Assessment Matters 6: 2014

Assessment Matters 6: 2014

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No matter where we are in the world, assessment issues continue to cause debate and contention. Continual international comparisons of student performance, such as PISA, as well as those used within national and local jurisdictions, fuel media and political debates. The political desire for accountability and “good news” in student results also appeals to a range of discourses within societies: to raise the achievement of particular groups of students; as an… Read more

Assessment practices in higher education focus on evaluating student learning. Institutions are now expected to provide improvement-oriented assessments that help students to improve their work. Student learning outcomes are enhanced if students understand assessment and respond to it in a self-regulating fashion. Beliefs about assessment have been shown to have adaptive and maladaptive relationships to assessment. The 33-item Students’ Conceptions of Assessment… Read more

This article details the use of Q methodology (Q) for eliciting different views of classroom assessment among Singaporean teachers. Q is purported to be useful for studying the tacit decision-making process within the wide-ranging practical and controversial situations that Q researchers tend to prefer to investigate. This article asks a key question: Is Q helpful for investigating the possible multiplicity and significant relationships of views of classroom… Read more

Since 2007, substantial restructuring of New Zealand’s national school curriculum has occurred. This change has been paralleled by extensive revisions to New Zealand’s high-stakes assessment system, the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), which makes the New Zealand context an important one for investigating how teachers come to terms with mandated assessment innovation. The New Zealand curriculum learning area Learning Languages, dedicated… Read more

This article describes the use of Rasch measurement to improve criteria-based analytical marking keys. The instruments and data described result from a research project which investigated the use and assessment of digital portfolios in the Western Australian senior secondary design course. The study involved two phases and two separate data sets. A criteria-based analytical marking key was used to score the portfolios in Phase 1, and a refined and improved… Read more

The implementation of a new national curriculum and standards-referenced assessment in Australia has been an opportunity and a challenge for teacher assessment practices. In this case study of teachers in two Queensland schools, we explore how annotating student or exemplar assessment tasks could support teacher assessment practice. Three learning conversations between the researchers and the teacher teams are interpreted through the lens of Bernstein’s (1999)… Read more

The report Directions for Assessment in New Zealand (Absolum, Flockton, Hattie, Hipkins, & Reid, 2009) envisages an “assessment capable” system where students are empowered to become self-regulated learners. This article explores the concept of assessment capability. It considers what it means to be an assessment-capable teacher in New Zealand, the lessons that have been learned in this area, and why the realisation of the assessment-capable student… Read more

Gayle Eyers reviews Lorna M. Earl. (2013). Assessment as learning: Using classroom assessment to maximize student learning (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. 144 pp. ISBN: 978-1-4522-4297-2.

Gordon Stobart reviews Valentina Klenowski and Claire Wyatt-Smith. (2014). Assessment for education: Standards, judgement and moderation. Sage Publications, 171 pp. ISBN 978-1-4462-0841-0.

The general editor of Assessment Matters invites interested people to submit articles in the field of assessment in education. The intended readership for these articles is researchers, policy makers and practitioners.

Submission date for the 2015 issue
Contributors to the 2015 issue are requested to submit their manuscript by 1 November 2014.