. This process of becoming more expert and belonging within the community of practice involved students… Read more

This article provides a synthesis of the literature on formative assessment, self-regulated learning and adaptive help seeking. We do this by developing a classroom model of adaptive help seeking. The model focuses on self-regulated learning, within which the processes of adaptive help seeking and interactive formative assessment are theoretically integrated. The learner is central to this model, and the help-seeking behaviours of the learner during learning  activities are not only… Read more

This paper puts forward a proposal for reviewing the role and purpose of standards in the context of national curriculum and assessment reform more generally. It seeks to commence the much-needed conversation about standards in the work of teachers as distinct from large-scale testing companies and the policy personnel responsible for reporting. Four key conditions that relate to the effective use of standards to measure improvement and support learning are analysed: clarity about purpose… Read more

New Zealand’s previous examination-based secondary assessment system can be viewed as encompassing cultural values presenting unfair challenges for indigenous and other nonmajority students. The standards-based National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) incorporates enhanced flexibility, student choice and grading practices independent of comparisons with others. These features may be a better match for the educational aspirations of collectivist cultures, yet little is known… Read more

The Premier New Zealand Scholarship, awarded annually to students performing at a high level in multiple secondary school subjects, has historically been dominated by students with successful results in mathematics and the sciences. Three possible explanations for this dominance are explored in the present article. The first is that greater numbers of students undertake assessments in combinations of these subjects than in combinations of other subjects. The  second is that there is a… Read more

Before I trot out my starter-kit proposal, however, I need to make sure we are considering the same entity here, so let me first offer a definition of formative assessment and, after that, provide a brief rationale for why more teachers should be using it.