The article draws from 199 sources on assessment, learning, and motivation to present a detailed decomposition of the values, theories, and goals of formative assessment This article will discuss the extent to which formative feedback actualizes and reinforces self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies among students Theoreticians agree that SRL is predictive of improved academic outcomes and motivation because students acquire the adaptive and autonomous learning characteristics required for an enhanced engagement with the learning process and subsequent successful performance The theory of formative assessment is found to be a unifying theory of instruction, which guides practice and improves the learning process by developing SRL strategies among learners In a postmodern era characterized by rapid technical and scientific advance and obsolescence, there is a growing emphasis on the acquisition of learning strategies which people may rely on across the entire span of their life Research consistently finds that the self-regulation of cognitive and affective states supports the drive for lifelong learning by: enhancing the motivational disposition to learn, enriching reasoning, refining meta-cognitive skills, and improving performance outcomes The specific purposes of the article are to provide practitioners, administrators and policy-makers with: (a) an account of the very extensive conceptual territory that is the ‘theory of formative assessment’ and (b) how the goals of formative feedback operate to reveal recondite learning processes, thereby reinforcing SRL strategies which support learning, improve outcomes and actualize the drive for lifelong learning

Formative Assessment: Assessment Is for Self-regulated Learning

Developing children as successful learners is a key aim of A Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland. This paper presents qualitative results from an eight week exploratory field study in which a class of ten year olds made their own computer games. The analysis focuses on the development of aspects of successful learning as identified in the curriculum: enthusiasm and motivation for learning, determination to reach high standards of achievement, independent and group learning, and linking and applying learning in new situations. As teachers have an important role in facilitating and supporting learners as they use technology, the paper concludes with a discussion of implications for classroom practice.

Computer game design: Opportunities for successful learning

High stakes testing in Australia was introduced in 2008 by way of the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). Currently, every year all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 are ass...

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The impact of high stakes testing: the Australian story

Scotland’s new Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) has been widely acknowledged as the most significant educational development in a generation, with the potential to transform learning and teaching in Scottish schools. In common with recent developments elsewhere, CfE seeks to re‐engage teachers with processes of curriculum development, to place learning at the heart of the curriculum and to change engrained practices of schooling. This article draws upon well‐established curriculum theory (notably the work of both Lawrence Stenhouse and A.V. Kelly) to analyse the new curriculum. We argue that by neglecting to take account of such theory, the curricular offering proposed by CfE is subject to a number of significant structural contradictions which may affect the impact that it ultimately exerts on learning and teaching; in effect, by ignoring the lessons of the past, CfE runs the risk of undermining the potential for real change.

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The Development of Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence: Amnesia and Deja Vu.

There is a strong quest in several countries including Australia for greater national consistency in education and intensifying interest in standards for reporting. Given this, it is important to make explicit the intended and unintended consequences of assessment reform strategies and the pressures to pervert and conform. In a policy context that values standardisation, the great danger is that the technical, rationalist approaches that generalise and make superficial assessment practices, will emerge. In this article, the authors contend that the centrality and complexity of teacher judgement practice in such a policy context need to be understood. To this end, we discuss and analyse recorded talk in teacher moderation meetings showing the processes that teachers use as they work with stated standards to award grades (A to E). We show how they move to and fro between (1) supplied textual artefacts, including stated standards and samples of student responses, (2) tacit knowledge of different types, drawing into the moderation, and (3) social processes of dialogue and negotiation. While the stated standards play a part in judgement processes, in and of themselves they are shown to be insufficient to account for how the teachers ascribe value and award a grade to student work in moderation. At issue is the nature of judgement as cognitive and social practice in moderation and the legitimacy (or otherwise) of the mix of factors that shape how judgement occurs.

The Centrality of Teachers' Judgement Practice in Assessment: A Study of Standards in Moderation.

This article takes the form of a case-study, outlining the progress of policy and practice in Scotland towards the introduction of Assessment for Learning in pre-school and schools for children aged 3–14. The period described comprises the launch of 5–14 curriculum and assessment guidelines in the early 1990s, a review and consultation on assessment in pre-school and 5–14 by HM Inspectorate of Schools, the recent assessment development programme, Assessment is for Learning (AifL), initiated in 2002, and the publication by the Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED) of a set of curriculum and assessment policy documents for education 3–18 in November 2004. The assessment guidelines published in 1991 put considerable emphasis on professional practice in assessment as part of learning and teaching, promoting what would now be recognized as ‘assessment for learning’. However, curriculum guidelines for English language and mathematics and new arrangements for national testing in reading, writing and mat...

The journey so far: assessment for learning in Scotland

Assessment at Transition: Report

Scotland, traditionally, has high levels of confidence in teachers. Fairness and justice are key concepts in policy and practice in Scottish education. For more than 100 years, the high-stakes assessment system in Scotland, with the Scottish Higher qualification at its heart, has been crucial to that sense of opportunity and justice. However, in 2019–2020, public confidence in high-stakes assessment in Scotland, as in other United Kingdom countries, was dented. In Scotland, the Covid-19 pandemic meant that schools were closed, teachers provided online learning opportunities for pupils working at home and, for the first time in 130 years, it was not possible to run national examinations. To ensure that learners were not further disadvantaged, alternative approaches to gathering evidence for qualifications were instigated. However, these results were challenged as socially unjust and the results that had been nationally moderated were replaced by results based on locally moderated teachers' professional judgement. As Scotland looks to qualifications beyond Covid-19, trust must be re-built. This article reports on a participative research project that sought to understand public perceptions of standards and fairness across a range of key communities following this experience. Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative data, we analyse factors which affected trust in National Qualifications under the pandemic. The evidence suggests that when considering what matters for qualifications to be trusted, technocratic solutions are likely to be rejected by stakeholders. Understanding and responding to what led to the mistrust of qualifications in Scotland will be crucial to inform its future qualifications system. 

Carolyn Hutchinson

Papers

The journey so far: assessment for learning in Scotland

Assessment at Transition: Report

National qualifications in Scotland: A lightning rod for public concern about equity during the pandemic

Assessment at Transition: Executive Summary