ElmCore Journal of Educational Psychology October, 2014 | Page 30

Science-Fellows®
This brief overview of assessment for
learning definitions makes clear that assessment takes
place in the continuous interaction of teachers with
students and students with students, without any need
for formalization in terms of instrumentation or
reporting of scores or grades. Further, assessment for
learning moves the center of assessment from the
teacher to the learner who is expected to selfinterrogate, provide feedback, and learn with little
input from instructors. However, this prioritization of
non-formal methods and student-centered action
creates difficulties both conceptually and empirically.
It is this approach to assessment that I wish to address
in this essay.

important decisions with consequences for students
(e.g., assign harder or easier curriculum material to a
student, put a student in a different learning context,
motivate a student to greater effort, diagnose a
learning difficulty, etc.) are going to be made, then a
more formal approach to assessment that insists on
checking the validity of the data collection,
interpretation, and responses is probably warranted.
Simply, putting assessment in the head of the teacher
prevents scrutiny, debate, or discussion as to its
meaning and this may be acceptable if assessment for
learning is a pedagogical process. However, if
consequences are attached to assessment processes, it
seems important to make space for a more formal
process that can be validated.

Assessment for Learning
Most basically assessment for learning
involves, in accordance with Scriven’s (1967)
definition of formative evaluation, collecting evidence
about learning early enough so that teacher instruction
(teaching) and student activity (learning) changes in a
way that causes greater progress towards intended
goals and targets. Progress involves being able to do
more things faster, more accurately, and more easily
or know more things to a deeper and better quality.
The key ingredient of formative assessment is that it
takes place before the end (when it is too late to do
make any further improvements) and that it leads to
changes in teaching & learning practices such that
progress is achieved. However, not all information is
equally good; using an essay test to judge the quality
of hair-cutting probably will not lead to appropriate
decisions about the educational needs of an apprentice
hair dresser.
Information that leads to appropriate
interpretations and actions (Messick, 1989) must be
robust; in other words, it needs to be open to scrutiny
such that other competent judges can consider whether
they would make similar interpretations or decisions
given the same information. Assessment processes
that take place solely in the head of the learner or
teacher are difficult to scrutinize and validate and
perhaps we should treat such use of assessment as a
child-centered (Stobart, 2006) pedagogy (Black &
Wiliam, 2006). A pedagogical version of assessment
may be appropriate if the consequences of
interpretative errors are very low. If teachers have
much time and many opportunities to adjust their
teaching (as might be the case in the 1st term of a
primary school year), then perhaps there is no need to
check that any one teacher’s assessment for learning
pedagogical interactions in the flow of classroom life
are comparable to another teacher’s. However, if

ElmCore® Journal of Educational Psychology

This means that there are two aspects of the
assessment for learning approach to assessment that
raise concerns for me. Is it impossible for formal
assessment methods (e.g., tests, examinations,
checklists) to contribute to the identification of
learning needs or must assessment only use interactive
processes (e.g., self-assessment, peer assessment,
teacher intuitions). Secondly, who is responsible for
assessment? Is there space for the teacher, as the most
expert person in the room, to actively analyze learning
and guide students (Bloom, Madaus, & Hastings,
1981) or must assessment be solely in the hands of the
learners? To address this situation, I will review and
synthesize research concerning teachers’ and students’
beliefs about assessment processes, classroom
assessment practices including some consideration of
cultural factors, and technical considerations
concerning accuracy in human judgments and the
effects of testing. I will conclude with some advice I’d
like to give for the development of an assessment for
learning 2.0 policy.
The purposes of assessment
`
Assessment for learning requires the active
contribution of teachers and students. What they think
assessment is and what it is for become important
questions since attitudes, beliefs, and values are
known to be strong predictors of intentions and actions
(Ajzen, 2005). An important factor in considering
beliefs about the educational activity of assessment, to
use Green’s (1971) language, is the degree to which
beliefs are ecologically rational (Rieskamp & Reimer,
2007). It seems highly likely that the most dominant
and powerful of teachers’ beliefs were acquired in
their socialization into schooling (Pajares, 1992); in
other words, teachers learned to think about
assessment mostly from their own experience of it.
Furthermore, since teachers are normally employed to

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