CHAPTER 3: ASSESSMENT AND TEACHING—

PROVIDING FEEDBACK TO ENHANCE LEARNING

OBJECTIVES

By the end of this chapter, you should be able to: o o o o identify key concepts that
ensure assessment and reporting focus on learning evaluate the importance and
relevance of those concepts to classroom contexts identify a variety of approaches that
will promote assessment for learning appreciate the external contexts in which the
assessment and reporting of student learning are constructed. Assessment can be used
for many purposes— to select students for higher education; to rank students, or even
countries, in order to establish an order from highest to lowest; to decide who will
progress from one stage of schooling to another; or to monitor student progress at
different stages of schooling. In all of these cases, assessment of learning takes place.
It is summative in nature, it provides no opportunities to try again if the first attempt
is not successful, and it is ‘high stakes’ in nature, as the outcomes have very
significant implications for students— especially for those who do not do well. Yet,
assessment of learning serves very particular purposes, and these are usually related to
the broader social, political and economic contexts that have come to the fore in many
countries (Métais and Tabberer 1997). These contexts will undoubtedly continue to be
important as the pace of change continues, and in particular as technological
innovation drives change in almost every aspect of life. Such changes have the
potential to alter radically the role and function of schools, including approaches to
assessment and reporting. But assessment can achieve more than these broad
purposes: assessment can also be used to improve learning. When it is properly
designed, assessment provides feedback to students, leads to re-teaching and provides
extra opportunities for practice. Assessment of this kind— assessment for learning—
can contribute towards a supportive school environment and can help to create a
culture of learning. If schools are to be ‘social anchors’ (Kennedy 1999), providing
students with safe and secure environments, focusing on assessment for learning is an
important objective. .

KEY CONCEPTS AND ISSUES FOR ASSESSMENT

Over time, assessment experts have developed sophisticated ways to ensure that the
assessment process is one that can be trusted to deliver fair and reliable judgments
about students’ learning. As important as these processes are in providing confidence
in assessment, there is not always agreement about the purpose and function of
different forms of assessment. For this reason it is often important to be able to
contextualise assessment in terms not only of the conceptual issues that characterise it
but also of the values underlying it. As has already been shown in Chapter 1, teachers
are not the only ones with an interest in assessment, and therefore assessment often
needs to be considered within the broad social, political and economic environments
that influence schools. Taken together, there are many complexities associated with
assessment— conceptual, educational and social— and it will be helpful to
understand these. To assist in such understanding, this chapter deals with the
following topics:
• designing valid, reliable and fair assessment
• educational values underpinning assessment and reporting
• external contexts influencing assessment and reporting.

DESIGNING VALID , ASSESSMENT

Irrespective of which type of assessment is used, assessment of learning or assessment
for learning, there are some common features that should characterise all assessment
practices. The results of assessment need to reflect as accurately as possible what
students know and are able to do. Stakeholders— students, parents and the
community— need to have confidence that the results have not been produced by any
systematic or random errors. It is for this reason that assessment tasks need to be
valid, reliable and fair. The specific meaning of these terms will be discussed later. It
is important to recognise here that the accuracy of any assessment is directly related to
whether the results can be taken to represent real learning on the part of students.
Inaccuracies in the assessment process are poor, not to say misleading, indicators of
learning. The more accurate the assessment, the more confidence there is that results
represent real learning progress on the part of students. The following paragraphs
indicate important ways to improve the accuracy of assessment. The first issue to be
discussed is the requirement that assessment tasks be valid. There are several aspects
relating to the concept of validity that have undergone a good deal of rethinking in
recent times. Traditionally, the validity of an assessment task ‘is tied to the purposes
for which an assessment is used’ (Dietel, Herman and Knuth 1991). In more
traditional measurement terms, ‘validity is the extent to which a test measures what it
was designed to measure’ (Gipps 1994, p. 58). Messick (1989) extended these views
of validity by incorporating ideas about the social consequences of assessment. Where
such consequences are negative (e.g. constantly depressed results for certain groups,
such as girls, leading to declining participation rates in certain curriculum areas), then
Messick would argue that the validity of the assessment has to be called into question.
As a further extension of the concept of validity, and with specific reference to
performance assessment, Wiggins (1990, p. 1) suggested that ‘test validity should
depend in part upon whether the test simulates real world “tests” of ability’. This is an
attempt to highlight context, relevance and engagement as the key qualities of an
assessment activity, rather than simple links to specific curriculum objectives. Central
to these expanded notions of validity are the different types of evidence that can be
used to judge the validity of an assessment task (Gipps and Murphy 1994, p. 23). The
variety of evidence that can be collected and the different aspects of validity that can
be explained are outlined in Table 3.1.
Aspect Evidence that can be collected about different aspects of validity

