ARG

ASF

Assessment Systems for the Future
- the place of assessment by teachers

Background

Goals of the project

Procedures

Organisation

Outline of project events

Members

Reports

Working papers

Pamphlet (in English, Welsh and Chinese)

Dissemination conference reports

Book

Background

The ASF project was developed by ARG to build upon a number of the Group’s recent activities. The research review by Black and Wiliam (1998) found that assessment used formatively to help learning improves learning and the raises standards of students attainment. following from this, the Group identified implications for policy of taking steps to improve practice in using assessment to help learning (assessment for learning as opposed to assessment of learning). These implications were published in Assessment for Learning: beyond the Black Box (ARG 1999), and followed by the identification of principles of assessment for learning (ARG 2002).

At the same time as developing these ways of supporting assessment for learning (formative assessment), ARG turned attention to assessment of learning (summative assessment). This was prompted by increasing awareness, not only in the teaching profession but in reports of inspectors, that testing has become successively more demanding, consuming greater and greater time and resources, iIts effect being exacerbated through target-setting and league tables based on test and examination results. Moreover there was clear evidence that increased testing was inhibiting the implementation of formative assessment. The review of research by Harlen and Deakin Crick, (2002, 2003) showed that testing has a negative impact on motivation for learning and an inhibiting impact on developing assessment for learning. Implications for the assessment system and for practice, of attempting to avoid this impact, were summarised in Testing, Learning and Motivation (ARG 2002). (For references, please see Publications).

The teaching and learning conditions brought about by assessment systems that depend on external tests contrast vividly with the widespread agreement that the aims of education must include the development of the higher level thinking skills and the prerequisites for continued learning throughout life. Achievement of these aims requires a curriculum that is broadly based and designed to develop the ability of learners to access and evaluate information, apply knowledge to new situations and to develop an awareness of their own thinking processes. It also requires teaching methods that facilitate motivation to learn, including the key aspects of self-regulation, self-efficacy and orientation towards learning goals. The research uncovered by ARG suggested that the assessment systems in the UK, in operation in 2003, were inhibiting rather than facilitating achievement of these aims.

ARG therefore applied to the Nuffield Foundation for funding to conduct a project with the goal of exploring alternatives to testing and in particular the role that assessment by teachers can take in assessment for summative purposes. The Nuffield Foundation Trustees agreed to fund the project from September 2003 to the end of June 2006.

Goals of the project

The overall goal of the project is to clarify thinking by educational professionals, by politicians and by various users of education, about the nature, practice, potential and challenges of assessment by teachers, and to provide reports, including recommendations for policy and practice, on the role that assessment by teachers can play in assessment systems. More detailed goals are as follows:

To identify how assessment by teachers is understood by various interest groups
To bring together what is known from studies of the reliability and validity of assessment by teachers and of the conditions that affect its reliability and validity.
To report on the roles that assessment by teachers currently takes in the assessment systems of the countries of the UK
To explore what can be learned from how assessment is conducted and used in other countries and the part that assessment by teachers plays in assessment systems in other countries.
To learn about, and from, the perspectives on assessment by teachers of participants in and users of assessment systems (namely pupils, teachers in schools and other educational institutions, parents and employers,).
To make proposals for how assessment by teachers can be made reliable, efficient and dependable as part of an optimum assessment system.

Procedures

These goals were not to be achieved through empirical research – at least not within the timescale and with the resources available. Instead the project brought together the experience of relevant participants in the educational system with experts from within the UK and abroad. Thus the procedures took the form of a series of five expert seminars at which those with knowledge and experience in specific topics were invited to share their knowledge and engage in dialogue. Ideas relating to the goals of the project were developed out of these discussions and captured in Working Papers developed during the project. Information from these sources was supplemented (in relation to goal 2) by a systematic review of research into the reliability and validity of teachers’ assessment. (See ALRSG). Three consultation conferences with potential users were held half-way through the project and five dissemination conferences held in spring 2006.