The Role of Assessment in a Learning Culture

LORRIE A. SHEPARD

Educational Researcher, Vol 29, No. 7, pp. 4-14 Historical Perspectives: Curriculum, Psychology,
and Measurement
The historical framework I present here is familiar to you.

T his article is about classroom assessment—not the kind

of assessments used to give grades or to satisfy the ac-
countability demands of an external authority, but
rather the kind of assessment that can be used as a part of
Yet, it is important to remind ourselves where traditional
views of testing came from and to appreciate how tightly
entwined these views of testing are with past models of cur-
riculum and instruction—because dominant theories of the
instruction to support and enhance learning. On this topic, past continue to operate as the default framework affecting
I am especially interested in engaging the very large num- and driving current practices and perspectives. Belief sys-
ber of educational researchers who participate, in one way tems of teachers, parents, and policymakers derive from
or another, in teacher education. The transformation of as- these old theories.
sessment practices cannot be accomplished in separate tests A more elaborated version of the paradigm that has pre-
and measurement courses, but rather should be a central dominated throughout the 20th century can be shown as a
concern in teaching methods courses. set of interlocking circles (Figure 2). The central ideas of so-
The article is organized in three parts. I present, first, an cial efficiency and scientific management in the curriculum
historical framework highlighting the key tenets of social circle were closely linked, respectively, to hereditarian the-
efficiency curricula, behaviorist learning theories, and "sci- ories of individual differences and to associationist and be-
entific measurement." Next, I offer a contrasting social- haviorist learning theories. These psychological theories
constructivist-conceptual framework that blends key ideas were, in turn, served by scientific measurement of ability
from cognitive, constructivist, and sociocultural theories. In and achievement.
the third part, I elaborate on the ways that assessment prac- In the early 1900s, the social efficiency movement grew
tices should change to be consistent with and support social- out of the belief that science could be used to solve the prob-
constructivist pedagogy. lems of industrialization and urbanization. According to so-
The impetus for my development of an historical frame- cial efficiency theory, modern principles of scientific man-
work was the observation by Beth Graue (1993) that "as- agement, intended to maximize the efficiency of factories,
sessment and instruction are often conceived as curiously could be applied with equal success to schools. This meant
separate in both time and purpose" (p. 291, emphasis taking F. W. Taylor's example of a detailed analysis of the
added). As Graue notes, the measurement approach to movements performed by expert bricklayers and applying
classroom assessment, "exemplified by standardized tests similar analyses to every vocation for which students were
and teacher-made emulations of those tests," presents a being prepared (Kleibard, 1995). Then, given the new asso-
barrier to the implementation of more constructivist ap- ciationist or connectionist psychology with its emphasis on
proaches to instruction. fundamental building blocks, every step would have to be
To understand the origins of Graue's picture of separa- taught specifically. Precise standards of measurement were
tion and to help explain its continuing power over present- required to ensure that each skill was mastered at the de-
day practice, I drew the chronology in Figure_l. A longer- sired level. And because it was not possible to teach every
term span of history helps us see that those measurement student the skills of every vocation, scientific measures of
perspectives, now felt to be incompatible with instruction, ability were also needed to predict one's future role in life
came from an earlier, highly consistent theoretical frame- and thereby determine who was best suited for each en-
work (on the left) in which conceptions of "scientific mea- deavor. For John Franklin Bobbitt, a leader in the social ef-
surement" were closely aligned with traditional curricula ficiency movement a primary goal of curriculum design
and beliefs about learning. To the right is an emergent, con- was the elimination of waste (1912), and it was wasteful to
structivist paradigm in which teachers' close assessment of teach people things they would never use. Bobbitt's most
students' understandings, feedback from peers, and stu- telling principle was that each individual should be educated
dent self-assessments would be a central part of the social
processes that mediate the development of intellectual abil-
ities, construction of knowledge, and formation of students' LORRIE A. SHEPARD IS a professor in the School of Education,
identities. The best way to understand dissonant current Campus Box 249, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO
practices, shown in the middle of the figure, is to realize 80309-0249. Her area of specialization is psychometrics and the
that instruction (at least in its ideal form) is drawn from uses and misuses of tests in educational settings. This article was
the emergent paradigm, while testing is held over from presented as the presidential address at the 2000 AERA Annual
the past. Meeting in New Orleans, LA.

4 EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER
 /
/ Social \
/
! Efficiency i Reformed Vision «
I Curriculum / i of Curriculum '
\

/ Hereditarian^^-X—— '
/ TheorvoflO A . i Cognitive & ' \ >
/ A • ' • .o 1 1 Scientific , I Traditional 1
Associationist & .. Instruction _ .. 1 i Constructivist | j Classroom ',
\ _ , . . \ 1 Measurement ' ! \ Testing / 'i Learning \ ; Assessment !
\ Behavionst W
\ Learning X j > Theories V ,'
\ Theories / \ /
\ * /
v„ ,/ v _ y
k Dissolution of Old Paradigm: New Views of Emergent Paradigm
(circa 1900s -2000+) Instruction/Old Views of Testing • (circa 1990s - 2000+)
(circa 1980s-2000+)

FIGURE 1. An historical overview illustrating how changing conceptions of curriculum, learning theory, and measurement
explain the current incompatibility between new views of instruction and traditional views of testing.