Not all assessment tasks can demonstrate all aspects of validity. Messick (1989) has
argued that construct validity is at the heart of assessment. Gipps (1994) has pointed
out that ‘construct validity is needed not only to support test interpretation, but also to
justify test use’. She also argued strongly for the importance of consequential validity,
and this highlights a focus on the social and educational consequences of assessment.
Construct validity needs to be built into an assessment task from the very beginning.
If the purpose of the assessment is to gain some understanding of students’
mathematical reasoning or language comprehension, then specific tasks must be
designed to elicit responses that will clearly demonstrate student understanding within
those broad domains. Tasks that cannot be related to the broad domain being assessed
are not valid tasks.
Another approach that will assist both construct and content validity is to make the
selection of tasks a collegial decision. A moderation process can be used to reach
agreement on whether tasks are related to a broad domain or to specific curriculum
objectives, and how they might be improved to make them relate better. Collegial
decisions, sometimes referred to as panel judgments, are well-recognised processes
for determining content validation (Rudner and Farris 1992). There are other
processes for task validation, but the collegial approach is probably the most useful
and efficient for schools.
Authentic assessment, as referred to throughout this book, places particular emphasis
on construct validity, although of a different type. Assessment tasks, if they are to be
considered ‘authentic’, must be challenging, relevant and engaging for students. As
Wiggins (1990) has pointed out, they must reflect real-world contexts and situations
that will confront students outside of school. The reason these can be considered
criteria for valid assessment tasks is that student performance on decontextualised,
abstract and theoretical assessment tasks may well be a reflection of the nature of the
tasks themselves and not a true reflection of student understanding. If learning is to be
the focus of assessment, then it is important that assessment tasks provide the
opportunity for students to demonstrate what they know and are able to do. Authentic
assessment, more than any other form of assessment, seeks to ensure that the task
itself engages students and provides the best opportunity to demonstrate the kind of
learning that has taken place.
A second issue to be discussed is the requirement that assessment tasks produce
reliable or consistent results. Traditionally, assessment tasks are considered to be
reliable when they get the same results from students irrespective of when they are
administered. Such approaches to determining reliability have been outlined by Gipps
(1994, p. 67). These include: multiple administrations of the same tests (test/ retest);
administration of multiple forms of tests designed to measure the same underlying
construct (parallel forms); and comparing performance on two halves of a test (split-
half procedure). In addition, consistency in marking can be addressed by having
multiple markers for a single assessment task (inter-rater reliability) or having an
assessment task marked on two different occasions by the same marker (intra-rater
reliability).
The underlying similarity in all of the above approaches is that they assume
consistency of task performance by students. Each approach is designed to produce a
‘measure’ of consistency, and in traditional measurement theory this measure is
usually represented by a statistical correlation. The higher the correlation between the
results of successive administrations of the test, performance on parallel forms of the
test, performance in two halves of the test and so on, the more reliable the items are
said to be.
This is a very traditional way of regarding reliability, but it cannot be applied to all
forms of assessment— especially those used in classrooms on a day-to-day basis. In
addition, the technical requirements for determining reliability in this way are often
beyond the resources of schools. Nevertheless, reliability and consistency are
important if confidence is to be maintained in the outcomes of assessment. There are
some quite specific efforts that can be made to ensure greater consistency in
assessment, and these represent an alternative to the more measurement-oriented
approaches described above.
Masters and Forster (1996, p. 6), for example, relate reliability to the amount of
evidence or information that is used to make a judgment about student learning: ‘in
general, the greater the amount of evidence used in making an estimate, the more
reliable that estimate’. This approach calls for multiple measures rather than reliance
on a single assessment task. Gipps (1994) has suggested a wholesale shift in thinking
about reliability, away from traditional approaches based on statistical assumptions
towards approaches based on the conditions surrounding assessment. She talks of
