Updated: Mar 2000 | Assessment Review Classroom Approaches

Review Classroom Approaches to Student Assessment

	Assessment Using an Outcomes Focus
	Using a Variety of Evidence Observation Teacher Journals Checklists & Matrices Criterion Referencing Self-assessment Peer Assessment Open-ended Tasks Student-teacher Conferences Teacher-made Tests Standardised Tests Monitoring Standards in Education Student Journals Portfolios Individual Education Programs (IEPs) Negotiated Evaluation
	On-balance Judgements

Assessment Using an Outcomes Focus

As teachers learn about how students approach tasks, what helps them learn most effectively, and what assessment tasks challenge and support the kinds of learning desired, they find themselves transforming both their teaching and their assessment strategies. Darling-Hammond, L., Performance Based Assessment and Educational Equity. Harvard Educational Review (1994), pp. 5-30

In outcomes-focused education, where the outcomes have been defined broadly, teachers need to be clear about the student behaviour being interpreted and how they have measured any change in relation to the students' social, personal or cognitive behaviour.

Following interpretations of students' performances, a decision is required about what information needs to be recorded and how.

In a review of their assessment methods, teachers need to explore the characteristics of:

	Formative Assessment
	Summative Assessment

Teachers need to address such issues as a single overall result, standards of uniformity and documented evidence in assessment.

They also need to help establish procedures in the school to ensure some comparability of teacher expectations and standards and when comparability matters. Also, teachers need to decide how formative and summative assessment forms are used informally or formally. For example, is formative assessment always informal and for the purpose of making judgements about changes in students' personal and social development?

Further, teachers need to consider how they move between using an assessment practice for individual students, a small group or a whole class.

Teachers frequently change their planning or teaching because their professional knowledge and experience reveal that different courses of action are required.

The work of Bell and Cowie (1997) (Figure 23) provides a useful way of considering assessment to refine short-term goals for students' learning within the Curriculum Framework and Outcomes and Standards Framework.

Figure 23 - Assessing short-term goals within broader outcome frameworks (Based on Bell, B. & Cowie, B. Formative Assessment and Science Education (1997), p. 47)

In order to make valid and reliable judgements, Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting: Policy and Guidelines instructs teachers to:

	use a variety of evidence of students demonstrating learning outcomes from a range of assessment methods and strategies.
	make 'on-balance' judgements about whether students have demonstrated learning outcomes.