"according to his capabilities." These views led to a highly States from the beginning of the century to the present day.
differentiated curriculum and a largely utilitarian one that Recognizing the common paternity of behaviorist learning
disdained academic subjects for any but college prepara- theory and objective testing helps us to understand the con-
tory students. tinued intellectual kinship between one-skill-at-a-time test
Alongside these curriculum theories, Edward Thorndike's items and instructional practices aimed at mastery of con-
(1922) associationism and the b e h a v i o r l s m ^ F H u l l (1943), stituent elements.
Skinner (1938, 1954) and Gagne (1965) conceived of learn- Looking at any collection of tests from early in the cen-
ing as the accumulation of stimulus-response associations. tury, as shown in F i g u r e ^ one is immediately struck by
The following quotation from B. F. Skjnner is illustrative: h o w much the questions emphasized rote recall. To be fair,
at the time, this was not a distortion of subject matter
The whole process of becoming competent in any field caused by the adoption of objective-item formats. One hun-
must be divided into a very large number of very small dred years ago, various recall, completion, matching, and
steps, and reinforcement must be contingent upon the ac- multiple-choice test types, along with some essay ques-
complishment of each step. This solution to the problem tions, fit closely with w h a t w a s deemed important to learn.
of creating a complex repertoire of behavior also solves
However, once curriculum became encapsulated a n d rep-
the problem of maintaining the behavior in strength. .. .
By making each successive step as small as possible, the resented by these types of items, it is reasonable to say that
frequency of reinforcement can be raised to a maximum, these formats locked in a particular and outdated concep-
while the possibly aversive consequences of being wrong tion of subject matter.
are reduced to a minimum. (Skinner, 1954, p. 94) The dominance of objective tests in classroom practice
has affected more than the form of subject-matter knowl-
Note that this viewpoint promotes a theory of motivation edge. It has also shaped beliefs about the nature of evidence
as well as one of cognitive development. and principles of fairness. In a recent assessment project, for
Several key assumptions of the behavioristic model had example, both teachers and researchers were surprised to
consequences for ensuing conceptualizations of teaching find that despite our shared enthusiasm for developing al-
and testing: ternatives to standardized tests w e nonetheless operated
1. Learning occurs b y accumulating atomized bits of from different assumptions about h o w "standardized" as-
knowledge; sessments needed to b e in classrooms. More surprising
2. Learning is tightly sequenced and hierarchical; still, it was teachers w h o held beliefs more consistent with
3. Transfer is limited, so each objective must be explicitly traditional principles of scientific measurement. From the
taught; perspective of our teacher colleagues, assessment needed
4. Tests should be used frequently to ensure mastery be- to be an official event, separate from instruction (Bliem &
fore proceeding to the next objective; Davinroy, 1997). To ensure fairness, teachers believed that
5. Tests are isomorphic with learning (tests = learning); assessments h a d to be uniformly administered, so they were
6. Motivation is external and based on positive rein- reluctant to conduct more intensive individualized assess-
forcement of m a n y small steps. ments with only below-grade-level readers. Because of the
It is no coincidence that Thorndike was both the origina- belief that assessments h a d to be targeted to a specific in-
tor of associationist learning theory and the "father" of "sci- structional goal, teachers felt more comfortable using two
separate assessments for separate goals, "running records"
entific measurement," a n a m e given him by Ayers in 1918.
to assess fluency and written summaries to assess compre-
Thorndike and his students fostered the development and
hension rather than, say, asking students to retell the gist of
dominance of the "objective" test, which has been the single
a story in conjunction with running records. Most signifi-
most striking feature of achievement testing in the United

OCTOBER 2000 5
 The Curriculum of Social Efficiency

> Scientific management of schools like factories

• Carefully specified educational objectives
based on job analysis
• Utilitarian content, antagonism toward
academic content except for elite few
• Science of exact measurement, precise
standards
> Differentiated curriculum based on predicted
social roles

Hereditarian Theory of Intellit

• IQ as innate, unitary, and fixed

Associationist & Behaviorist Learning Theor/es\ Scientific Measurement

• Concept of mind replaced by stimulus-respons^
associations • IQ tests to sort pupils by ability
• Accumulation of atomistic bits of knowledge
• Learning tightly sequenced & hierarchical «Objective tests to measure
• Limited transfer, each objective taught explicitly\ achievement
• Test-teach-test to ensure learning
• Tests isomorphic with learning
• Motivation based on positive reinforcement of
many small steps

FIGURE 2. Interlocking tenets of curriculum theory, psychological theories, and measurement theory characterizing the
dominant 20th-century paradigm.

cantly, teachers wanted their assessments to be "objective," other, I predict that it will be something like this merged,
and this was the word they used. They worried often about middle-ground theory that will eventually be accepted as
the subjectivity involved in making more holistic evalua- common wisdom and carried into practice.) The three-part
tions of student work and preferred formula-based meth- figure (Figure 4) was developed in parallel to the three-part
ods, such as counting miscues, because these techniques historical paradigm to highlight, respectively, changes in
were more "impartial." curriculum, learning theory, and assessment. In some cases,
Any attempt to change the form and purpose of class- principles in the new paradigm are the direct antitheses of
room assessment to make it more fundamentally a part of principles in the old. The interlocking circles again are in-
the learning process must acknowledge the power of these tended to show the coherence and inter-relatedness of these
enduring and hidden beliefs. ideas taken together.
The cognitive revolution reintroduced the concept of
Conceptual Framework: New Theories of Curriculum, mind. In contrast to past, mechanistic theories of knowl-
Learning, and Assessment edge acquisition, we now understand that learning is an ac-
To consider how classroom assessment practices might be tive process of mental construction and sense making. From
reconceptualized to be more effective in moving forward the cognitive theory we have also learned that existing knowl-
teaching and learning process, I elaborated the principles of edge structures and beliefs work to enable or impede new
a "social-constructivist" conceptual framework, borrowing learning, that intelligent thought involves self-monitoring
from cognitive, constructivist, and sociocultural theories.1 and awareness about when and how to use skills, and that
(Though these camps are sometimes warring with each "expertise" develops in a field of study as a principled and