consistency in task administration, in the interpretation of assessment criteria by
markers, and in the application of the same standards to judging performance. What
these do is help to provide some indication that the results are due to what students
actually know, rather than some other variable in the external environment. In the
same way, processes such as moderation can be used to help markers understand the
requirements for assessment and to make them aware of how other markers have
approached the assessment process. These have the effect of reducing any variance in
marking that might come from extraneous factors.
In relation to moderation, there is now considerable evidence that teachers who
engage in consensus moderation processes are able to reach agreement very quickly
on such things as assessment criteria and their application to specific tasks. Where
worked samples are used as the basis for discussion, teachers can explain why they
made particular decisions and can modify those decisions if necessary after the
discussion. Such approaches work well for high-stakes assessment, where it is
necessary to establish some comparability of marking across schools, but can also be
used at the school level where different teachers are involved in assessing groups
doing the same task. The purpose of consensus moderation is to have a group of
markers reach agreement about criteria and standards for marking so that a piece of
assessment work will get the same mark irrespective of who marks it or where it is
marked. This is particularly important when different teachers are involved in
assessing multiple classes using the same assessment task.
Valid and reliable assessment tasks will ensure that there is a solid foundation for the
assessment process. Yet, valid and reliable tasks also need to be fair. Not all students
come to assessment tasks with the same attributes, life opportunities, values and
predispositions. As far as possible, assessment tasks should not be based on
requirements that will favour one individual or group over another. In particular, tasks
can be biased in favour of boys rather than girls, one ethnic group over another,
European Australians over Indigenous Australians, students from high-income groups
over students from low-income groups, and students whose first language is English
over students whose first language is not English. Childs (1990) provides a good
definition of bias in assessment and, while it is referring specifically to gender bias,
the general principles it outlines can be applied to all forms of structural bias in
assessment:
A test is biased if men and women with the same ability levels tend to obtain different
scores. The conditions under which a test is administered, the wording of individual
items, and even a student’s attitude toward the test will affect test results. These
factors may change with time as tests are administered differently, as items are
revised, and as students feel more or less comfortable taking the test. The error caused
by these factors will randomly affect both men and women.
Another type of error is caused by factors which do not change. Known as systematic
error, it is the result of characteristics of the examinees that are stable (such as gender
or race) and that are characteristics other than those the test is intended to measure.
Gender bias in testing is often the result of such systematic error. (Childs 1990, p. 1)
Teachers can be alert to this kind of bias by paying attention to the results of
assessment. Where results seem to be favouring groups or individuals (as outlined
above), then close attention needs to be paid to the assessment tasks to see how these
might be biased. It might be the form of those tasks (e.g. multiple-choice questions,
essays, demonstrations), the content of the tasks (e.g. the content might assume
certain knowledge that has nothing to do with what is being assessed and is more
likely to be familiar to one particular group) or the marking of the completed tasks,
where judgments are called for on the part of the marker and there has been
insufficient marker training to ensure high inter-rater reliability. In this situation,
markers can be guided by their own perceptions of what is required, rather than by the
need to make an assessment of what students know and are able to do.
The detection of bias of any kind requires that teachers record their results in ways
that enable them to examine easily the results for different groups. The easiest way to
examine differences is to split the results for boys and girls. Depending on the class,
however, there may be other groups to examine as well: English as a first or second
language, ethnic groups where these are large enough to warrant it, European
Australians and Indigenous Australians, or any other significant groups where bias
might affect results. The reason for doing this is to ensure that the results of
assessment genuinely reflect what students know and are able to do and are not the
result, even in part, of systematic error.

