ElmCore Journal of Educational Psychology October, 2014 | Page 29

Science-Fellows®
Assessing Assessment for Learning: Reconsidering the policy and practice
Gavin T L Brown, PhD

Assessment is one of the most commonplace events in
education. Teachers assess students and report those
results to families; students report assessment results
to employers and universities in hope of improving
their life chances; the qualities of schools are
determined, in part, through the assessment of
students; students assess teachers and share their
insights with peers; principals and administrators
report, sometimes with undeserved glee, the results of
assessments to politicians and parents. Assessment is
any act of interpreting and acting on information about
student performance, collected through any of a
multitude of means or practices (Messick, 1989).
Thus, assessment is a “general term enhancing all
methods customarily used to appraise performance of
an individual or a group. It may refer to a broad
appraisal including many sources of evidence and
many aspects of a pupil’s knowledge, understanding,
skills and attitudes; or to a particular occasion or
instrument. An assessment instrument may be any
method or procedure, formal or informal, for
producing information about pupils: e.g., [sic] a
written test paper, an interview schedule, a
measurement task using equipment, a class quiz”
(Gipps, Brown, McCallum and McAlister, 1995, p.
10-11).
While this definition is a relatively broadchurch approach towards assessment techniques, the
current New Zealand policy about assessment in
education is less interested in technique and more
interested in purposes for assessment. The stance
explicitly taken in the current curriculum is that
assessment is for learning rather than an evaluation of
student performance. Specifically, the priority is much
narrower in its priorities:
Assessment for the purpose of improving student
learning is best understood as an ongoing process that
arises out of the interaction between teaching and
learning. It involves the focused and timely gathering,
analysis, interpretation, and use of information that
can provide evidence of student progress. Much of this
evidence is ‘of the moment’. Analysis and
interpretation often take place in the mind of the
teacher, who then uses the insights gained to shape
their actions as they continue to work with their
students. Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 39.
(highlights added by author)

ElmCore® Journal of Educational Psychology

This approach prioritizes assessment as a
pedagogical process that takes place ephemerally and
intuitively in the interaction of teachers with students.
Notice that formal mechanisms such as tests,
checklists, or paper-based assessments, while not
precluded, are certainly not foregrounded. The policy
wants to remind teachers that their intuitive processes
are assessment and that they should be aware that in
responding to learners, they are gathering, analyzing,
interpreting, and responding to ‘evidence’. Needless to
say, the Ministry’s position is not alone in its
prioritization of an approach to assessment that
focuses primarily on interaction between teachers and
students and a reduced reliance on formal assessment
methods. For example, an American science education
researcher defined assessment for learning as:
Teachers … use their knowledge of ‘the gap’ to
provide timely feedback to students as to how they
might close that gap. … By embedding assessments
that elicit students’ explanations—formally within a
unit, as part of a lesson plan, or as ‘on-the-fly’
teachable moments occur—teachers would take this
opportunity to close the gap in student understanding.
As a consequence students’ learning would be
expected to improve. Shavelson, 2008, p. 293.
Even further, Harlen (2007, p. 121), a
respected member of the English Assessment Reform
Group claimed that assessment for learning “is not a
measurement; it does not lead to grades or levels’.
Any assessment system that involves tests or regular
activities that are interpreted in relation to
performance criteria and which are reported are
deemed summative assessment of learning”. The
interactionist approach to assessment goes even
further in the recommendations given to American
school leaders, which suggest that assessment for
learning involves: five broad strategies to be equally
powerful for teachers of all content areas and at all
grade l ]