Learning Assessment

1. What is assessment?

Assessment is the systematic process of collecting data to provide insight into students’ learning experiences. Through assessment, educators can provide invaluable feedback to students, parents/carers, the wider community, government and school officials. Moreover, assessment can be a powerful tool for learning that can direct students’ learning experiences throughout their education and beyond (Readman & Allen, 2013). Assessment can be broadly divided into two categories: summative and formative. More recently, the concept of assessment has expanded to include the following types of assessment: assessment for learning, assessment of learning, and assessment as learning.

The term ‘Assessment for learning’(AFL)

Other strategic questioning practices include open/closed questions; wait time; think time; turn to your partner; think/pair/share; prompts; hands down, and discussion lines. Feedback in the formative sense has to provide specific advice about what the student can do in order to improve their performance (Glasson, 2009). Peer feedback is a process whereby students offer one another advice about their work and refer to a success criteria to identify areas for improvement. In addition, peer feedback incorporates advice on how to achieve that improvement, usually guided by the teacher. Black and Wiliam (1998) describe student self-assessment as ‘…not an interesting option or luxury; it has to be seen as essential.’ Student self-assessment offers students a proactive approach to learning that requires them to reflect upon the learning process critically; understand the learning intentions/objectives and success criteria; use the success criteria to guide their learning; act on feedback received from teacher/peers; set learning targets of problematic concepts; and manage the organisation of their learning. Making formative use of summative assessment means using data derived from summative assessments to inform future student learning. For teachers, this means

Assessment as learning encourages students to take responsibility for their learning and reflect upon how they can move forward in their learning (Earl, 2013).Unlike formative and summative assessment, assessment as learning takes into account the way pupils participate in the assessment process. The conceptual underpinnings of assessment as learning lie in the process of self-assessment. Accordingly, student self-assessment is the guiding principle in assessment as learning. In contrast to formative and summative assessment where students are usually receptacles of assessment information which they receive in the form of oral or written feedback, assessment as learning encourages the student to develop