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ASSESSMENT as a
Catalyst
for LEARNING
ensure students are prepared for the summative event. Cassandra Erkens (2013), while talking about the balance between formative and summative assessment, states: The summatives should simply serve as a public celebration of how much learning has happened along the way. In this light, formative assessments might actually be the more “dull” because like the hard work of daily practice, they represent the little parts or scaffolding that can only lead to the big game.
Learning for Students When teachers define assessment and its purpose for students, they invite them to feel more comfortable with being active participants in the learning process. Meaningful assessment practices open up the communication between teachers and students and organically allow for more conversations centered on learning. The key to using assessment formatively and ensuring student involvement and learning is what D. Royce Sadler (1989) refers to as the feedback loop. As the teacher provides feedback, the student then responds to that feedback, creating the loop. Imagine that a high school English language arts student hands in a writing assignment and the teacher responds in the following way: I really like the start you have with your analysis of the text. Remember that our focus is on using examples from the text to support your analysis. Can you please revisit that and distinguish what textual evidence you identified to support your analysis? Come show that to me when you are done. Great start, and I can’t wait to see your next steps!
Notice that the teacher starts out with complimenting the student’s work and then redirects him back to the targeted learning. The teacher then asks him to move his work forward by identifying textual support for his analysis and asks him to check in again. The teacher focuses not on what is missing or a grade but instead on next steps in order to improve the student’s work. This changes the focus from what was
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With a common understanding of assessment purpose and use comes valuable learning for teachers. Through this lens, teachers should be designing an assessment process that will elicit the evidence necessary to answer the aforementioned questions. Teachers will no longer just evaluate student work; they will learn about what students know, how they learn best, what they do not know, and what needs to come next to coach them forward. For example, when creating an assessment that they intend to use formatively, teachers might focus on common misconceptions and develop an assessment that will give them the data to provide accurate in-class interventions the following day.