6 EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER
 New Stone Reasoning Tests in Arithmetic (1908) American History Examination, East High School
(Sam Everett and Effey Riley, 1928)
1. James had 5 cents. He earned 13 cents more and
then bought a top for 10 cents. How much money I. Below is a list of statements. Indicate by a cross (X)
did he have left? Answer: after it, each statement that expresses a social heritage of
the present-day American nation.
Place a (0) after each statement that is not a present-day
Sones-Harry High School Achievement Test, Part II (1929) social heritage of the American nation.
1. Americans believe in the ideal of religious
1. Write "25% of as "a decimal times." ( ) toleration.
2. Write in figures: one thousand seven and four 2. Property in land should be inherited by a man's
hundredths ( ) eldest son.
3. Citizens should have the right to say what taxes
should be put upon them.
The Modern School Achievement Tests, Language Usage
II. To test your ability to see how an intelligent knowledge
a. off of past events helps us to understand present-day
1. I borrowed a pen b. off of my brother. situations and tendencies.
c. from (Note: Write your answer in essay form on a separate
sheet of paper.)

The Barrett-Ryan Literature Test: Silas Marner State your reasons for every position assumed.
1. Dolly Winthrop is: 4. Take some economic fact or group of facts in
a. an ambitious society woman, c. a haughty lady. American History about which we have studied and
b. a frivolous girl. d. a kind, helpful neighbor. briefly show what seems to you to be the actual
significance of this fact in the past, present and future
K of America.
Examples of True-False Objective Test (Ruch, 1929) 5. Show this same three-fold relationship using some
political fact or facts.
1. Tetanus (lockjaw) germs usually enter the body 6. Show this same three-fold relationship using a
through open wounds. True False religious fact or facts.

FIGURE 3. Examples from some of the earliest 20th-century ' standard" tests and objective-type classroom tests.
Note: The first four examples are borrowed from Ross (1941); the last two, including the Everett-Riley American History
Examination, appeared in Ruch (1929).

coherent way of thinking and representing problems, not other should help students gain experience with the ways
just as an accumulation of information. of thinking and speaking in academic disciplines. School
At the same time, rediscovery of Vygotsky^ (1978) and the learning should be authentic and connected to the world
work of other Soviet psychologists led to the realization that outside of school not only to make learning more interest-
what is taken into the mind is socially and culturally deter- ing and motivating to students but also to develop the abil-
mined. Fixed, largely hereditarian theories of intelligence ity to use knowledge in real-world settings. In addition to
have been replaced with a new understanding that cogni- the development of cognitive abilities, classroom expecta-
tive abilities are "developed" through socially supported tions and social norms should foster the development of
interactions. Although Vygotsky was initially interested in important dispositions, such as students' willingness to
how children learn to think, over time the ideas of social persist in trying to solve difficult problems.
mediation have been applied equally to the development of To be compatible with and to support this social-con-
intelligence, expertise in academic disciplines, and meta- structivist model of teaching and learning, classroom as-
cognitive skills, and to the formation of identity. Indeed, a sessment must change in two fundamentally important
singularly important idea in this new paradigm is that both ways. First, its form and content must be changed to better
development and learning are primarily social processes. represent important thinking and problem solving skills in
These insights from learning theory then lead to a set of each of the disciplines. Second, the way that assessment is
principles for curriculum reform. The slogan that "all stu- used in classrooms and how it is regarded by teachers and
dents can learn" is intended to refute past beliefs that only students must change. Furthermore, to enable this latter set
an elite group of students could master challenging subject of changes within classrooms, I argue that teachers need
matter. A commitment to equal opportunity for diverse help in fending off the distorting and de-motivating effects
learners means providing genuine opportunities for high- of external assessments.
quality instruction and "ways into" academic curricula that
are consistent with language and interaction patterns of
home and community (Au & Jordan, 1981; Brown, 1994; Improving the Content and Form of Assessments
Heath, 1983; Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). Classroom routines The content of assessments should match challenging sub-
and the ways that teachers and students talk with each ject matter standards and serve to instantiate what it

OCTOBER 2000 7
 Reformed Vision of Curriculum

> All students can learn.

• Challenging subject matter aimed at higher
order thinking & problem solving
• Equal opportunity for diverse learners
> Socialization into the discourse & practices
of academic disciplines
> Authenticity in the relationship between
learning in and out of school
» Fostering of important dispositions and
jits of mind
EnacrRjent of democratic practises in a
caring community

Cognitive & Constructivist Darning Theories

ssroom Assessment
Intellectual abilities are socially and culturally
developed. Tallenging tasks to elicit higher order thinking
« Learners construct knowledge and understandings • Addresses learning processes as well as
within a social context. learning outcomes
« New learning is shaped by prior knowledge and • An on-going process, integrated with instruction
cultural perspectives. • Used formatively in support of student learning
• Intelligent thought involves "metacognition" or • Expectations visible to students
self monitoring of learning and thinking. • Students active in evaluating their own work
> Deep understanding is principled and supports • Used to evaluate teaching as well as student
transfer. learning
Cognitive performance depends on dispositions
• and personal identity.

