COMENTARIOS ACERCA DEL TRATADO

Due to developments in education theory, such as increasing emphasis on social-cultural learning theory, and metacognitive and self-regulation theory, researchers argue that learners should be given a significant role in the assessment process (Bell & Cowie, 1997; Black & Wiliam, 1998a; Sadler, 1989, 1998; Torrance & Pryor, 1998). Properly executed, assessment for learning can help learners understand and improve the quality of their work, through self-assessment, self-monitoring, and

self-regulation. Learners in this changing role should be able to apply self-regulation and self-monitoring skills during the process of completing a task (Butler & Winne, 1995; Perrenoud, 1998). The significance of this is the learner’s ability to assess and improve their work through understanding of the assessment criteria.

Assessment for learning encompasses strategies that teachers engage during teaching and learning. It serves the purpose of supporting and developing students learning and enabling students to become autonomous and self-regulating learners (Dixon, 2011b; Sadler, 2010; Swaffield, 2011). These strategies embrace the promotion of students’ understanding of their own learning goals and expected performance, as well as the generation of feedback by both teachers and students on their current versus desired performances (James, 2008; James & Pedder, 2006). In this view, student engagement in peer and self-assessment, and taking control of their learning through self-assessment is significant (if not vital) for their learning progressions.

Within the socio-cultural perspective, assessment strategies include culturally situated arrangements that promote student participation, and development of students’ sense of becoming an insider in their learning practice. It also promotes the development of student’s identities as autonomous learners. Thus, newer models of assessment for learning necessitate a need for teachers and students to radically change the roles and behaviour encouraged under a behaviourist paradigm. In current education theory, students are no longer dependent on teacher but rather hold the key role in the process of effective learning (James & Pedder, 2006). Teachers now hold the role of helping students become autonomous and self-regulating learners. In order for students to be able to judge their performance against the required goals and progress towards that goal (Butler & Winne, 1995), the ‘guild knowledge’ that teachers tacitly hold should be shared with their students, in order to enable students to hold concepts of quality similar to their teacher (Sadler, 2009b) thus achieving an insider role in their learning. Teachers’ ‘guild knowledge’ is defined as knowing what constitutes quality in student performance, which has been constructed over time through their teaching and learning experiences in making qualitative judgement about student work (Sadler, 1989)

Assessment for learning (AƒL) first appeared into use in the late 80s and early 90s and may be considered a newer concept in the assessment literature (Gardner, 2006). The Assessment Reform Group (2002), group of mostly of UK based academics formulated the definition of AƒL. That definition has since been extensively embraced and often quoted as:

teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get there (Assessment Reform Group, 2002, p. 2-3).

Gardner (2006) claims that although both formative assessment and assessment for learning denote similar sets of practice, assessment for learning encapsulates the essence of assessment which is to support learning, as leaners are provided with the responsibilities for using the information to enhance their learning and makes the link between learning and assessment explicit. Thus the present paradigm of thinking on assessment has been one that integrates teaching, learning and assessment as a holistic process of learning (Black et al., 2003). Emphasis on shifting teachers out of the main role in the assessment process and into their providing opportunities to students in the process has been deemed important to student learning.

Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam of King’s College, London identified the problem of unproductive interaction impeding learning (Black and Wiliam, 1998b). In Assessment for Learning: Beyond the Black Box written by the Assessment Reform Group (ARG) (Assessment Reform Group, 1999), they found that the emphasis of marking and grading in the classroom inevitably focused on student performance at a singular point in learning. They argued that in order to attain and establish improved learning, teacher instructions during assessment should motivate and build students’ self- esteem through varying assessment instructions, involving students in their own learning through self-assessment and effective feedback.

Assessment for Learning, which is informed by Vygotskian concepts, stressed the significance of student autonomy in their learning. As a result, teachers’ roles were again redefined: to share responsibility with students in their learning and assessment (Cowie, 2005). The conceptualisation of assessment for learning was taken from a published document entitled Assessment for learning: 10 principles, and described assessment for learning as:

 Part of effective planning;

 Focused on students learning;

 Central to classroom practice;

 A key professional skill;

 Sensitive and constructive in nature;

 Fostering motivation in learning;

 Promoting learner’s understanding of goals and criteria;

 Helping students know how to improve;

 Recognising all educational achievement by the learner.

(Assessment Reform Group, 2002). The 10 principles stated above by the ARG on assessment for learning centred assessment around the learner’s self-regulation during learning. Teachers were given the responsibility of sharing authority and promoting student autonomy (Bourke et al., 2010; Hawe & Parr, 2013; Marshall & Drummond, 2006). Within the assessment for learning process, researchers argued that teachers should embrace their students as partners in learning, sharing discussion of learning goals and success criteria - in other words, making space for students to have knowledge about the quality of the expected assessment (Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Sadler, 1989, 2010). This, they suggested, would bring the student into the assessment process, and help them understand their own learning goals (as compared to summative assessment by which teachers score student achievement). Goals may denote knowledge or skill students need to attain or a task a student has to complete (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). Therefore, for students to progress, feedback that is goal or progress based is important, as researchers maintain the most crucial element in formative assessment is feedback that influences learning (Black & Wiliam, 1998b; Crooks, 1988; Hattie & Timperley, 2007). This is a point highlighted in policy documents as one to be embraced by teachers and embedded into educational institutions (Crisp, 2007).

