Assessment Matters 5: 2013

Whether and how to assess key competencies is a subject of debate and constitutes a main challenge in the implementation of key competencies within the New Zealand curriculum. The use of rubrics in criteria-based assessment may not take into consideration the situated and emergent nature of learning because the assessment criteria are constructed before task performance occurs. An inductive assessment approach can be employed to discover what the learners know, understand, or can do, without… Read more

Informal formative assessment practices, which occur as part of the dialogic interactions happening in the everyday classroom, are not well understood by many teachers. The successful implementation of formative assessment practices is not widespread in school classrooms. This article examines one aspect of these dialogic interactions—namely, the use of teacher questioning—and argues that the potential exists for teachers to make use of the many formative assessment opportunities that occur… Read more

Research has suggested that using early literacy data to inform instruction can prevent reading failure. However, little is known about how teachers learn to effectively link their instruction to student data. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate how first-grade teachers used early literacy student data to inform instruction. This study also explored factors that influenced teachers’ data use. Participants were 20 first-grade teachers in a suburban district located in the… Read more

Feedback on students’ written assignments has been deemed critical for improvement. Although teachers’ and students’ views on feedback have been examined, school leaders’ perceptions of what constitutes effective feedback remain unclear. This study investigates school leaders’ perceived quality of feedback that a teacher may provide, with teacher responses formulated based on Hattie and Timperley’s (2007) typology of feedback. We randomly assigned school leaders (n=103) to five… Read more

This article introduces the Research, Analysis and Insight into National Standards (RAINS) project, a study of how six schools are enacting the National Standards introduced into New Zealand’s primary and intermediate schools from October 2009. The article provides some background to the National Standards and the RAINS research before concentrating on findings from the first year of the study (2011). The most important of these findings were that the RAINS schools’ responses to the National… Read more

In Sweden, systematic reviews have prompted a strong government focus on implementing formative assessment in science and mathematics education. However, the intention behind this investment—to improve Sweden’s position in TIMSS and PISA appears to overlook the difficulty of putting research into practice. The purpose of this study is to explore the problems associated with incorporating formative assessment into classroom work by focusing on the experiences of a physics teacher who… Read more

Margaret Carr and Wendy Lee. (2012). Learning stories: Constructing learner identities in early education. London: Sage. 168 pp. ISBN: 9780857020932 (pbk); ISBN: 9780857020925 (hbk); ISBN: 9781446258194 (ebk). Reviewed by Alex Gunn, University of Otago

Peter Hay and Dawn Penney. (2013). Assessment in physical education: A sociocultural perspective. London and New York: Routledge. 150 pp. ISBN13: 978-0-415-60272-3 (hbk); ISBN13: 978-0-203… Read more