Assessment can often have a negative connotation for many educators. Grades, rankings, time, effort, frustration, misrepresentation, standardized tests etc. are often associated with assessment but it doesn’t have to be bad. Assessment for and as learning can be very powerful!
The teaching profession is a calling, a calling with the potential to do enormous good for students. Although we haven’t traditionally seen it in this light, assessment plays an indispensable role in fulfilling our calling. Used with skill, assessment can motivate the unmotivated, restore the desire to learn and encourage students to keep learning, and it can actually create-not simple measure- increased achievement.
Stiggins et.al 2006
Based on this notion, I was working with educators last week on assessment for and as learning and unpacking some of our assessment practices in school. Some assessment practice impact learning and others, despite our best intentions, end up hindering the learning process.
Here is a list that we came up with and some others that we added from comments on Twitter.
Assessment Practices That
| Improve the Learning Process | Hinder the Learning Process |
| Transparent learning targets Co-constructing success criteria Relationships Examples (strong and weak) Co-constructed Self reflection Goal setting Multiple attempts Tracking progress over time Peer assessment Collaboration Clear Structure Mentoring/ conferring Multiple attempts Authentic Multiple ways of representing knowledge |
Timed tests Lack of high-quality resources Red marks Communicating in grades or percentages Isolated feedback “great job” Bias (implicit and explicit) Narrow view of smart Past experiences/ beliefs No clear focus/ structure Fixed pacing guides Tracking Rubrics that are overwhelming Deficit focused Conflating behavior and skills Grading homework and practice Averaging Grades |
What would you add or revise?
Thank you for showing the factors of what hinder practice and what helps with learning process! It is very useful!
I whole-heartedly agree with these lists. Especially grading homework and practice. Grading should never be based upon compliance, but rather than on learning. Equating learning as percentages in the grade-book is distracting to the process.