Assessment for ‘learning’ is beneficial when it provides students support to monitor their progress towards reaching a desired goal through closing the gap between their current learning status and desired outcome (Clark, 2011). However, Swaffield (2011) argues that checking students against predetermined and sequenced set on learning objectives is not the principle of AƒL. This limits the view of learning principles. In traditional forms of assessment, students were often perceived as passive recipients, but as discussed above, the current paradigm of assessment requires that learners take ownership of their own learning. Teachers are encouraged to provide opportunities for students to assess their own learning progress, alongside their peers, while collaborating with teachers in developing criteria for their work. Conceptions of learning within the constructivist approach suggest that students can and should create their own meaning, and analyse their own context to create new knowledge (Klenowski, Askew & Carnell, 2006).

Therefore, feedback in AƒL is the crux of the changing paradigm and the focal point of process of helping students to enhance their learning and moving to a higher or closer level of their specified goal or learning standard. Swaffield (2011) stated that assessment for learning and formative assessment differ: assessment for learning is a

beneficial to specific classroom students who would ideally exercise agency and autonomy in the process of learning how to learn. Formative assessment on the other hand is a purpose or function of a certain assessment, focussed on long-term goals, which can involve other teachers and in different setting, provide information that guides future learning and concentrates on curriculum objectives.

The fact that the terms “assessment for learning” and “formative assessment” are often used interchangeably also presents a problem. Black et al. (2003) argue that the significance of assessment for learning is to promote (rather than to evaluate) student learning, and that formative assessment functions to provide information for teachers to use in giving feedback, and to assist teachers to adapt and modify both their teaching and students’ learning. However, Wiliam and Thompson (2008) maintain that, “assessment is formative to the extent that information from the assessment is fed back” (p. 61), and opportunities for teachers to regularly observe students, and to adapt lessons to suit their needs.

The significance of feedback in assessment to support students’ learning

Feedback is a significant aspect of assessment to support learning. Feedback can exist in various forms, from written comments in the form of grades or marks to oral responses or gestures to students. Feedback is often is embedded in to the teaching/learning process. Teachers can either plan the feedback to students or it can be a spontaneous process. It is an important component in the assessment for learning process both for the teachers and for the students (Bell & Cowie, 2001; Black & Wiliam 1998b; Sadler, 1989, 2009b, 2010).

Feedback within the new constructivist paradigm has moved away from being corrective to being facilitative, and is now more often focused on scaffolding of learning through the zone of proximal development (ZPD) (Vygotsky, 1978). According to Hattie and Timperley’s (2007) research, feedback in the formative function can reduce the gap between students’ current understanding of their performance and the goals they are trying to achieve. As mentioned, feedback from teachers in a traditional context, which is a one-way communication, has been criticized due to students becoming dependent on teachers (Sadler, 1989), so in the present conception, it is considered that feedback should be interactive. Ideally, effective feedback enables learners to self-assess, self- reflect, and self-regulate their learning (Butler & Winne, 1995; Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006; Sadler, 1989). Self-regulated learning is defined as the process of learners setting their own goals for their learning, and then monitoring and regulating their motivation, behaviour and cognition to reach their goals (Pintrich, 2000a). During this process, teachers’ facilitative feedback is seen to be significant to successful achievement.

Formative assessment and feedback aims to enable students to self-assess, reflect and monitor their learning to grow as lifelong learners. According to studies, feedback is significant in influencing learning (Black & Wiliam, 1998b; Bangert-Drown, Kulik, Kulik & Morgan, 1991; Crooks, 1998; Hattie, 2009; Sadler, 1989, 2010); can act as a facilitator in enhancing performance (Bandura, 1991; Bandura & Cervone, 1983), and is significant in the classroom structure. Literature concerning formative feedback identifies the importance of teachers’ responses to student work in closing the gap (Sadler, 1989). Feedback here is defined as:

Information about the gap between the actual level and reference level of a system parameter which is used to alter the gap in some way (Ramaprasad, 1983, p. 4).

This definition of feedback was later extended by Sadler’s (1989) formative assessment theory, which posited that information on students’ successful practice requires a “feedback loop” (Sadler, 1989, p. 121). Formative assessment as a feedback loop operates in closing the gap between the student’s current performance and their desired performance. (Sadler, 1989) argues that information itself is not feedback unless it is actively used to serve this function. This feedback loop informs teachers about knowledge or skills attained or yet to be achieved by the student, aims to facilitate learners in being able to identify and to amend a gap, and also to assist teachers in reflecting and selecting suitable tasks or activities and to modify/adapt their teaching to close the gap. Ideally, teachers would use evidence gained from formative assessment to make changes in teaching, while students would receive feedback to improve their learning. Feedback within the assessment for learning then is information about the students’ current/desired performance, and in a formative conception of feedback, students also have knowledge about the desired quality for their work, and are able to perform self-monitoring and self-regulation to enhance their learning (Dixon, 2011b). This understanding of feedback is used to inform this thesis. Figure 2.1 on the next page highlights formative assessment and feedback within Sadler’s (1989) new paradigm and outlines the role of feedback as information to enhance learning.