Assessment

The Nature and Purposes of

Educational Assessment

Paul Denley
Introductions
Who am I?

Who are you?

• What do you hope to get out of the unit?

• What experience do you bring?
 Aims of the unit

 To develop and apply a critical understanding of

some of the important contemporary issues and
discourses in assessment.
 To become familiar with some of the key terms and
concepts used in assessment.
 To share experience and ideas amongst practitioners
from a wide range of backgrounds.
 To contribute to your own professional development
in this field.
 by …

 considering principles, theories, practice and changes

in practice;
 considering the same in relation to your own
experience and practice;
 developing a framework/rationale for your own
theories and practice.
 Session content

 The nature of assessment in education

 What shall we assess and how?
 Assessment of/for/as learning
 Peer and self assessment
 Quality issues in assessment
 Referencing systems
 Who should assess and reporting
 Where is assessment going
 Assignment Presentations
Myths and Challenges
 Assessment ≠ Testing
 Assessment does not always
involve writing
 Assessment does not always have
to involve stress
 Assessment should always have a
clear purpose
 The tail should not wag the dog!
Some starting points
1. Is assessment about measuring or
learning, or both?
2. Is assessment about teaching or about
learning, or both?
3. Does assessment provide information
about the individual or the institution?
4. Is assessment for the teacher or the
student, or both?
5. Should assessment reflect the learning
process, or support it?
 A definition of assessment

Write down what comes to mind when you think of

assessment

Discuss with your neighbour(s) what you have written

about assessment

Can you agree on a definition?

Some key basic questions …

Why do we assess?
What do we assess?
How do we assess?
Who assesses?
When do we assess?
What do we do with the results?
 Why do we assess?

• Think of the various times when you assess

your students (or when you were assessed as
a student).

• Why are you assessing them? (Or why were

you assessed?) Do these change?

• What are the purposes?

• What are we doing when we assess?

 A working definition …

Assessment is about obtaining and interpreting

evidence about the achievement of learners to help
someone make decisions about those learners and/or
the teaching and learning process

(Evaluation is broader than assessment)

 A caveat

‘Assessment’ is NOT the same as ‘examining’

or ‘testing’.

They are just particular forms of assessment.

‘Assessment’ is not the same as ‘evaluation’.
 Assessment and Evaluation

We measure distance, we assess learning, and we

evaluate results in terms of some set of criteria

Perhaps assessment is more about collecting data

… and evaluation is about interpreting it.

Whilst these terms are connected they also have

different and distinct functions and purposes.
Obtaining evidence

Make a list of all the ways you can think of

for obtaining evidence about students’
achievement.
• Some ways are ‘formal’ – separate from
the everyday practice of the classroom;
• Some ways are ‘informal’ – part of the
teaching and learning activities of the
classroom.
Can you divide your list into formal and
informal ways of assessing?
Interpreting the evidence

What difficulties might there be in interpreting what

the evidence tells us about the learners and their
achievements?

How might we ensure that our interpretations are

correct?
Making decisions

What sort of decisions might be informed by

assessment data?
(Think about decisions at different levels: individuals,
classes, schools and wider society.)

Who makes these decisions and how do they use the

assessment data to make them?
The vital link!
Why do we assess?

Before we start teaching

… to discover what our students know/ don’t know …

can do/ can’t do

Diagnostic assessment
Why do we assess?

While we are teaching

… to monitor and support our students’ learning …

and our own teaching

Formative assessment
Why do we assess?

After we have finished teaching

… to summarise what our students have learned/ can

do … and to report on it

Summative assessment
For what purpose is the boy suggesting his assessment
grades will be used?

What impact might this use (or threatened use) have on

the teacher’s approach to teaching and assessment in her
classroom?
 Assessment …

 has a particular purpose

 involves a judgement or measurement by an ‘expert’

of a ‘learner’

 results in an outcome which should be linked to the

learner in some way and to the purpose in some
way
Some purposes of assessment
 obtaining information about abilities, skills,
knowledge …
 allocating students to groups, classes – if
homogeneity is required
 comparing progress – of individuals, groups …
 comparing progress – of teachers
 informing users – parents, teachers, students,
employers about progress and attainment
 One school’s assessment purposes

• To recognise and celebrate the variety of positive

achievements of our pupils
• To involve our pupils in taking responsibility for their
own learning
• To evaluate the effectiveness of our teaching
programmes
• To provide a summary document appropriate for
potential users
• To encompass the principles of equal opportunities
Consequences of assessment

These might be termed the intended consequences

of assessment.

What might some of the unintended consequences

be?
Unintended consequences of Assessment
• Labelling and consequent prejudice
• Self-fulfilling prophecy effect
• Excessive competition and individualism
• Curriculum backwash: teaching (and learning) for the
examination
• Replacement of the important by the measurable
• Reinforcement and legitimation of social
disadvantage
• Extrinsic goals replace intrinsic goals
• ‘Qualificationism’
• Acceptance of hierarchies
 Teaching to the Test?

“The result of any assessment is almost invariably used

to make inferences beyond the immediate items
assessed, in other words as an index of performance. If
it is easier to increase a student’s score on a test,
without increasing the student’s competence on the
domain, and the results of the test matter, then we
should not be surprised that the teacher’s efforts are
directed towards the indicator rather than the indicated.”

(Wiliam, D., 1992. Technical issues in criterion-referenced assessment: evidential

and consequential bases. Paper presented at the 18th annual conference of the
International Association for Educational Assessment, St Patrick’s College Dublin, 16
September 1992)
Or Measurement-Driven Instruction?