FIGURE 4. Shared principles of curriculum theories, psychological theories and assessment theory characterizing an emer-
gent, constructivist paradigm.

means to know and learn in each of the disciplines. There- cause this aspect of reform has received the most attention
fore, a broader range of assessment tools is needed to cap- to date. Although I cannot claim that common practice has
ture important learning goals and processes and to more moved significantly beyond the end-of-chapter test, there
directly connect assessment to ongoing instruction. The are nonetheless already promising models being developed
most obvious reform has been to devise more open-ended and used in literacy, mathematics, science, history, and so
performance tasks to ensure that students are able to rea- forth. For example, PatJTJiomp_son_(1995) provided the set of
son critically, to solve complex problems, and to apply their questions in Figure 5 to illustrate how non-algorithmic prob-
knowledge in real-world contexts. In addition, if instruc- lems can help students "see" a mathematical idea. Two ad-
tional goals include developing students' metacognitive ditional open-ended tasks are shown in Figure 6 and serve
abilities, fostering important dispositions, and socializing to illustrate the point that good assessment tasks are inter-
students into the discourse and practices of academic dis- changeable with good instructional tasks.
ciplines, then it is essential that classroom routines and
corresponding assessments reflect these goals as well. This Protecting Classroom Assessment From the Negative
means expanding the armamentarium for data gathering to Effects of High-Stakes Accountability Testing
include observations, clinical interviews, reflective journals, The arguments advanced thus far—in support of social-
projects, demonstrations, collections of student work, and constructivist learning theory, challenging curriculum for
students' self-evaluations, and it means that teachers must all students, and imaginative new forms of assessment—
engage in systematic analysis of the available evidence. follow closely the rhetoric of standards-based reform. I
In this article, I do not elaborate further on needed have avoided using that term, however, because, from the
changes in the content and form of assessment primarily be- beginning, standards-based reform has additionally placed

8 EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER
 the use of assessment for learning, which I consider in the
next section, it is important to recognize the pervasive neg-
ative effects of accountability tests and the extent to which
externally imposed testing programs prevent and drive out
thoughtful classroom practices. In presenting these ideas to
an audience of educational researchers and teacher educa-
tors, I used the image of Darth Vader and the Death Star to
a) Can you see 3/5 of something? convey the overshadowing effects of accountability testing.
b) Can you see 5/3 of something?
The negative effects of high-stakes testing on teaching and
c) Can you see 5/3 of 3/5?
d) Can you see 2/3 of 3/5? learning are well known (e.g., Madaus, West, Harmon,
e) Can you see 1 •*• 3/5? Lomax, & Viator, 1992). Under intense political pressure, test
0 Can you see 5/4 + 3/4? scores are likely to go up without a corresponding improve-
ment in student learning. In fact, distortions in what and
how students are taught may actually decrease students'
FIGURE 5. An example of a set of questions designed to
conceptual understanding. While some had imagined that
help students visualize part-whole relationships as a way to teaching to good tests would be an improvement over low-
understand fractions (Thompson, 1995). level basic-skills curricula, more recent experiences remind
us that all tests can be corrupted. And all can have a cor-
great faith in externally imposed standards and "tests worth rupting influence on teaching (Whitford & Jones, 2000).
teaching to." More recently, the standards movement has Moreover, as Darling-Hammond (1988), McNeil (1988),
been corrupted, in many instances, into a heavy-handed and others have pointed out, external accountability testing
system of rewards and punishments without the capacity leads to the de-skilling and de-professionalization of teach-
building and professional development originally proposed ers, even—in my own state recently—to the denigration of
as part of the vision (McLaughlin & Shepard, 1995). Al- teaching. High-stakes accountability teaches students that
though both large-scale, system-monitoring assessments effort in school should be in response to externally admin-
and classroom assessments could benefit from the same istered rewards and punishment rather than the excitement
kinds of substantive reform and alignment of content with of ideas. And accountability-testing mandates warn teach-
important learning goals, there is more at stake here than re- ers to comply or get out (or move, if they can, to schools with
form of assessment format. If we wish to pursue seriously higher scoring students).

Grade 4 Mathematics Problem Set Grade 5 Science Tasks

(Mathematical Sciences Education Board, 1993) (California Learning Assessment System, 1994)

All of the bridges in this part are built with yellow rods for Fossils
spans and red rods for supports, like the one shown here. This You are a paleontologist (a scientist who studies past life forms).
is a 2-span bridge like the one you just built. Note that the You were digging and just discovered a large group of fossils.
yellow rods are 5 cm long. Directions:
Open BAG A and spread the fossils on the table.
yellow

a=i
Now, build a 3-span bridge.
Use the hand lens to carefully observe each fossil.
Sort your fossils into groups. You may make as many groups
as you like.
Write answers to these questions in your journal.
1. Draw your groups. Circle and number each group.
2. How many groups do you have?
a How many yellow rods did you use? 3. List the number of each group and tell why you sorted
b. How long is your bridge? your fossils into these groups.
c. How many red rods did you use?
d. How many rods did you use altogether? BAG B has a fossil that was found in the area near where you
were digging.
Try to answer these questions without building a 5-span
bridge. Directions:
If you want, build a 5-span bridge to check your answers. Open BAG B.
a. How many yellow rods would you need for a 5-span Take out the new fossil and compare it with the other fossils
bridge? on the table.
b. How long would your bridge be? 4. Does this new fossil fit into one of your groups? If YES,
c. How many red rods would you need? how are they alike?
d. How many rods would you need altogether? 5. If the new fossil does not fit into any of your groups,
describe a new group in which this fossil would fit.
3. Write a rule for figuring out the total number of rods you 6. Choose one of the fossils and draw a picture of it.
would need to build a bridge if you knew how many spans 7. In what kind of habitat (environment) do you think
the bridge had. this fossil might have once lived? Why?

