Assessment Matters 4: 2012

Assessment Matters 4 explores questions of assessment practice and how assessment practices known to support learning might be facilitated. Articles discuss:

• implementing assessment for learning
• maintaining a community of practice around moderation processes
• making overall teacher judgements
• incorporating likeability in low-stakes performance tasks
• assessing learning for summative and accountability purposes without resorting to… Read more

Assessment for learning (AfL) has been touted as one of the most promising pedagogical approaches for enhancing student learning. Research suggests that engaging students in AfL helps to improve their achievement, develop metacognition and support motivated learning and positive self-perceptions. However, despite these promises, there have been notable barriers impeding teachers’ use of AfL in their classrooms. Time and class sizes; conceptual confusions related to AfL; perceived… Read more

This article uses Wenger’s (1998) theory of communities of practice as a framework to describe the complexities of moderation processes when these processes are intended to support teacher learning in ways that subsequently help lift student achievement. We draw on a case study in which we observed teachers working together to moderate students’ writing in a school that had an established reputation for good assessment practice. We discuss these observations in relation to Wenger’s four… Read more

Central to New Zealand National Standards is the concept of overall teacher judgements (OTJs). This paper examines the concepts of OTJs and standards through international literature and experiences of a sample of New Zealand teachers in 2010. Standards contain expectations—what is, what could be and what might be desirable— implicit degrees of performance. Teacher capacity to judge current and future performance is important. With multiple opportunities to gather pertinent information,… Read more

The characteristics of performance tasks that make them appealing to students in a low-stakes environment were investigated with data from the National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP) of New Zealand. Random samples of Year 4 (8-year-old) and Year 8 (12-year-old) students were assessed using a set of performance tasks in the areas of mathematics, information skills and social studies. Students indicated whether they particularly liked or disliked each task, or whether they were neutral in… Read more

Recent changes to New Zealand’s senior secondary school qualifications include the introduction of standards that allow students to demonstrate evidence of competency in literacy and numeracy via “naturally occurring evidence”. Such evidence can potentially be drawn from routine learning activities in a wide range of subject areas. However, teachers of other subjects may not have the literacy or numeracy expertise to identify and leverage relevant opportunities, or to accurately judge the… Read more

This paper suggests The New Zealand Curriculum Exemplars for Learners with Special Education Needs and the accompanying booklet, Narrative Assessment: A Guide for Teachers, can potentially transform the ways we think about teaching, learning, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment for the group of students considered most likely to be learning within level 1 of The New Zealand Curriculum for most of their time at school. The complex relationship of beliefs and… Read more

Directions for Assessment in New Zealand (DANZ), published in March 2009, was written to provide strategic advice to the Ministry of Education to guide and inform the design of new and improved strategies, policies and plans for assessment. The central premise of that advice is that all young people should be educated in ways that develop their capacity to assess their own learning. Students who have well-developed assessment capabilities are better able and motivated to access,… Read more