“If properly conceived and implemented,

measurement-driven instruction currently constitutes
the most cost-effective way of improving the quality
of public education.”

(Popham, J. W., 1987. The Merits of Measurement-Driven Instruction. Phi

Delta Kappan, 68(9), pp.679-682.)
(and see also the counter-argument in the article that follows this one)
 ‘High stakes’ assessment
Think of a formal test or examination that you would class
as ‘high stakes’ assessment:
• What are the ‘stakes’ involved? What do the students
(and/or the teachers) gain if they do well, or lose if they
do not do well?
• In what ways are students prepared for this
examination? How long before they take the exam does
the preparation start?
• Does the washback effect of this examination benefit
teaching and learning or have a negative effect?
A sociological account of assessment
Certification of competence: who wants to be
operated on by an incompetent surgeon?

Selection for limited opportunities: how do we

decide who gets what? How do we legitimate
exclusion?

Control of the individual and the system:

- quality control
- accountability
(Broadfoot 1996)
What do the learners think are the
purposes?
Purposes of SATs
Who are SATs for?
Assessment ~ a possible framework

“Assessment is the
flipside of learning”
Assessment ~ a possible framework
assessment

teaching learning
Assessment ~ a possible framework
assessment

pedagogy

curriculum learning
 A framework of learning-oriented
assessment*
Judging Maintaining
achievement standards

Promoting Tutors’
Students’
learning experiences of
experiences of
(and values
(and values
relating to)
relating to)
Assessment tasks assessment
assessment
as learning tasks

Students as Feedback as
self-evaluators feedforward

Desired
learning
outcomes

* Carless et al (2006) How Assessment Supports Learning

Evaluating Assessment?

“As someone who has spent his entire career doing

research, writing and thinking about educational testing
and assessment issues, I would like to conclude by
summarizing a compelling case showing that the major
uses of tests for student and school accountability over
the past 50 years have improved education and student
learning in dramatic ways.
Unfortunately, that is not my conclusion.”

Linn, R., 2000, Assessment and accountability, Educational Researcher, 29(2), pp4-16
 A paradigm shift in
educational assessment?

 From a ‘psychometric’ paradigm to an ‘educational’ one

 From a ‘traditional’ approach to an ‘authentic’ one

 From behaviourist views about learning to constructivist ideas

 From a testing and examination culture to an ‘assessment culture’

Beyond Testing, Caroline Gipps

The psychometric tradition
derived from intelligence testing

assumes innate, fixed attributes, ‘normally’ distributed in a

population

concerned with finding the ‘correct score’ for an individual

norm-referenced; interpretation by comparison

designed to differentiate between individuals

standardisation essential for comparisons

emphasis of reliability of instruments

 Educational assessment
seeks to measure competence rather than intelligence
competence recognised as developable and variable with time
and context

looks for ‘best’ rather than ‘typical’ performance

variable conditions of assessment; comparisons made difficult
aims to help and develop the individual rather than label
performance judged in relation to the individual not the group
reliability is not so ‘critical’
 Which paradigm?
• Can you identify aspects of the Psychometrics
Testing paradigm in your own experience of
educational assessment, or in your institution's
current practices?
• Can you identify aspects of the Educational
Assessment paradigm in your own experience
or practice?
• Is there room for both approaches in schools?
• Is each more appropriate than the other for
certain purposes?
 National Curriculum Assessment in England

National curriculum assessment (NCA) in England has been in place for

20+ years. It has its origins in a political desire to regulate education,
holding schools accountable. However, its form and nature also reflect
educational and curriculum concerns and technical assessment issues.

NCA in England has evolved over 20 years, from an attempt at a criterion-

referenced system based on tasks marked by the children’s own teachers
through to an externally marked examination system. This change reflects
the political purposes of the system for accountability, and the pressure
associated with this has led to growing criticism of the effects on children
and their education. Nonetheless, the results provided are widely used by
the public and government, and the reasons for the survival of the system
lie in both its utility and the difficulty of identifying a new system which is
necessarily an improvement for all the stakeholders involved.

Whetton, C.,2009. A brief history of a testing time: national curriculum

assessment in England 1989-2008, Educational Research , 51(2), pp.137-159.
Some food for thought

Do teachers make a difference?

[9:34-12:45]

 Standards?
 Performance related pay?
 Good teachers?
 Class size?
Further food for thought

Should assessment be about

celebrating individual differences or
eliminating individual differences?
 … and finally
Lucy in Peanuts
[To herself:]
A "C"? A "C"? I got a "C" on my coat-hanger sculpture? How could anyone
get a "C" in coat-hanger sculpture?

[To her teacher:]

May I ask a question? Was I judged on the piece of sculpture itself? If so,
is it not true that time alone can judge a work of art? Or was I judged on
my talent? If so, is it right that I be judged on a part of life over which I
have no control? If I was judged on my effort, then I was judged unfairly,
for I tried as hard as I could! Was I judged on what I had learned about
this project? If so, then were not you, my teacher, also being judged on
your ability to transmit your knowledge to me? Are you willing to share my
"C"? Perhaps I was being judged on the quality of the coat hanger itself
out of which my creation was made . . . now, is this also not unfair? Am I
to be judged by the quality of coat hangers that are used by the
drycleaning establishment that returns our garments? Is that not the
responsibility of my parents? Should they not share my "C"?
(Schultz, C. (in Merhens and Lehmann, 1991: 479). Emphasis added)
Mehrens, W. A. & Lehmann, I. J., 1991. Measurement and Evaluation in Education and Psychology . 4th ed. Fort Worth: Holt.