FIGURE 6. Examples of open-ended assessment tasks intended to engage students in thinking and reasoning about important
content.

OCTOBER 2000
 Again, these ideas are not new. It is likely that teacher ed- "every teacher who wants to practice formative assessment
ucators say something about this litany of complaints in must reconstruct the teaching contract so as to counteract
teacher preparation courses. But, what do diatribes against the habits acquired by his pupils" (p. 92). Tunstall and Gipps
testing teach candidates about more meaningful forms of as- (1996) have studied classrooms in Great Britain where
sessment? Given their own personal histories, our students teachers have developed more interactive ways of dis-
are able to hate standardized testing and at the same time re- cussing work and criteria with students as a means to re-
produce it faithfully in their own pre-post testing routines, distribute power and establish more collaborative relation-
if they are not given the opportunity to develop and try out ships with students.
other meaningful forms of assessment situated in practice. To accomplish the kind of transformation envisioned, we
So we must teach them how to do assessment well. have not only to make assessment more informative, more
Also, teacher candidates need to find support and a way insightfully tied to learning steps, but at the same time we
of protecting their own developing understandings of con- must change the social meaning of evaluation. Our aim
structivist assessment practices from the onslaught of test- should be to change our cultural practices so that students
driven curricula. I have in mind here something like the and teachers look to assessment as a source of insight and
double-entry teaching that teachers had invented in Linda help instead of an occasion for meting out rewards and pun-
McNeil's (1988) study of the Contradictions of Control. In con- ishments. In the paragraphs that follow, I summarize briefly
trast to teachers who trivialized content and taught defen- several specific assessment strategies: dynamic assessment,
sively as a means to control and win compliance from stu- assessment of prior knowledge, the use of feedback, teach-
dents, McNeil found that excited and engaging teachers in ing for transfer, explicit criteria, student self-assessment, and
the magnet schools she studied found ways to resist and evaluation of teaching. Each of these strategies serves a so-
hold off the pernicious effects of proficiency testing on their cial, motivational purpose as well as a cognitive, informa-
curriculum. Specifically, they helped students keep parallel tional one. None of these strategies by themselves will be ef-
sets of notes, one set for the real knowledge and one for fective if they are not part of a more fundamental shift in
the knowledge they would need for the test. They did this classroom practices and expectations about learning.
rather than give over the entire course to the "fragments
Dynamic, On-Going Assessment
and facts" required on the test.
This is only one example of a strategy for resistance. As I In order for assessment to play a more useful role in help-
continue next to describe productive ways to use assessment ''£ ing students learn it should be moved into the middle of the
in classrooms, I emphasize the need sometimes to "mark" teaching and learning process instead of being postponed
informal assessment occasions for students as they occur as only the end-point of instruction. Dynamic assessment—
within the normal flow of classroom discourse—because finding out what a student is able to do independently as
this helps students become self-aware about how assess- well as what can be done with adult guidance—is integral
ment can help learning. Similarly, I believe we should ex- to Vygotsky's idea of a zone of proximal development. This
plicitly address with our teacher education students how type of interactive assessment, which allows teachers to pro-
they might cope "with the contesting forces of good and evil vide assistance as part of assessment, does more than help
assessment as they compete in classrooms to control cur- teachers gain valuable insights about how understanding
riculum, time, and student attitudes about learning. might be extended. It also creates perfectly targeted occa-
sions to teach and provides the means to scaffold next steps.
Using Assessment in the Process of Learning Although formal dynamic assessments are assumed to in-
volve an adult working with only one child, these ideas
A Learning Culture about social mediation of learning can be extended to
Improving the content of assessments is important but not groups, especially if students are socialized into the ways
sufficient to ensure that assessment will be used to enhance of talking in a community of practice and become accus-
learning. In this section, I consider the changes in classroom tomed to explaining their reasoning and offering and re-
practices that are also needed to make it possible for as- ceiving feedback about their developing competence as part
sessment to be used as part of the learning process. How of a social group.
might the culture of classrooms be shifted so that students Note that these ideas, based on activity theory and Lave
no longer feign competence or work to perform well on the and Wenger's (1991) concept of legitimate peripheral par-
test as an end separate from real learning? Could we create ticipation, provide a profoundly different view of motiva-
a learning culture where students and teachers would have tion from behaviorist reinforcement and create no separa-
a shared expectation that finding out what makes sense and tion between cognitive and motivational goals. According
what doesn't is a joint and worthwhile project, essential to to Lave and Wenger's theory, learning and development
taking the next steps in learning? of an identity of mastery occur together as a newcomer
I believe that our international colleagues are ahead of us becomes increasingly adept at participating in a commu-
in thinking about the difficulties of making these cultural nity of practice. If one's identity is tied to group member-
changes. Sadler (1998) in Australia, for example, writes about ship, then it is natural to work to become a more competent
"the long-term exposure of students to defective patterns of and full-fledged member of the group.
2
formative assessment" (p. 77). Perrenoud in Switzerland
(1991) notes that there are always certain students in a class Prior Knowledge
who are willing to work harder to learn more and who, there- Prior knowledge and feedback are two well-established
fore, go along with formative assessment. But other chil- ideas, the meaning of which may have to be reexamined as
dren and adolescents are "imprisoned in the identity of a bad learning theories are changed to take better account of so-
pupil and an opponent" (p. 92). According to Perrenoud, cial and cultural contexts. For example, assessing my prior