EDUCATIONAL VALUES UNDERPINNING ASSESSMENT AND REPORTING

The conceptual issues that can be addressed to make assessment valid, reliable and
fair are clearly important. Yet there are broader issues that define the role and function
of assessment for the wide range of stakeholders who take an interest in it. What kind
of assessment, for what kind of students, and for what purposes? These questions
have been answered in numerous ways in recent times and there appears to be some
convergence of thought among educators. However, educators are not the only
stakeholders and they do not always have the power to influence the decision makers,
who often get alternative advice. In this section, it is the views of educators on the
broad issues confronting assessment that are highlighted. In the following section,
these issues are considered in broader social, political and economic contexts.
There is remarkable agreement among educators on the need to relate assessment to
teaching and therefore to what goes on in classrooms. Such agreement can stand in
opposition to the use of standardised and often decontextualised assessment regimes
external to the school and unrelated to classroom practice. In the United States,
Wiggins (1992a, p. 33) has made the point that circling ‘correct answers to problems’
does not test a full range of knowledge and this cannot be ‘the aim of teaching’. In
Australia, Blackmore (1988, p. 7) takes this view a step further by referring to
‘technicist modes of assessment’ that promote assessment as a device for social
selection and meritocratic advancement. From a United Kingdom perspective,
Broadfoot (1992, p. 5) has pointed to the role of assessment in creating ‘a market
among schools based on published test results’. She was, of course, referring
specifically to reforms put in place by the Conservative Thatcher governments.
However, successive UK governments, both Labour and Conservative/Liberal, have
not reversed this trend. Both federal and state/territory governments in Australia are
also supportive of market-like mechanisms in the public sector and this accounts for
the developments of the My School website referred to in Chapter 2. When the results
of student assessment are used to rank schools, even implicitly, the assessment is not
being used just for meritocratic purposes, as outlined by Blackmore (1988), but to
create a kind of ‘market’ for schools so that parents can ‘choose’ the most successful
schools for their children. In these contexts, where assessment comes under
considerable social pressure, how do educators conceptualise what might be called
‘good practice’ in assessment? As might be expected, there is not a uniformity of
views within the profession.
Wiggins (1989; 1992a, p. 27; 1992b; 1993), for example, places his faith in the
development of more authentic forms of assessment. He sees no value at all in simple
multiple-choice tests that are unrelated to what teachers and students do in
classrooms. He wants assessment tasks that are ‘authentic and meaningful’ with
contexts that are ‘rich, realistic, and enticing’ linked to ‘genuine benchmarks not
arbitrary cut scores or provincial norms’. Yet he does not dismiss large-scale, high-
stakes assessment processes. Rather, he sees such processes underpinned with a
different assessment regimen based on the use of performance-based assessment
items. He points to many education systems in the United States where such
approaches have been used. His fundamental point is that teaching and assessment are
inextricably linked and that this relationship is best consolidated with assessment that
is meaningful, relevant and engaging for students.
Blackmore (1988, pp. 56– 7) puts forward the idea of ‘educative assessment based on
a critical pedagogy’. This has already been referred to in Chapter 2. The important
point to note here, however, is that it provides a view of assessment as ‘integral to
learning as a process of feedback and as a dialogue between those actively
participating in the learning environment’. Blackmore’s view attempts to remove the
power relationships inherent in any assessment process and to locate assessment in the
context of democratic and participatory classrooms. In such contexts, assessment is
really part of the everyday communication that goes on in the classroom, and it would
allow for the questioning of the purposes of some kinds of assessment and their
replacement with alternatives. Assessment in this context is about learning: about
learning to question, and about taking action when things need to be changed.
A somewhat different but not altogether unrelated response comes from Broadfoot,
who sees assessment as a way of promoting learning:
The first thing to do is to encourage more effective learning and then to use
assessment to encourage the desire to learn. We need to teach children how to learn.
We do not have a theory of how children actually learn, but we are now beginning to
appreciate how assessment can help them to learn. (1991, p. 11)

