Assessment Literacy and the Language of Learning

Abstract

For many decades, research on educational assessment was largely the preserve of the professional testing community and dominated by the search for more accurate summative techniques. By contrast, day to day assessment activity in schools and colleges was largely the result of custom and practice and of teachers’ intuition.

Yet we now know that assessment is one of the most powerful factors influencing learning for good or ill. A range of recent research studies has provided clear evidence concerning both how assessment affects students’ capacity and will to learn and how it can most effectively be used to support learning.

This presentation will firstly, review some of these recent findings to highlight the key importance of developing professional assessment literacy. Secondly, it will argue that assessment research now needs to focus on the nature of learning itself and how new assessment tools can inform teachers’ understanding of the learner as an individual to create a new ‘language of learning.’ In particular it will suggest that deriving the maximum benefit from the changing pedagogic possibilities that are associated with the growth of ICT, requires an increasing commitment to evidence-based assessment practices.