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Wendy Mockler
Naomi Aigner
Derek Gillions
Antoinette Woods
Dean WatkinsCECG Assessment Reform Group’s Updates
Update 2: Modern Assessment Approaches
This update recognises that assessment involves professional judgement and locates student performance on a developmental continuum. Teachers use assessment language that describes student performance and need to know, understand and be able to use assessment related terms and strategies including: reliability, validity, assessment for learning, assessment of learning, standards, performance standards and norm-referenced assessments. This shared practice has implications for students' academic self-concept and wellbeing.
Ways to talk about assessment
Table 1: Types and Processes of Assessment (Brady & Kennedy, 2019, pp 2-3)
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Norm-referenced assessment | Rank orders the performance of individual students. The process compares the performance of groups with similar or different characteristics. It displays the range of performance and enables comparison of different levels of performance. |
| Criterion-referenced assessment | Demonstrates how an individual's performance compares with a predefined criterion. It demonstrates what students know and are able to do; is not used to compare students. |
| Standards-based assessment |
Users criterion referencing to show a student's performance in relation to expected levels of achievement. Usually this is at a specific grade level or stage of schooling. |
| Standardised test | A test that is administered according to a common set of procedures. It is used across systems and states overtime. The results can be reliably compared using norm referenced or criterion referenced processes. |
| Traditional assessment | Usually refers to paper and pencil tests that ask students to choose responses from alternative answers such as multiple choice questions true false questions matching exercises and cloze passages. |
| Alternative assessment | Student centred tasks where students demonstrate their level of achievement by creating a response or a product such as a painting, oral presentation, collaborative projects. |
| Performance-based assessment | An alternative form of assessment that engages students in tasks and activities for example role plays, debates, musical performances, dramatic performance, contributing to group work. Judgement is made through direct observation of the performance. |
| Authentic assessment | Refers to assessment tasks that require students to be engaged in real world activities that connect with daily life and the broader community. the focus is on the context of the task and the stakeholders involved. |
| Portfolio assessment |
An alternative form of assessment based on the collection of work samples or products overtime that demonstrate progress in learning. Criteria or standard for judging performance requires agreement before commencement of the task. |
| Assessment for learning (formative assessment) | Provides feedback to students about their progress. It can take place during the teaching and learning process or as structured feedback on work samples either by the teacher or peers. Such feedback can assist students to improve their learning and can also help teachers to develop new and more effective ways of teaching. |
| Assessment of learning (summative assessment) | Takes place at the end of a unit of work subject or course and will indicate the extent to which expected learning outcomes have been achieved. |
| Reliability | Refers to the assessment’s consistency and stability. The assessment result should be the same irrespective of where when and how the assessment was taken who marked it and when it was marked. The reliability of assessment can be enhanced when possible sources of error are minimised. Multiple assessment tasks, agreed assessment criteria, and the use of moderation procedures all help to ensure that assessment is consistent and therefore reliable. |
| Validity | The extent to which an assessment task accurately reflects the knowledge skills and values being assessed. Tasks linked to curriculum objectives and outcome statements should have a high degree of validity. Such tasks however must also be fair to all students so that the content of the task does not favour one group of students over another. |
Assessment practices can shape student, parent and community beliefs about learning. Geoff Masters suggests this can sometimes happen in unintended ways. He argues that commonly used assessment approaches send unhelpful messages to students.
Read more in his occasional essay (5 minute read) (Masters, 2013):
Comment: Choose from one of the approaches outlined by Masters:
- Providing success experiences
- Judging performance against standards
- Assessing growth over time
Make a comment outlining some of the unintended consequences of this approach.
Make an Update: Describe an assessment tool, and using Table 1, identify which type(s) and process(es) of assessment it is. Then referring to the Masters (2013) paper, explain which approach to assessment it uses. Suggest ways to maximise its effectiveness to support student learning.
References
Brady, L. & Kennedy, K. (2019). Assessment and Reporting: Celebrating student achievement. Pearson.
Masters, G. (October 2013). Towards a growth mindset in assessment. ACER Occasional Essays. Retrieved from: https://www.acer.org/au/discover/article/towards-a-growth-mindset-in-assessment