10 EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER
knowledge using a checklist or pre-test version of the in- Transfer
tended end-of-unit test may not be very accurate unless I There is a close relationship between truly understanding a
already have sophisticated experience with the teacher's concept and being able to transfer knowledge and use it in
measures and conceptual categories. Open discussion or new situations. In contrast to memorization—and in contrast
"instructional conversations" (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988) are to the behaviorist assumption that each application must be
more likely to elicit a more coherent version of students' rea- taught as a separate learning objective—true understanding
soning and relevant experiences and can be a much more is flexible, connected, and generalizable. Not surprisingly, re-
productive w a y for novice teachers to learn about the re- search studies demonstrate that learning is more likely to
sources brought by students from diverse communities. transfer if students have the opportunity to practice with a
In m y o w n experience working in schools, I have noticed variety of applications while learning (Bransford, 1979). Al-
two divergent sets of teaching practices that address stu- though there appears to be disagreement between cogni-
dents' prior knowledge. First, many teachers rely on a tradi- tivists and situativists regarding knowledge generalization
tional, pretest-posttest design to document student progress, (Anderson, Reder, & Simon, 1996), in fact, both groups of re-
but then do not use information from the pretest in instruc- searchers acknowledge the importance of being able to use
tion. At the same time, a significant n u m b e r of teachers, es- what one has learned in new situations (Bransford, Brown, &
pecially in reading and language arts, use prior knowledge Cocking, 1999). Cognitivists focus more on cognitive struc-
activation techniques, such as Ogle's (1986) KWL strategy, tures, abstract representations, and generalized principles
but without necessarily attending to the assessment in- that enable knowledge use in new situations, while situa-
sights provided. tivists are concerned about "learning to participate in inter-
We have a great deal of work to d o to develop and model actions in ways that succeed over a broad range of situa-
effective assessment strategies, for starting points as well as tions" (Greeno, 1996, p. 3).
for other stages of learning. One question w e may w a n t to In working with pre-service teachers, I have suggested
consider is whether assessment should become so much a that a goal of teaching should be to help students develop
part of normal classroom discourse patterns that scaffold- "robust" u n d e r s t a n d i n g s (Shepard, 1997). The term w a s
ing and ongoing checks for understanding are e m b e d d e d prompted by Marilyn Burns's (1993) reference to children's
(and therefore disguised). Or w h e t h e r assessment steps understandings as being "fragile"—they appear to know a
should be marked and m a d e visible to students as an es- concept in one context but not to know it w h e n asked in an-
sential step in learning. In our efforts to change the culture other w a y or in another setting. Sometimes this fragility oc-
of the classroom, it may be helpful, at least in the short term, curs because students are still in the process of learning and
to label prior knowledge activation techniques as instances sometimes because the framing of the problem, clues, and
of "assessment." What safer time to admit what you don't other supports available in the familiar context are not
know than at the start of an instructional activity? available in another. All too often, however, mastery ap-
pears pat and certain but does not travel to new situations
Feedback
because students have mastered classroom routines and not
We take it for granted that providing feedback to the learner the underlying concepts. To support generalization and en-
about performance will lead to self-correction and improve- sure transfer, that is, to support robust understandings,
ment. For the most part, however, the existing literature on "Good teaching constantly asks about old understandings
feedback will be of limited value to us in reconceptualizing in n e w ways, calls for new applications, and d r a w s new
assessment from a constructivist perspective, because the connections" (Shepard, 1997, p. 27). And good assessment
great majority of existing studies are based on behaviorist does the same. We should not, for example, agree to a con-
assumptions. Typically, the outcome measures are narrowly tract with our students which says that the only fair test is
defined, feedback consists of reporting of right and wrong one with familiar and well-rehearsed problems.
answers to the learner, and the end-of-study test may differ
only slightly from the prior measure and from instructional
Explicit Criteria
materials.
Frederiksen and Collins (1989) used the term transparency to
More promising are studies of scaffolding and naturalistic
express the idea that students must have a clear u n d e r -
studies of expert tutoring—but these studies also reveal how
standing of the criteria by which their w o r k will be as-
m u c h w e have to learn about effective use of feedback.
sessed. In fact, the features of excellent performance should
For example, Lepper, Drake and O'Donnell-Johnson (1997)
be so transparent that students can learn to evaluate their
found that the most effective tutors do not routinely correct
o w n work in the same w a y that their teachers would. Ac-
student errors directly. Instead they ignore errors w h e n they
cording to Frederiksen and Collins,
are inconsequential to the solution process and forestall errors
that the student has made previously by offering hints or ask- The assessment system (should) provide a basis for de-
ing leading questions. Only when the forestalling tactic fails veloping a metacognitive awareness of what are impor-
do expert tutors intervene with a direct question intended to tant characteristics of good problem solving, good writ-
force the student to self-correct, or they may engage in de- ing, good experimentation, good historical analysis, and
bugging, using a series of increasingly direct questions to so on. Moreover, such an assessment can address not only
guide the student through the solution process. According the product one is trying to achieve, but also the process
to Lepper et al.'s analysis, the tendency of expert tutors to of achieving it, that is, the habits of mind that contribute
use indirect forms of feedback when possible was influenced to successful writing, painting, and problem solving
by their desire to maintain student motivation and self- (Wiggins, 1989). (Frederikson & Collins, 1989, p. 30)
confidence while not ignoring student errors. This is a bal- Having access to evaluation criteria satisfies a basic fair-
ancing act that new teachers must learn to perform as well. ness principle (we should know the rules for h o w our work

