Blessing is likely not the descriptor that most of us have attached to assessment.  More often, the word conjures up images of endless hours of marking student work, the dreaded report card season, the sometimes-painful process of justifying the mark to students and parents, and accusations of grade inflation. Burden is a more likely descriptor.  Likewise, student experience of assessment is often far removed from blessing.  Many regard assessment as a threat hanging over their heads, something teachers do to them.  They see the resulting grade either as a reward for doing what the teacher asked them to do or yet another confirmation that they are ‘D’ students.  It does not have to be this way.  Assessment lovingly and skillfully practiced by assessment literate teachers together with their students can be a blessing for all concerned.

Many of us probably think of assessment primarily as something we do at the end of a lesson, unit or quarter to measure the learning that has or has not taken place.  To move our assessment practices toward blessing, we need to think of assessment in much broader terms.  We need to think in terms of an ongoing process that not only measures learning, but also supports and encourages it. This broader view of assessment requires us to think clearly about what we are assessing, why we are assessing it, who needs the results, and how the information will be communicated. (1)  This is where the distinction of assessment for and of learning is particularly helpful.   If we are assessing primarily for the purpose of gathering evidence of student achievement at a certain point in time in order to communicate that information to educational decision makers, we are clearly in the realm of assessment of learning.  Such assessment yields a snapshot of learning achievement useful for those who make large-scale educational decisions.  If, however, we are concerned not only to measure learning but also to encourage and support learning, we will engage in assessment for learning.  In assessing for learning, we seek information about where our students are in their learning journey prior to and during the course of a unit or lesson in order to make day-to-day or even moment-to-moment instructional decisions. The goal is to maximize the learning of each student in the classroom. Prior to learning, we seek information about what our students already know and can do in relation to the area they will study, as well as what they feel and believe about it.  Brainstorming, pretests, content knowledge boxes, focused conversations, and other such tasks provide information that enables us to modify our learning plan to serve the particular students in our classrooms.(2) We can further personalize the learning journey by using surveys, questionnaires, inventories, and focused conversations to gather information about patterns of differences such as learning styles, work habits, intelligence preferences, and interests. (3)  During learning, we gather a wide range of data to assess progress toward learning targets and use that data to modify instruction and learning activities. If we keep assessment for learning at the forefront of our thinking, we will recognize that our teaching and learning activities provide multiple opportunities to gather the kind of information we need to inform our decision making. The important assumption behind assessment for learning is that we will use the data we uncover to modify our teaching and learning plans while the learning is taking place. 

We are not the only users of the information we gather.  Our students need the same information so they can improve their learning.  To that end, we feed back to them the information we uncover in the form of rich, timely descriptions that allow them with our guidance to take next steps in learning. Quick checks like thumbs up-thumbs down, response cards, ungraded quizzes, and one-minute writes provide information about emerging needs. Information-based tests and demonstrations of growing skill development help us determine if our students are meeting learning targets necessary for a successful demonstration of learning in the end.  The goal of assessment for learning is not comparative judgment or gathering scores to contribute to a final mark.  The goal is feedback to further learning.

Perhaps even more important, we need to ask our students to take an active role in assessing their own learning as an ongoing part of their learning process. Some refer to this as assessment as learning (4). In assessment as learning, we empower our students to reflect on their own learning and to talk about it in their own voice.  Self-assessment in which students evaluate their work against a rubric or a sample encourages growth in self-monitoring and self-management.  Student reflections on their thought processes, reflective journals or focused conversations with peers or the teacher makes student thinking visible, open to examination and redirection.  When students are becoming true partners in assessment and, therefore in their learning, they will be able to describe in their own words the purpose of their work, how it connects to prior work, how they will demonstrate their learning and the criteria they and the teacher will use to evaluate the work. With increasing sophistication, they will be able to talk about what they understand using discipline-appropriate language. Assessment as learning asks us to remember that students are important educational decision makers in the classroom, perhaps the most important. (5) They are always thinking and deciding.  That thinking and those decisions could be naïve or sophisticated, constructive or destructive, on track or misdirected.  To maximize the learning of each student, we need to find a way to make that thinking and deciding visible long before the summative assessment.  Research indicates that continuous assessment as and for learning that is used to modify the learning plan to meet emerging needs results in improved student learning for all, but especially for lower achieving students. (6) The neediest in the classroom receive the greatest blessing and the overall achievement gap in the classroom narrows. 

 Effective use of assessment for and as learning shifts our primary emphasis from what we are teaching to what our students are learning.  When we take student thinking, beliefs, prior knowledge, and unique learning approaches seriously as we design the learning plan, we honor our students as active participants in their own learning. Our students become co-workers in the learning journey as they learn to talk about their learning in their own voice.  They grow in independence as they learn to take greater responsibility for their learning, but they also have the opportunity to practice and experience the kind of interdependence and mutuality that is characteristic of the body of Christ.  As we listen carefully and lovingly to our students, they learn to listen to us and their peers with expectation of useful feedback and guidance.