One way Broadfoot sees of advancing this cause is in better recording and reporting
processes. She was a strong advocate of records of achievement, which she saw as
one way of recognising ‘the whole range of student achievement and assert[ing] the
need to motivate and encourage students’ development’ (Broadfoot 1991, p. 13).
Assessment from this perspective is not so much about ‘sifting and sorting’ as about
‘celebrating achievement’ and recognising it publicly. There is also a strong indication
that, for Broadfoot, learning is for all students and not just some. This means that
assessment is primarily concerned with individuals and their progress, rather than
with ranking and rating individuals against one another.
More recently, Broadfoot’s approach has been taken up with an increased emphasis
on what has been called ‘assessment for learning’. There are different ways to express
what is meant by assessment for learning:
Assessment for learning . . . acknowledges that assessment should occur as a regular
part of teaching and learning and that the information gained from assessment
activities can be used to shape the teaching and learning process. (Curriculum
Corporation n.d.)
and
Assessment for Learning is the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use
by learners and their teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where
they need to go and how best to get there. (Assessment Reform Group 2002)

What these different approaches have in common is a focus on the classroom,

teachers and students. Assessment for learning highlights assessment as a regular part
of the teaching process and its capacity to provide feedback that can help students to
improve their learning. In the broader context of escalating large-scale testing
programs, assessment for learning hands assessment back to teachers and students. An
example of assessment for learning is formative assessment ‘when the evidence is
actually used to adapt the teaching to meet student needs’ (Black and Wiliam 1998).
Considerable evidence has been advanced to show that improving formative
assessment has the potential to improve not just learning but also the contexts and
conditions for learning to flourish: ‘the quality of teacher/pupil interactions, the
stimulus and help for pupils to take active responsibility for their own learning, the
particular help needed to move pupils out of the trap of “low achievement”, and the
development of the habits necessary for all students to become lifelong learners’
(Black and Wiliam 1998). Specific strategies to put assessment for learning into
practice will be dealt with in Chapter 4.
The one thing that the views of Wiggins, Blackmore, Broadfoot, and Black and
Wiliam have in common is the central relationship between teaching, learning and
assessment. An important issue for teachers, therefore, is how they negotiate the
multiple demands on their time and practice in order to construct assessment practices
that acknowledge the relationships between teaching and assessment and assessment
and learning. This is an issue of educational values, and it is central to the purpose and
function of schools. It is a singular contribution that teachers can make to creating
classrooms that genuinely reflect a concern for students, a concern for their learning
and a concern for their progress.
That the classroom is the prime site for teaching/learning/assessment is attested to by
writers other than those referred to above (e.g. Nuttall 1986; Nitko 1995; Gipps 1994).
A major issue that follows from this view is to ensure that the processes of
teaching/learning/assessment taking place in classrooms are understood and valued
outside of schools. The progress that students make in their learning is at the very
least of interest to their parents. Increasingly, as noted earlier, other members of the
community— such as employers and politicians— are taking an interest in what is
happening in classrooms. How can teachers satisfy the twin expectations of regarding
teaching/learning/assessment as classroom-focused and of meeting broader
community needs for information on student progress?
Rowe and Hill (1996) describe the work that has been done in Australia using subject
profiles as a framework for reporting on student progress. Such profiles are currently
not exactly the same across all states and territories (this may change with the
proposed national curriculum), but there is a general orientation to outcomes-based
assessment and reporting in most jurisdictions. The advantage of the methodology
that Rowe and Hill discussed is that the results of classroom assessment activities can
be reported in relation to local, state and even national standards. A full range of
assessment tasks can be used to assist teachers to make judgments about student
progress, and they can be used for purposes such as diagnosis of learning difficulties,
monitoring of progress, and either formative or summative assessment. In this
process, assessment is classroom-based: reporting has multiple purposes and
functions.
This is not to say that the assessment process is an easy one, as indicated by the
following description of what teachers are expected to do in making judgments about
student progress in relation to state or national standards in English and mathematics:
. . . teachers are required to rate a student’s level of achievement with reference to
indicators for each of the nine bands (labelled A– I) of the reading, writing and spoken
language strands of the English Profiles, and for each of the twelve levels (labelled ‘1’
to ‘12’) of the number and space strands of the Mathematics Profile. On class
recording lists, a score of ‘3’ is typically recorded if all the behaviours associated with
a given band/level are consistently displayed by the student, ‘2’ if most of the
behaviours are present, ‘1’ if some of the behaviours are beginning to be developed,
and ‘0’ if none of the behaviours have yet to be observed. The ratings for each
band/level are then added together to give a total score out of 27 for each of the
English Profile strands, or 36 for each strand of the Mathematics Profiles. (Rowe and
Hill 1996, p. 27)
This extract is worth quoting in full because it conveys the complexity of the
assessment process. Yet, Rowe and Hill provide considerable evidence that when
teachers are provided with the right kind of professional development, they can make
the required judgments with some degree of reliability. One possible approach that
draws on teachers’ judgments is to regard the assessment profiles developed for
NAPLAN as standards against which classroom assessments can be reported.
Appropriate professional development can be provided to assist teachers to calibrate
their own assessments in relation to what are now being used as national assessment
standards. This would bring together classroom-based approaches to assessment and
national reporting processes to provide feedback to students, to their parents and to
teachers themselves. If used properly, such approaches have the potential to move
educational assessment towards better ends and lead to less reliance on
decontextualised testing programs. To be successful, however, teachers need to be
supported with targeted support for professional development.
P.39