OCTOBER 2000 U
will be judged). More importantly, however, giving stu- tivation and a sense of how to develop a classroom culture
dents the opportunity to get good at what it is that the stan- with learning at its center. Given that new ideas about the
dards require speaks to a different and even more funda- role of assessment are likely to be at odds with prevailing
mental sense of fairness, which is what Wolf and Reardon beliefs, teachers will need assistance to reflect on their own
(1996) had in mind when they talked about "making think- beliefs as well as those of students, colleagues, parents, and
ing visible" and "making excellence attainable." school administrators.
I am reminded of Linda Darling-Hammond's (1996) ac-
Self-Assessment knowledgement in her presidential address that John Dewey
Student self-assessment serves cognitive purposes, then, anticipated all of these ideas 100 years ago. But as Cremin
but it also promises to increase students' responsibility for (1961) explained, the successes of progressive education re-
their own learning and to make the relationship between forms never spread widely because such practice required
teachers and students more collaborative. As Caroline Gipps "infinitely skilled teachers" who were never prepared in
(1999) has suggested, this does not mean that the teacher sufficient numbers to sustain these complex forms of teach-
gives up responsibility, but that rather, by sharing it, she ing and schooling.
gains greater student ownership, less distrust, and more ap- So, we are asking a lot of ourselves and others. Nonethe-
preciation that standards are not capricious or arbitrary. In less, we must try again. This vision should be pursued be-
case studies of student self-evaluation practices in both an cause it holds the most promise for using assessment to im-
Australian and English site, Klenowski (1995) found that prove teaching and learning. To do otherwise means that
students participating in self-evaluation became more in- day-to-day instructional practices will continue to reinforce
terested in the criteria and substantive feedback than in and reproduce the status quo. Our goal should be to find
their grade per se. Students also reported that they had to ways to fend off the negative effects of externally imposed
be more honest about their own work as well as being fair tests and to develop instead classroom assessment practices
with other students, and they had to be prepared to defend that can be trusted to help students take the next steps in
their opinions in terms of the evidence. Klenowski's (1995) learning.
data support Wiggins's (1992) earlier assertion that involv-
ing students in analyzing their own work builds ownership Epilogue
of the evaluation process and "makes it possible to hold stu- „I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to pro-
dents to higher standards because the criteria are clear and /• vide at least a brief sketch of what we might do concretely
reasonable" (p. 30). to work toward a proposed vision of assessment in the ser-
vice of learning. Happily for an organization of researchers,
Evaluation of Teaching I suggest more research—but research of a particular kind
In addition to using assessment to monitor and promote in- embedded in the dilemmas of practice. I also suggest that
dividual students' learning, classroom assessment should we develop and pursue an agenda of public education to
also be used to examine and improve teaching practices. help policymakers and the general citizenry understand the
This includes both ongoing, informal assessments of stu- differences between large-scale, system monitoring tests
dents' understandings to adjust lessons and teaching plans and what we hope for from teachers on a daily basis.
as well as more formal and critical action-research studies.
As I have suggested with other assessment strategies, here A Program of Research
again I believe it will be helpful for teachers to make their To develop effective practices based on social-constructivist
investigations of teaching visible to students, for example, perspectives, it will be important to conduct studies in
by discussing with them decisions to redirect instruction, classrooms where instruction and assessment strategies are
stop for a mini-lesson, and so forth. This seems to be fun- consonant with this model. In many cases this will mean
damentally important to the idea of transforming the cul- "starting over again" and not assuming that findings from
ture of the classroom. If we want to develop a community previous research studies can be generalized across para-
of learners—where students naturally seek feedback and digms. For example, as suggested earlier, there are hundreds
critique their own work—then it is reasonable that teachers of studies on feedback but nearly all conform to behavior-
would model this same commitment to using data system- ist assumptions—instruction is of short duration, posttests
atically as it applies to their own role in the teaching and closely resemble pretests, feedback is in the form of being
learning process. told the correct answers, and so forth. New studies will be
needed to further our understandings of feedback provided
Conclusion in ways that reflect constructivist principles, for example, as
In conclusion, let me acknowledge that thissocial-construc- part of instructional scaffolding, assessment conversations,
tivist view of classroom assessment is an idealization. The and other interactive means of helping students self-correct
new ideas and perspectives underlying it have a basis in and improve. Similarly, the research literature on motiva-
theory and empirical studies, but how they will work in tion makes sweeping claims about the risks of evaluating
practice and on a larger scale is not known. Clearly, the abil- students, especially when they are tackling difficult prob-
ities needed to implement a reformed vision of curriculum lems. Yet, these findings are based on students' experiences
and classroom assessment are daunting. Being able to ask with traditional, inauthentic and normative forms of as-
the right questions at the right time, anticipate conceptual sessment, where students took little responsibility for their
pitfalls, and have at the ready a repertoire of tasks that will own learning, and criteria remained mysterious. If the class-
help students take the next steps requires deep knowledge room culture were to be shifted dramatically, consistent
of subject matter. Teachers will also need help in learning to with social-constructivist learning perspectives, then the
use assessment in new ways. They will need a theory of mo- effects of assessing students on difficult problems would

