The Central Role of Assessment in Pedagogy

Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 2004

The completion of the first ten years of this journal is an occasion for review and reflection. The main issues that have been addressed over the ten years are summarized in four main sections: Purposes, International Trends, Quality Concerns and Assessment for Learning. Each of these illustrates the underlying significance of the themes of principles, policy and practice, which the journal highlights in its subtitle. The many contributions to these themes that the journal has published illustrate the diversity and complex interactions of the issues. They also illustrate that, across the world, political and public pressures have had the effect of enhancing the dominance of assessment so that the decade has seen a hardening, rather than any resolution, of its many negative effects on society. A closing section looks ahead, arguing that there is a move to rethink more radically the practices and priorities of assessment if it is to respond to human needs rather than to frustrate them.

Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice,, 2008

Critical Quarterly, 2000

2000

Policy Futures in Education, 2015

This paper discusses the emergence of assessment for learning (AfL) across the globe with particular attention given to Western educational jurisdictions. Authors from Australia, Canada, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand, Norway, and the USA explain the genesis of AfL, its evolution and impact on school systems, and discuss current trends in policy directions for AfL within their respective countries. The authors also discuss the implications of these various shifts and the ongoing tensions that exist between A fL and summative forms of assessment within national policy initiatives.

Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 2004

This paper explores ten common themes concerning assessment practice in Australian education across the six states and two territories. The themes are: (1) a strong curriculum base influencing assessment, (2) the incorporation of school‐based assessment in all certification, (3) preference for standards‐referenced assessment, (4) respect for teacher judgement, (5) increasing vocational education delivery within schooling, (6) multiple pathways to future

Teachers College Record, 2014

The Gordon Commission on the Future of Assessment in Education was created to consider the nature and content of American education during the 21st century and how assessment can be used most effectively to advance that vision by serving the educational and informational needs of students, teachers, and society. The work of the commission is both timely and well situated relative to other significant changes in the educational landscape. Among those changes is the fact that the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics and English Language Arts (CCSSI, 2010a, 2010b) and the Next Generation Science Standards (Achieve, 2013) stress problem solving, creativity, and critical thinking over the memorization of isolated facts and decontextualized skills (Pellegrino & hilton, 2012). Assessments meant to embody and reinforce those standards are under development and will be given for the first time in English language arts and mathematics in 2015. Currently, and for the foreseeable future, America's educators will be deeply engaged in implementing the standards and preparing for the new assessments. These developments have heightened awareness among educators and state and federal policy makers of the critical relationships among more rigorous standards, curriculum, instruction, and appropriate assessment, and have created an opportunity to address issues of long standing. This brief essay capitalizes on that opportunity to bring about a fundamental reconceptualization of the purposes of educational assessments. The goal is to further stimulate the national conversation about assessment and its relationship to learning.

Studies in Educational Policy and Educational Philosophy, 2003

In this article I raise some questions about international comparative assessments and the impact these assessments seems to have on the field of education and curriculum. In doing this I exemplify the discussion with two different concepts of assessment. One early methodology of assessment carried out with the scientific cooperation of the IEA-mostly exemplified in the TIMSS study-and a newer methodology carried out by the OECD-exemplified in the PISA 2000 study. By doing this I will show some interesting results with a curriculum sensitive assessment and a newer post-curriculum sensitive assessment. In this development the theory of literacy have come to play an important role with an interesting implication from measuring knowledge to assessing competencies. These results are discussed as an international educational hegemony which consists of structural adjustments and a development of knowledge assessments carried out by international organisations and the impact an international educational hegemony has on the field of education and curriculum and the way we speak of them.

1991

This paper is intended to raise questions and identify some of the problems posed by assessment within an educational setting. The principal aim is to offer a springboard for discussion, rather than to propose a specific plan of action. It is also worth stressing that assessment designates more than just examinations (public or otherwise). As teachers and educators, we are constantly making assessments of our students, passing official, unofficial, conscious and unconscious judgements. These are judgements which inevitably influence our attitudes to our jobs, our performance and our teaching or administrative styles. They also have wide-ranging repercussions on the attitudes, performances and future of our students. They are judgements based on a complex series of assumptions which we habitually make about, for instance, what education involves, the nature of schooling, school structures and their aims, the learning process as it relates to human development. What follows is largely inspired by a desire to identify and scrutinize some of the most recurrent of these assumptions.