What is assessment of as and for learning?

Advice and tools for teachers to assess the progress of all learners and support more targeted teaching practices.

Assessment is the ongoing process of:

• gathering, analysing and interpreting evidence
•  reflecting on findings
• making informed and consistent judgements to improve student learning.

Assessment for improved student learning and deep understanding requires a range of assessment practices to be used with three overarching purposes:

• Assessment for learning: occurs when teachers use inferences about student progress to inform their teaching (formative assessment)
• Assessment as learning: occurs when students reflect on and monitor their progress to inform their future learning goals (formative assessment)
• Assessment of learning:occurs when teachers use evidence of student learning to make judgements on student achievement against goals and standards (summative assessment).

For information, advice and resources about using assessment to improve your students’ achievement and progress in learning see:

• Insight Assessment Platform
  
• Evaluate the Impact of Your Teaching

More information

Australian Council on Educational Research (ACER) - provides educational research, products and services, including assessment and test administration services. The website contains research, tests, publications, professional learning opportunities and information about ACER library services.

Association for Achievement and Improvement through Assessment - provides information, research and links for assessment in education.

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) - provides information on education work undertaken by the OECD. Work includes thematic reviews in specific policy areas, and collection of detailed statistical information on education systems, including measures of the competence levels of individuals.

The Online Learning Centre - Ministry of Education, New Zealand - enables you to locate information about assessment, including recent developments, research and new tools.

The Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (USA) - contains tools to help classroom teachers become better assessors of student learning.

Rubistar - a free tool to help teachers develop quality rubrics. 

Policy advice

Assessment of Student Achievement and Progress Foundation to 10

It boils down to purpose. In 50 Ways To Measure Understanding, I talked about the purpose of assessment:

Is the assessment for the teacher or the student? If you’re not clear about why you’re assessing (and what you’re going to do with the data the test provides) you’re wasting a lot of time, energy, and resources–your own and that of the students.

Think like a doctor: You have to have a plan what you’re going to do with what you learn from the data before you give the assessment–ideally, before you even design the tool to begin with.

Assessment for learning is commonly referred to as formative –that is, designed to inform instruction. If we can agree that the purpose of a test is to provide data to revise planned instruction, then the only type that’s not ‘for learning’ is ‘of learning,’ commonly referred to as summative.

Assessment is generally broken down into three categories: before instruction (pre-test), during instruction (formative), and after instruction (summative). To further complicate matters, it could be argued that pre-assessment is both of and for learning–that is, it assesses ‘prior knowledge’ (as a pre-test) and that data is then used to revise planned instruction (making it formative).

In truth, most of this is semantics and a bit confusing. There are many ways to measure understanding and the primary distinction in most K-12 classrooms is function: What is the assessment supposed to do? If you’re using the ‘test’ so that you can see what students do and don’t know so that you can more accurately plan future learning lessons and activities, then it’s for learning (even if you’re obviously doing so by performing an assessment of learning).

If instead, the tool is merely a kind of benchmark to see ‘how well they can do’ and you’re moving on, then it’s primarily an assessment of learning. There is significant overlap between the two; in fact, the same test given in one circumstance would be considered ‘of learning’ while in another circumstance be considered ‘for learning.’

In short then, the difference is a matter of function and purpose–a matter of ‘who’: assessment of learning is a way to see what the students can do while assessment for learning is a way to see what the teachers should do in response.

You can check out more of TeachThought’s resources for teachers or contact us for related professional development, and let us know in the comments if there is a distinction or example you think other teachers could benefit from.