ElmCore Journal of Educational Psychology October, 2014 | Page 33

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accountable is more strongly endorsed and is more
strongly associated with improvement. Furthermore,
judging school quality on the basis of assessments
seems to be contingent upon the assessments
evaluating students’ deeper thinking. Additionally, it
would seem that teachers’ conception of assessment is
contingent upon the focus given to assessment. Thus,
the introduction of league tables based on high-stakes
consequences (e.g., National Standards in NZ or
Australia’s NAPLAN) is likely to cause teachers to
deviate from a strong commitment to assessment for
learning. Unfortunately, the higher the stakes (real or
perceived) for an assessment, the more emphasis is
given to maximizing results regardless of effect on
learning (Hamilton, 2003; Phelps, 2009); scores might
go up but learning probably will not. Hence, relying
on teacher beliefs to resist context is probably naïve if
contexts are inimical to the improvement belief.
Student perspectives on assessment
As noted earlier, assessment for learning
expects students to take a large active part in
assessment. Thus, understanding what assessment
means, what they want from it, and how those beliefs
relate to achievement becomes important. The first
premise is that, on the whole, students want honest,
comprehensible, and constructive feedback as to how
to improve (Pajares & Graham, 1998). However, there
is evidence that teachers, notwithstanding their
espoused belief in giving feedback to learn, tend to
emphasize praise and positive Y