72 EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER
have to be reexamined. Thus we face the challenge of trying ity testing programs—what the content should be, whether
to find out what works at the same time that we are at- there should be high-stakes consequences, and so forth. In
tempting to create new contexts and new cultural expecta- contrast, we have much to learn from assessment experts in
tions that will fundamentally alter the very relations we are the United Kingdom who have pursued a fundamentally dif-
trying to study. ferent course of action emphasizing the key role of forma-
We also need to study what makes sense in terms of tive assessment in effective teaching. Beginning in 1989, re-
teacher development and change. Many of the most excit- searchers representing England, Northern Ireland, Scotland,
ing current assessment projects are being conducted in and Wales met as a Task Group of the British Educational Re-
classrooms but still have researchers at the helm, taking search Association and ultimately established themselves as
central responsibility for the development of curriculum, the Assessment Reform Group. The group is concerned with
assessment tasks, and technology-based delivery systems. policy issues and has attempted to have a dialogue with
We know that for teachers to make meaningful changes in policymakers. Although members of the group have been in-
pedagogical beliefs and accompanying practices, they them- volved with either the development or evaluation of the Na-
selves will need to try out and reflect on new approaches tional Assessment Programme, they "have become more and
in the context of their own classrooms (Putnam & Borko, more convinced of the crucial link between assessment, as
1997). In deference to the enormous constraints on teachers' carried out in the classroom, and learning and teaching" (As-
time, we should also look for ways to introduce new prac- sessment Reform Group, 1999, p. 1). They commissioned a
tices incrementally, for example, to develop a portfolio for major review of research examining the impact of assessment
one subject area or one curriculum unit before trying to do on students' learning (Black & Wiliam, 1998a), and they have
it in all subject areas. To consider how particular classroom issued two policy-oriented "little books" summarizing the
assessment strategies might be used to create a learning cul- important tenets of assessment for learning and urging gov-
ture as well as improve achievement, teams of teachers in ernment policies that would give more than lip service to the
schools might undertake projects aimed at any one of the importance of improving formative assessment (Assessment
assessment elements. For example, one team might want to Reform Group, 1999; Black & Wiliam, 1998b). They have ar-
introduce self-assessment and conference with students gued for (a) refraining of bureaucratic requirements, such as
about how (or whether) self-assessment helps them learn. standards for teacher education and school inspections, to
Another team of teachers might agree to meet regularly to engure that teachers are skilled assessors of students' learn-
share examples of "assessment insights," that is, specific oc- ing; (b) increased funding, especially for teacher professional
casions when assessment data from a student, written or development; and (c) reducing obstacles, especially the in-
oral, helped the teacher intervene in a better way because fluence of external tests that dominate teachers' work.
she understood what the student was thinking. While an- Assessment experts in the U.S. should consider whether
other group of teachers might focus on using feedback ex- a similar public education endeavor would be worthwhile
plicitly to help students make their work better. and what message we would choose to convey. At a mini-
When I say that our research efforts should be embedded mum, we should try to get beyond the currently popular
in the dilemmas of practice, I am echoing the call for more sound-bite of "instructionally relevant assessment," because,
collaborative forms of research advanced in recent reports unfortunately, legislators and school board members have
by the National Research Council (1999) and National Acad- taken up this slogan with the intention that once-per-year
emy of Education (1999) as well as by Alan Schoenfeld (1999) accountability testing can be used to diagnose individual
in his presidential address to the AERA. In contrast to a tra- student needs. Yes, end-of-year tests can be used to evalu-
ditional, linear progression from research to development ate instruction and even tell us something about individual
and dissemination, these authors argue for investing in re- students; but such exams are like shopping mall medical
search projects that would advance fundamental under- screenings compared to the in-depth and ongoing assess-
standings at the same time that they would work to solve ments needed to genuinely increase learning. By pursuing
practical problems in real-world settings. If researchers a public education agenda like that undertaken in the U.K.
and professional educators share responsibility for im- we could help policymakers understand the limits to what
proving educational outcomes, it is hoped that research can be accomplished with accountability tests (and thereby
will lead to continuous improvement of practice and not fend off their negative effects) and at the same time garner
require a separate translation phase to be useful. In the con- the support and flexibility that teachers and researchers will
text of an agenda for improving classroom assessment, this need to develop powerful examples and to enact more per-
model for research would mean conducting studies aimed vasive shifts in classroom practices.
at general explanatory principles regarding prior knowl-
edge, self-assessment, and the like, at the same time that
practical issues are addressed such as the initial obstacles Notes
of negative student attitudes, time seemingly stolen from
instruction, and the inevitable demand for better materials The work reported herein was supported in part by grants from the
and instructional tasks that elicit the kind of thinking and Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of
dialogue envisioned. Education, to the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and
Student Testing (CRESST) (Award No. R305B60002) and to the Center
for Research on Evaluation, Diversity and Excellence (CREDE) (Award
A Public Education Agenda No. R306A60001). The findings and opinions expressed in this article
do not reflect the positions or policies of the Office of Educational Re-
Researchers in the United States have engaged policymakers search and Improvement or the U.S. Department of Education.
and the public on the topic of testing but have focused almost 1
A more detailed discussion of this framework and supporting lit-
exclusively on the features of state and district accountabil- erature review are provided in Shepard (in press).

OCTOBER 2000 13
 2
Sadler (1998) uses the term formative assessment to mean assess- Lepper, M. R„ Drake, M. F., O'Donnell-Johnson, T. (1997). Scaffolding
ment "that is specifically intended to provide feedback on perfor- techniques of expert human tutors. In K. Hogan & M. Pressley (Eds.),
mance to improve and accelerate learning" (p. 77). He acknowledges Scaffolding student learning: Instructional approaches & issues. Cam-
that teachers may have difficulty using feedback in positive ways be- bridge, MA: Brookline Books.
cause of students' negative coping strategies developed in response Madaus, G. F., West, M. M., Harmon, M. C , Lomax, R. G., & Viator,
to past practices. K. A. (1992). The influence of testing on teaching math and science in
grades 4-12. Chestnut Hill, MA: Center of Study of Testing, Evalua-
tion, and Educational Policy, Boston College.
Mathematical Sciences Education Board. (1993). Measuring up: Prototypes
for mathematics assessment. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
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14 EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER