ElmCore Journal of Educational Psychology October, 2014 | Page 31

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implement government policy as understood within a
school community, it is highly likely that their
espoused beliefs will be consistent with the policies
and priorities that constrain work in that context
(Brown & Harris, 2009). In other words, how teachers
think about assessment will tend to conform to the
official policy and actual uses of assessment within a
society. This presumption also suggests that if policy
or practices around assessment were to change
drastically (e.g., introduction of national testing) then
teacher beliefs would be likely to change.
Not surprisingly, there are multiple purposes
for assessment within all societies; researchers
(Heaton, 1975;
Torrance & Pryor, 1998; Warren & Nisbet, 1999;
Webb, 1992) have identified three major purposes
(i.e., improvement, student certification, and school
evaluation). Further, there is evidence that teachers
reject assessment (Shohamy, 2001). While many
specific uses of assessment have been identified (e.g.,
Newton (2007) describes 17 different functions),
Brown (2008) has argued that these multiple functions
constitute four major purposes of assessment.
Improvement, the strictly educational use of
assessment, uses assessment to diagnose learning
needs and guide appropriate instruction so that desired
outcomes are achieved by students (Popham, 2000).
Improvement relates to how both teachers and
students change their practices as a consequence of
assessment, leading to improved performance.
The student certification assessment serves
the purpose of selecting and rewarding students on the
basis of their performance on formal examinations,
which may include school-based evaluations as well
as external public examinations. In New Zealand, as in
many western nations, this function takes place in
secondary schooling; though assessing students on
formal and/or common tasks takes place in primary
schooling to facilitate reporting to administrators and
parents. Such assessments hold students accountable
for learning and may serve to motivate students to pay
attention to important material (Kahn, 2000). Using
student testing to evaluate schools, a practice generally
eschewed in New Zealand, is commonplace in the
United Kingdom and United States. The notion behind
national testing of schools is that good schools have
students who learn material and skills deemed
essential by policy makers and, to ensure all schools
achieve what society wants, students should be tested
regularly (Butterfield, Williams, & Marr, 1999;
Firestone, Mayrowetz, & Fairman, 1998; Hershberg,
2002; Smith & Fey, 2000). Such testing will help
teachers know what students need to know and help

ElmCore® Journal of Educational Psychology

improve the quality of teaching (Linn, 2000; Resnick
& Resnick, 1992).
Interestingly, advocates of this
accountability agenda argue that it is being
implemented in the interests of improvement.
Unfortunately, the presence of high-stakes
consequences (e.g., retaining students in grade,
tracking students into different educational
experiences, public listing of school results, requiring
students and teachers to attend summer school, firing
school leaders and teachers, etc.) have generated a
strong anti-assessment response, certainly a
contributing factor in the existence of the idea that
assessment is irrelevant. In addition, many teachers,
based on their extensive interaction with students (e.g.,
25 hours per week, 40 weeks per year in a New
Zealand primary school setting), do not consider they
need formal assessments to know where their students
are and what they need to learn next (Gipps, Brown,
McCallum, & McAlister, 1995; Hill, 2001).
Nonetheless, every teacher is aware that,
notwithstanding negative consequences that may arise
from inappropriate use of assessments, there is some
legitimacy to all three major purposes of assessment.
It has been well established (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999)
that being made accountable has predictable effects on
subordinates; first and foremost, subordinates will
tend to conform to the views of the people to whom
they are accountable.
Since teachers are accountable, in the first
instance, to their own managers and the parents of
their students, and since both school leaders and
parents are inclined to believe that teaching will lead
to learning and that such learning will be reflected in
assessment scores, it would be expected that teachers
will likewise endorse improvement as the primary
purpose of assessment. Furthermore, it seems that
teaching requires believing that assessment, whether it
be formal or interactionist, can guide and inform
instruction and that teaching does contribute to better
learning outcomes. Teachers are also aware that
parents and media evaluate school quality on the
simplistic notion that high test or examination scores
are an indication of school quality.
While their own personal beliefs may not align with
these ideas, they are bound to be aware of them. Thus,
assessment serves two distinct masters: accountability
of students, teachers, & schools and improvement of
teaching & learning. Thus, evaluation or
accountability functions interact with the improvement
function and have an impact on teacher beliefs.
Teachers’ conceptions of assessment purposes

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