EXTERNAL CONTEXTS IN FLUENCING ASSESSMENT AND

REPORTING
As shown in Chapter 1, schools are a part of the broad social, political and economic
structures of society. As such, schools both respond to and influence that society.
Assessment and reporting, as core functions of schools, quite naturally come under
the scrutiny of groups and individuals who are external to schools but who see
themselves as having a stake in the outcomes of schooling. This scrutiny creates a
number of important issues that schools and their communities have to learn to
negotiate. In this section, three of those issues are discussed: accountability, school
reform, and the social purposes of schooling.

Assessment, accountability and politics

There are increasing accountability requirements for schools, but none are more
pressing or publicly visible than the requirement for all students to develop basic
skills of literacy and numeracy. To keep schools accountable, there is now a National
Assessment Program. There is an increasing tendency to publicise the results of tests
in numeracy, literacy, civics and citizenship and science, although there is still a
somewhat fragile consensus that prevents ‘league tables’ being published that pit
school against school in the achievement stakes. Nevertheless, headlines such as
‘Alarming slip in high school literacy levels’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 14 June 2007)
demonstrate how large-scale assessments, as distinct from classroom assessments, are
designed not so much for learning as for accountability. The existence of national
testing programs is not enough on its own to ensure accountability, because there are
critics of the way these programs are developed. Donnelly (2002), for example,
argued that ‘the reality is that the national literacy and numeracy benchmarks are
fundamentally flawed and, compared with overseas benchmarks, substandard’. Such a
criticism goes beyond accountability to show the highly politicised nature of
assessment within the Australian community.
The main issue here for teachers is that schools are being held accountable for literacy
and numeracy standards through an assessment process that is for the most part
external to schools. In some jurisdictions, such as Queensland and the Australian
Capital Territory, teachers are integrally involved in the assessment process. But in
most jurisdictions they are not. The challenge for teachers is to try to make these
external assessment programs relevant to their ongoing teaching and to student
learning without ‘teaching to the test’. There are no signs that such programs will
disappear in the future, irrespective of which political party is in office. This issue will
be discussed further in Chapter 8. As much as educators might proclaim the virtues of
classroom assessment, as shown earlier in this chapter, the reality is that teachers have
to cope with a range of assessments being used on their students, including external
assessments. Making use of these assessments so that they can influence teaching and
learning remains a significant challenge for the future. Alloway and Gilbert (1998)
made a good attempt at ‘reading’ benchmark data and its implications for teaching,
and more work of this kind is needed.

