Assessment Principles 1: Assessment should be an integral part of Teaching and Learning

In 2006, Professor David Andrich recommended to the Curriculum Council (now the School Curriculum and Standards Authority) that fine-grained assessment take precedence over broad classifications of student performance. Curriculum documents, like the Australian Curriculum, and standards frameworks, like the Achievement Standards, inherently provide broad classifications of student performance.

Andrich also recommended that teachers should employ marking strategies that arise directly from assessment tasks, and should be specific to the teaching program.

In this assessment snapshot, the teacher has devised assessment criteria that are specific to his assessment task (criteria for a book review: tells the audience the title of the book, who wrote it, describes the characters; briefly retells the story; provides a personal comment about why they liked the book and who else might like the book) and criteria that provide fine-grained information about speaking skills needed to deliver a short presentation of familiar topics (maintains eye contact with the audience; uses more formal language; uses complete sentences and speaks clearly and fluently).

Assessment Principle 2: Assessment should be educative

The teacher in this snapshot used the 'two stars and a wish' feedback strategy to encourage peer feedback and to provide his own feedback. He also used his observations to identify an area of need for a group of students which, in turn, informed his future lesson planning.

To be effective, feedback needs to be clear, purposeful and meaningful and compatible with students' prior knowledge, and to provide logical connections. It also needs to prompt active information processing on the part of the learner, have low task complexity, relate to specific and clear goals, and provide little threat to the person at the self-level. … These conditions highlight the importance of classroom climates that foster peer and self-assessment, and allow for learning from mistakes' (Hattie, 2009, p. 178).

Highly effective teachers 'provided high quality corrective feedback…they differentiated literacy instruction for individual needs, based on formal and informal assessment of the children' (Louden, Hopkins and Rohl, 2008, p. 61).

Assessment Principle 3: Assessment should be fair

In this Assessment snapshot the teacher has tried to ensure that his assessment is integral to his teaching and learning program (Principle 1) and that the assessment was educative (Principle 2). As a result it is likely that his assessment was a fair one.

There are other factors that need to be considered. Was the assessment equally available to all students, without discrimination? The answer to these questions may be yes in the context of his class demographics but no in the context of another class. For example, for some cultural groups, it may be inappropriate to assess 'maintaining eye contact with the audience'.

There are several ways a teacher can evaluate the validity of his or her assessments. Firstly, check that the assessment assessed what you intended to assess and that there are no interfering or confounding factors. In this assessment snapshot, if the teacher had given his students a challenging book to read and report, he would have been assessing their reading more than their speaking. Then check that inferences you are drawing from the assessment are legitimate based on what you assessed. Returning to the assessment snapshot; this would not have been reflective of a fair assessment if the teacher had set out to assess the students' ability to provide a book review and not aspects of their oral presentation but had then used his assessment to report on his students' speaking skills.

One of the challenges for teachers is to get the balance right. That is, to collect sufficient information about the aspect of learning being assessed so that the assessment provides worthwhile information that will lead to further learning, and to not allow assessment activity to become so burdensome that it detracts from teaching.

Year 2 Languages: How many ripe rambutan are there?

Assessment Principle 4: Assessment should be designed to meet their specific purpose

An important aspect of ensuring assessments are fit for purpose is to consider the validity of the assessments. Validity relates to whether the assessment measures what it claims to measure, or what it is assumed that it measures.

The teacher in this assessment task wanted to assess her students’ ability to convey factual information by referring to the number of things. The teacher, however, realised that she did not obtain accurate or valid information about her students’ ability because the difference between ripe and unripe fruit was unclear, and it was sometimes difficult for students to distinguish fruit from leaves. This was further compounded by students’ reluctance to write down numbers because of concerns about correct spelling.

All assessments, be they classroom tasks or externally imposed standardised assessments, need to be fit for purpose. Consider this advice given by Wiggins and McTighe in Understanding by Design,

Many teacher-designers confuse interesting and engaging learning activities with appropriate evidence from performance. Just because the performance is complex and the task interesting, it doesn’t follow that the evidence we gain from student project work is appropriate for the desired results (2005, p. 183).

Teachers need to know the skills and understandings they want to assess and to check that their assessments will allow their students to demonstrate these skills and understandings. In this example, the teacher did not obtain valid information about her students’ knowledge of numbers and the information is therefore unhelpful when planning future learning.

One of the key assumptions of assessment for learning is that, for learning to be effective, learners and teachers need to be clear on ‘where they need to go.’ In practice this involves making clear both the learning intentions and what a successful performance will look like. … Failure to achieve this clarity will be a threat to valid formative assessment since it may limit learning (Stobart, 2012, p. 237).