Research indicates that continuous, formative assessment improves the learning of each student and, when practiced by the learning organization as a whole, facilitates school improvement as well. (7)  However, Richard Stiggins and the folks at the Assessment Training Institute point out that traditionally assessment for (and as) learning has occupied a much smaller percentage of our assessment practices than has assessment of learning.  They ask us to flip that pyramid.   They advocate a continuous array of assessments for (and as) learning punctuated with assessments of learning. (8)

Thinking about assessment in this broader manner has implications for our curriculum design process.  One of the keys to quality assessment is being very clear about what we are assessing. (9).  Assuming that we want our students to understand key concepts or big ideas imbedded in a unit of study rather than rehearsing and repeating rote facts/skills, we need to begin the curriculum design process by clearly identifying those key concepts or big ideas. Having done that, we need to deconstruct those big ideas into the learning targets that will guide student learning.  We can think of these learning targets as the scaffold that our students will climb as they work toward unit goals. (10)  Since learning is the responsibility of the learner, we need to make these learning targets public and accessible to them. Meaningful assessment for learning requires that both teacher and students are clear about the big ideas toward which unit activities are directed as well as the knowledge, skill, reasoning, product/performance, and dispositional goals that will help them get there (11)

Another implication for our curriculum design process is that we need to plan for assessment in the earliest stages of the design. (12) We need to ask the evidence question as soon as we have identified the big ideas and the learning targets.  What kind of evidence would indicate that our students understand or are on the way to understanding the important ideas/concepts we identified?  As we answer this question, we need to think in terms of demonstrations of learning that probe beyond surface knowledge to the ability to use learning in new situations and contexts. Tools such as performance tasks, (13) extended written responses, portfolios, or other products would serve us well in this regard.  The tools we identify become the assessment of learning that we will use at the end of the unit to yield evidence of deep understanding or lack thereof. At this stage we also need to anticipate the variety of assessment for learning tools that we will use along the way.    Thinking about assessment before designing teaching and learning activities is a departure from a more traditional design process in which planning for assessment is typically the last step.  Asking the evidence question early on in the process serves to focus and direct our teaching.   Equally important, when we tell students at the beginning of a unit how they will be able to demonstrate their learning at the end, we remove the mystery of how their learning will be evaluated. By revealing to our students the intended learning targets, the avenue through which they will be able to demonstrate their learning, the criteria that will be used to evaluate their work, and samples of strong and weak work, we pave the way for our students to take greater responsibility for their own learning.

Perhaps the greatest paradigm shift required of us when we make assessment for and as learning a large part of our assessment process is a shift in our grading practices.  It is common practice among us to populate our grade books with numerous scores assigned to various assignments and assessments and to use those scores to determine a final mark. It is also common practice to adjust the mark – lowering it for missing or late work or raising it for effort, extra credit or other factors.  Assessment for learning requires a change in both practices. (14)  The first change is that the final mark we assign must be based on the student’s current level of achievement as measured against the learning targets we identified early on.  That means that we use the periodic assessments of learning but not the assessments for learning to determine the final mark. The grade should communicate the current level of achievement, not a history of attempts on the way to learning.  As we carefully distinguish between that which will be part of the final mark and that which serves as feedback for further learning, our classrooms become safe places in which our students can make, without penalty, mistakes that are inherently part of learning.  When we help our students distinguish between assessment that helps them improve and assessment that measures current achievement, avoiding the use of assessment as reward or sanction, we also preserve the space necessary for our students to build intrinsic motivation (15)  

The second change is that the final mark we assign should reflect current learning achievement only.  It should be unclouded by other information about the student such as tardies, effort, participation, or late work.  It is not that these factors are unimportant.  They are very important.  However, if we include them in the mark, we muddle the communication about current learning achievement. We should communicate information about these other important facets of our students’ work separate from the learning achievement mark.

The blessings inherent in this approach to assessment are sufficient to recommend it.  However, as Christian educators, we have an even stronger reason to consider this approach.  We are concerned that our instructional practices help maximize each of our student’s learning, because we know that our LORD calls each of them to take up their place in His great narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and new creation. We know He calls our students to work toward shalom in all their relationships both now and in the future. Such work requires that our students become as fully and completely equipped as possible.  It is our task and our privilege to use the powerful educational tools at our disposal to help nurture and equip these budding disciples of Christ.  When we do so, the blessings inherent in the tools we use are magnified and multiplied. 

Elaine Brouwer

Co-Director and Senior Member of Alta Vista

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