School reform and the economy

School reform is a very big item on the agenda of most governments, including the
Gillard government. Often, the promise of school reform is linked to an instrumental
agenda that seeks to raise the economic competitiveness of the nation. This has been
an international trend since the 1990s and there is little sign that it is abating. Student
achievement levels are often taken as a surrogate measure for the success that schools
are having with a particular reform agenda. In both the United States and the United
Kingdom, such scores are given a public airing so that schools can be compared. In
Australia, this process has thankfully been avoided. Nevertheless, there is a pervasive
view in Australia that if only schools could do more to enhance student achievement
the nation would do much better economically. This is a considerable pressure to
place on schools, and it is often behind the rationale for restructurings, reviews and
reform initiatives. How can schools be changed to make them more efficient
producers of human learning? What kind of competitive advantage can a nation, or a
state or territory, obtain by re-jigging its school system this way and that?
This is a difficult issue for schools to deal with, because their function is to monitor
student learning over time and to design effective teaching that can help students to
improve their learning. The links between these processes and the economy are very
distant ones for classroom teachers. Yet, teachers do have an important role to play in
developing local assessment processes that are educationally valid and that deliver the
kind of information that stakeholders external to the school see to be important. By
recognising the centrality of assessment and reporting processes to local and national
interests, schools can show how professional approaches to assessment can deliver
what is required. Where the profession can do this, it can perhaps avoid the worst
excesses of external assessment and put assessment to useful ends and purposes.
Teachers might not be able to end the instrumental culture that ties schools to the
national economy, but they can demonstrate that there are preferable ways of
conducting assessment and that these are likely to enhance, rather than diminish,
learning. This would make an important contribution to national understanding
about the role and function of schools.

Schools and their social purposes

Since their inception, schools have been concerned with broad social purposes, and it
is important that they continue to be so. Assessment is not an end in itself, and it
should not be allowed to dominate the lives of students in schools. Assessment has its
purposes: it is a means to an end—a social end. Its purpose is to help students and
their parents understand what progress is being made in learning, how much of the
journey has been completed successfully, how far there is to go and what needs to be
accomplished along the way. Assessment provides a feedback loop for teachers,
students and parents so that they can appreciate what steps need to be taken next.
Classrooms are about teaching and learning, and it is these contexts that provide the
best home for assessment.
Schools remain cultural institutions that seek to engage students with values, skills
and knowledge that will help them to become effective and productive citizens. What
is taught is as important as measuring what students have learned. Measuring
inconsequential learning assists neither students nor the society to which they are
expected to contribute. In the end, it is the content of schooling that will provide
young people with pathways to the future. That schools can provide a measure of how
much has been learned is an adjunct to the learning itself. But it is not a substitute for
it. Schools need to ensure that there is an environment and culture in which
meaningful learning can take place. Designing assessment for learning can help
students to demonstrate how they are progressing against important goals and
outcomes that will help them not just in the classroom but in the broader society of
which they are a part.

SUMMARY
 Assessment tasks that can promote learning must have a number of characteristics
to ensure that they have the confidence of students, parents and the community.
They need to be valid: they must be challenging and demanding tasks with some
relevance to real-world contexts; they must yield information that can be used to
make judgments about student performance in broad domains of knowledge and
skills, as well as in relation to specific curriculum objectives; and the social
consequences of the assessment activity should not be negative. They need to be
reliable: the results should be based on achievement on multiple tasks; tasks
should be administered in a consistent way; and there should be agreement on the
interpretation of assessment criteria, and on any reference to performance
standards or benchmarks. They also need to be fair: the requirements of the task
should not favour one individual or group over another. Assessment tasks that
lack these qualities will always be suspect and questionable.
 Resolving the conceptual issues associated with assessment does not resolve
broader issues, such as what kind of assessment for what purposes. Educators
have consistently argued for assessment practices that are integrated with the
processes of teaching and learning and that are underpinned by agreed
educational values. Not all forms of assessment to which students are subject
meet these criteria. There are some encouraging trends in large-scale assessments
that support such an approach, although there is by no means consensus within
the community.
 Schools are under continuous scrutiny, and there are constant demands for
schools to deliver outcomes that will meet community expectations. Inevitably,
this means that students will at times be subject to assessment practices endorsed
by those external to schools but that do not always reflect agreed educational
values.
 Schools serve broad social purposes, and it is important that assessment and
reporting reflect these purposes. Assessment should be concerned with significant
content and learning that can help students to become effective and productive
citizens.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. How would you explain to your colleagues at a staff meeting why assessment needs
to be valid, reliable and fair?
2. How can assessment be integrated with teaching to become assessment for
learning?
3. What is the relationship between assessment for learning and the assessment of
learning?
4. How might the results of external assessment be used to promote students’
learning? What are the difficulties involved?
5. What would different stakeholders hope to gain from the system-wide monitoring
of student achievement? How might stakeholders other than educators be convinced
of the educational values underlying assessment and reporting?

CHAPTER 4: