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Monday, 30 September 2019

assessment-what-improves-learning-and-what-hinders-it

https://katielmartin.com/2019/09/28/assessment-what-improves-learning-and-what-hinders-it/

Assessment can often have a negative connotation for many educators. Grades, rankings, time, effort, frustration, misrepresentation, standardized tests etc. are often associated with assessment but it doesn’t have to be bad. Assessment for and as learning can be very powerful!
The teaching profession is a calling, a calling with the potential to do enormous good for students. Although we haven’t traditionally seen it in this light, assessment plays an indispensable role in fulfilling our calling. Used with skill, assessment can motivate the unmotivated, restore the desire to learn and encourage students to keep learning, and it can actually create-not simple measure- increased achievement.
Stiggins et.al 2006
Based on this notion, I was working with educators last week on assessment for and as learning and unpacking some of our assessment practices in school. Some assessment practice impact learning and others, despite our best intentions, end up hindering the learning process.
Here is a list that we came up with and some others that we added from comments on Twitter.

Assessment Practices That

Improve the Learning Process Hinder the Learning Process
Transparent learning targets
Co-constructing success criteria
Relationships 
Examples (strong and weak)
Co-constructed
Self reflection
Goal setting
Multiple attempts
Tracking progress over time
Peer assessment
Collaboration
Clear Structure
Mentoring/ conferring
Multiple attempts
Authentic
Multiple ways of representing
knowledge
Timed tests
Lack of high-quality resources
Red marks
Communicating in grades or percentages
Isolated feedback “great job”
Bias (implicit and explicit)
Narrow view of smart
Past experiences/ beliefs
No clear focus/ structure
Fixed pacing guides
Tracking
Rubrics that are overwhelming
Deficit focused
Conflating behavior and skills
Grading homework and practice
Averaging Grades
What would you add or revise?