by Michelle Yap, Karima Syahirah and Adeline Wang
Leading Assessment Feedback Practices in Schools (Music)
by Michelle Yap
This video presentation describes the assessment feedback practice in the Music classroom for the Primary school level. It presents current issues and discusses how assessment feedback practice can be redesigned for greater efficacy before proposing the kind of assessment leadership to practice in leading the described assessment change in schools.
Challenges in Practising Assessment for Learning in Secondary School
by Karima Syahirah Binte Abdul Karim
This paper is an attempt at examining the challenges enacting AfL in secondary school classroom, arguing that these challenges are underpinned by the teachers’ assessment and feedback literacy, students’ feedback literacy and the tension in teachers’ perception on the different types and purposes of assessments in preparing students for GCE O level examinations and learning for life. This paper proposes to address these challenges by taking a school-wide approach in developing teachers’ assessment and feedback literacy through use of subject-specific exemplars and experiential-based learning in small groups such as lesson study, to allow teachers to develop conceptual clarity on the theoretical underpinnings of AfL, which can be translated to skilled enactment of AfL. A paradigm shift from a singular purpose of assessments to duality of purposes of assessments is needed to resolve the tensions between learning and preparing for examinations. Read more.
Developing student feedback literacy: How can primary schools begin this journey?
by Adeline Wang
The recent scholarship on Assessment for Learning (AfL) has placed much focus on developing students’ feedback literacy, highlighting the role students play in AfL, and the need for students to have the capability and disposition to use feedback to improve performance. Scholars have proposed ways to advance student feedback literacy, such as identifying the features of feedback literacy (Carless & Boud, 2018), embedding student feedback literacy within the curriculum (Malecka et al., 2020), using a learner-centred framework to guide the development of feedback literacy (Molloy et al., 2020), taking an ecological perspective to consider student feedback literacy (Chong, 2020) and so on. Notably, these studies, though not limited to, were set in the higher education context where students presumably would have the capability and disposition that enables them to be more prepared as feedback literate learners. A search on the databases yields no results on studies conducted on student feedback literacy in the primary and secondary levels. Further, no studies have been conducted to look at the application of these concepts on students with special educational needs. With this gap in mind, this paper will propose an earlier start to develop students’ feedback literacy at the primary school level, taking into considerations the diversity of student needs. The discussion will be presented using Sutton’s (2012) three dimension of feedback literacy. Implications on teacher practices will be discussed within each dimension. Read more.