Please refer to below for some new assessment publications that we would like to bring to your attention:
Boud, D. & Dawson, P. (2021) What feedback literate teachers do: an empirically-derived competency framework, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2021.1910928
If feedback is to be conducted effectively, then there needs to be clarity about what is involved and what is necessary for teachers to be able to undertake it well. While much attention has recently been devoted to student feedback literacy, less has been given to what is required of teaching staff in their various roles in feedback processes. This paper seeks to elucidate teacher feedback literacy through an analysis of the accounts of those who do feedback well. An inductive analysis was undertaken of conversations about feedback with 62 university teachers from five Australian universities using a dataset of transcripts of interviews and focus groups from two earlier research studies. Through an iterative process a teacher feedback literacy competency framework was developed which represents the competencies required of university teachers able to design and enact effective feedback processes. The paper discusses the different competencies required of those with different levels of responsibility, from overall course design to commenting on students’ work. It concludes by considering implications for the professional development of university teachers in the area of feedback.
Chan, K.T., Tan, K. How teachers experience assessment tension and its effect on formative assessment practices. Educ Res Policy Prac (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10671-022-09316-1
Formative assessment (FA) has been a popular discourse in education, but its potential benefit is fundamentally dependent on teachers’ willingness to make changes to their classroom practices. These changes bring about much assessment tension (AT). This paper argues that how well teachers experience and manage AT determines the efficacy of their FA practices. Past studies have warned that AT experienced by teachers is complex and problematic. Therefore, it would be useful to investigate the variation of AT experienced by teachers, and how well they are dealing with these tensions. This phenomenographic research examines the use of FA in the context of different ways that AT is experienced. Findings on teachers’ conceptions of AT are presented, and each is then discussed for insights into teachers’ meanings and practices of assessment. In particular, instances of how AT hindered or helped FA are identified to highlight more productive ways of understanding and using assessment to support students’ learning. Implications of the research findings for the Singapore Teaching Practice (STP) will be discussed.
Tan, K.H.K. (2022). Assessment Reforms in Singapore. In Lee, Y.J. (Ed.), Education in Singapore: People making and Nation building (pp. 243-260). Singapore : Springer.
The education system in Singapore has been transformed since its independence from colonial British rule in 1965. Reforms have occurred in four distinct phases: the survival phase; the efficiency phase; the ability-driven phase, and currently its values driven and student centredness phase. Each phase of education has been supported and driven by corresponding assessment reform. In the past few years, there has been a distinct effort to shift assessment purposes and discourse away from high stakes testing for placement and stratification, towards using assessment to signal and support learning within and beyond schools. Three assessment reforms are examined in this chapter – the reduction in emphasis on examinations in primary schools in 2008, the shift away from norm referenced assessment in the high stakes national examination for primary students (announced in 2016), and the changes to assessment and streaming in secondary schools announced in 2018. These reforms demonstrate the tight alignment between policy making and school implementation, and offers insights into the complexities in grappling with tensions between maintaining rigour and control in high stakes summative assessment against transparency of assessment standards for use in formative assessment in schools.
Tay, H.Y., Lam, K.W.L. Students’ engagement across a typology of teacher feedback practices. Educ Res Policy Prac (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10671-022-09315-2
The provision of feedback is widely practised as part of formative assessment. However, studies that examine the impact of feedback are usually from the teachers’ perspective, focusing on why and how they provide feedback. Fewer studies examine feedback from the students’ perspective, especially in the way they experience, make sense of and take up their teachers’ feedback. This paper provides empirical evidence of student engagement with different patterns of teacher feedback in their written essays. Data were gathered from 45 students (from 5 different schools) through group interviews and analysis of student artefacts from three rounds of writing tasks. The findings on affective, behavioural and cognitive engagement surfaced the conditions that will contribute to students’ will and skill to act on their teachers’ feedback. The implications on both teacher and student assessment literacy are discussed. The discussion will provide professional development providers and policy makers with new perspectives of and approaches to strengthening formative assessment practices in ways that are more cognizant of students’ experience of feedback.
Panadero, E., & Lipnevich, A.. (2021). A review of feedback typologies and models: Towards an integrative model of feedback elements. Educational Research Review. 35. 100416. 10.1016/j.edurev.2021.100416.
A number of models has been proposed to describe various types of feedback along with mechanisms through which feedback may improve student performance and learning. We selected fourteen most prominent models, which we discussed in two complementary reviews. In the first part (Lipnevich & Panadero, 2021) we described the models, feedback definitions, and the empirical evidence supporting them, whereas in the present publication, we analyzed and compared the fourteen models with the goal to classify and integrate shared elements into a new comprehensive model. As a result of our synthesis, we offered an expanded typology of feedback and a classification of models into five thematic areas: descriptive, internal processing, interactional, pedagogical, and students characteristics. We concluded with an Integrative Model of Feedback Elements that includes five components: Message, Implementation, Student, Context, and Agents (MISCA). We described each element and relations among them, offering future directions for theory and practice.
Carless, D., & Winstone, N. (2020) Teacher feedback literacy and its interplay with student feedback literacy, Teaching in Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2020.1782372
Feedback processes are difficult to manage, and the accumulated frustrations of teachers and students inhibit the learning potential of feedback. In this conceptual paper, challenges to the development of effective feedback processes are reviewed and a new framework for teacher feedback literacy is proposed. The framework comprises three dimensions: a design dimension focuses on designing feedback processes for student uptake and enabling student evaluative judgment; a relational dimension represents the interpersonal side of feedback exchanges; and a pragmatic dimension addresses how teachers manage the compromises inherent in disciplinary and institutional feedback practices. Implications discuss the need for partnership approaches to feedback predicated on shared responsibilities between teachers and students, and the interplay between teacher and student feedback literacy. Key recommendations for practice are suggested within the design, relational and pragmatic dimensions. Avenues for further research are proposed, including how teacher and student feedback literacy might be developed in tandem.
Sadler, I., Reimann, N., & Sambell, K. (2022) Feedforward practices: a systematic review of the literature, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2022.2073434
The notion of ‘feedforward’ has emerged as popular with practitioners, and there has been an upsurge in publications which include this term. This interpretivist and conceptual systematic review sought to consider the different forms of educational practices that are framed in relation to feedforward. The initial search of four electronic databases found 1076 articles published between 2007 and 2019, which were reduced to 68 once duplicates had been removed and exclusion/inclusion criteria applied during screening and eligibility procedures. An iterative meta-ethnographic approach to analysis resulted in the identification of five main practices, framed as feedforward. These were: alignment and timing (41%); use (25%); comments (18%); self-review (9%); and teaching (7%). The vast majority involved a process where student improvement was a key goal, but the design of this process differed between practices. A large proportion supported improvement from one task to the next, almost exclusively within the ‘future horizon’ of the module/study unit, while only a small proportion of articles focuses on improving the amount, nature or quality of the information delivered to learners. Evidence of student sense-making and uptake was rarely sought, and few practices offered genuine opportunities for student agency, self-regulation and the development of evaluative judgment.
