Aligning Assessment Literacy to Learning Outcomes
by Tan Heng Kiat, Kelvin (NIE)
Assessment feedback efficacy should be understood as a vital component of Assessment for Learning (Tan, 2013). According to the Ministry of Education, Assessment for Learning “is primarily used for ensuring that the intended learning outcomes are achieved by students”. Hence, how well assessment is understood and used for learning should be directed towards ensuring that students achieve their intended learning outcomes. There is therefore a need to make connections between what teachers know about assessment, and how that eventually and systematically leads to students’ attainment of learning outcomes.
Four boxes can be used to illustrate how assessment literacy may lead to learning outcomes. This four-box theory of aligning teachers’ assessment literacy to students’ learning outcomes may be represented in the context of assessment feedback as follows:
Given that assessment and feedback is one of the four teaching processes of the Singapore Teaching Practice, it is common for teachers in Singapore to spend a great deal of time attending professional development workshops and courses in assessment feedback literacy. It is in the interests of teachers and students for new knowledge of assessment feedback theories and practices to be translated into enhancing or even ensuring learning for students.
However, teachers who attend such training but fail to apply their assessment literacy knowledge to their classrooms and school contexts may be said to remain only in Box 1. Application of and reflection on assessment feedback theory is therefore required to ensure that teachers are able to move to Box 2 to adjust or improve their assessment feedback practices. This requires intentionality on the part of teachers, in particular to be clear whether feedback for students is intended at the task, process, and/or self-regulated levels (Hattie & Timperley, 2007).
However, what teachers intend for their students to derive from teachers’ feedback comments would not be actualised if students do not read or act on the feedback in the first place. Hence, to ensure that teachers’ feedback practices are not stuck in Box 2, how students understand and are inclined to act on feedback needs to be considered. This therefore requires teachers to ensure that feedback is actionable for students, and to persuade students of the utility and benefits of acting on feedback. Such agentic engagement with feedback is termed as proactive recipiences by Winstone et al. (2017), and is defined as ‘a state or activity of engaging actively with feedback processes, thus emphasizing the fundamental contribution and responsibility of the learner’ (p. 17).
Whilst Boxes 1 and 2 represent what teachers need to know and do, Box 3 represents the reality that feedback efficacy ultimately depends on what students actually do with feedback, rather than on what kinds of feedback are provided by teachers. But proactive recipience of feedback in itself merely means that assessment feedback efficacy is represented by Box 3. To ensure that Box 4 is reached as a goal, i.e., for students to actually benefit from acting on feedback, the focus needs to shift from students’ activity with feedback, to students learning from feedback.
The journey from Box 1 to Box 4 represents the chronology that begins with assessment knowledge, to application by teachers, to action by students, and finally for the learning benefits for students. However, the thought process of a curriculum leader starts with the ends in mind, and begins with the vital curriculum question of what students need to learn (Box 4). This then indicates what students need to do (Box 3) in order to process, enhance, and evidence their learning. The question(s) that Box 3 poses about learning in turn prods the teacher to consider the feedback advice and actions (Box 2) that enables such learning to take place. And finally this raises questions of what else teachers’ need to know about assessment feedback theory (Box 1) that may improve their feedback advice and enactment.
Given the vast amounts of time and effort we expend on feedback, as well as attending various assessment courses and workshops, it would be timely and useful to consider whether and how we can ensure that feedback achieves its ultimate purpose of enhancing or ensuring learning. Obviously, we should look beyond knowledge telling in our assessment literacy efforts, and make concrete efforts to apply what we have learnt into improved practices that students can actively use for their learning. More importantly, we should also remember our educative roles as curriculum leaders, and ensure that clarity in what students should learn, and the forms of evidence and actions of such learning, should be the starting point of our assessment endeavours.
References
Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112. https://doi.org/10.3102/003465430298487
Tan, K.H.K. (2013). A framework for Assessment for Learning: Implications for feedback practices within and beyond the gap. ISRN Education, 1-6.
Winstone, N., Nash, R., Parker, M., & Rowntree, J. (2017). Supporting learners’ agentic engagement with feedback: A systematic review and a taxonomy of recipience processes. Educational Psychologist, 52, 17-37. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2016.1207538