Assessment drives learning: An unavoidable truth?

The debate around which factors drive medical students' learning is ongoing and controversial. What is the influence of an assessment's weighting on the motivation of students to study the particular subject? One medical school in London is in a unique position to investigate this question. At our institution, the weighting of Anatomy within the overall scheme of assessment has changed twice in recent years, a trend of increased weighting. This enabled a comparative investigation into the effect these changes have had on the students' motivation to learn Anatomy. A five‐point Likert‐scale questionnaire survey was used to evaluate students. A section within a broad survey of Anatomy teaching and learning at our institution was dedicated to the evaluation of the amount of weighting Anatomy received within the assessment structure and the effect this had on students' motivation toward learning the subject. Increasing Anatomy's weighting within the scheme of assessment produced a dramatic increasing trend toward students' motivation to learn Anatomy. The weighting of Anatomy has a profound effect on students' motivation to learn it. Although multifactorial and complex in nature, medical students' self‐reported drive to study a subject is directly influenced by the weighting of the subject in the overall scheme of assessment. Anat Sci Educ 2:199–204, 2009. © 2009 American Association of Anatomists.     

National Curriculum Assessment in the U.K.

What are the objectives of national curriculum assessment in the United Kingdom? What criteria for assessment were established? What kinds of problems are associated with the assessment?     

A Theory-Based Framework for Assessing Domainl-Specific Problem-Solving Ability

Is problem solving a global construct? What components can be assessed? What multiple assessment strategies can be used?     

Secondary Teachers' Classroom Assessment and Grading Practices

What variables do secondary teachers use to assign grades? What is the relationship between classroom assessment practices and grading? Is the form of classroom assessment related to grade level, subject area, and student ability?     

Educational Testing in America: What's Right,What's Wrong? A Criterion-Referenced Perspective

What is a criterion-referenced test? What are the good and bad points of authentic assessment, criterion-referenced testing, and Item Response Theory?     

The Americans With Disabilitie Act Implications for Measurement

What does the Americans with Disabilities Act require of assessment programs? What does “reasonable accommodation” mean? What is the best overall guidance that is available regarding ways to meet the spirit and letter of the act?     

How Far Have We Moved Toward the Integration of Theory and Practice in Self-Regulation?

In this article, we address four main questions, including: What is self-regulated learning for? What key strategies do students need to guide and direct their own learning process? What cues in the learning environment trigger self-regulation strategies? What can teachers do to help student to self-regulate their learning, motivation, and effort in the classroom? We illustrate that answers to these questions have changed over time and that changing conceptualizations of the self-regulation process have influenced the assessment tools that were used. We also point to changing classroom conditions as a factor that has affected the assessment of self-regulation. Finally, we formulate some questions that need to be tackled in research on self-regulation and introduce the articles and commentaries in the special issue that provide some cutting-edge work on the use of assessment to register self-regulation over time.     

Investigating the dynamics of formative assessment: relationships between teacher knowledge,assessment practice and learning

This exploratory study of elementary school science examines questions central to policy, practice and research on formative assessment: What is the quality of teachers’ content-pedagogical and assessment knowledge? What is the relationship between teacher knowledge and assessment practice? What is the relationship between teacher knowledge, assessment practice and student learning? Drawing on multiple measures, hierarchical linear modelling and path analysis, results suggest that despite weaknesses in teachers’ content-pedagogical and assessment knowledge, teachers’ formative assessment practices are positively related to student learning. Relationships between teachers’ knowledge and assessment practices are mixed. Findings underscore both the potential and challenge of bringing effective formative practice to fruition as well as the need for continued research.     

Professional Development in Student Assessment for Educational Administrators: An Instructional Framework

What assessment tasks do administrators perform? What knowledge and skills do they need for these tasks? How is this information useful for professional development?     

Educational Assessment in Czechoslovakia

What is the history of educational assessment and research in Czechoslovakia? How have attitudes toward testing changed over the years? What are the prospects for the future?     

Performance Assessment: Moonstruck or the Real Thing?

What are the advantages of performance assessment? What are the risks of employing only performance assessments in large-scale testing programs?     

Perspectives on Measurement Instruction

How do teachers obtain assessment information? Should our courses emphasize less formal assessment methods rather than formal methods? What nontraditional assessment topics should be added to our courses?     

Assessing Differential Item Functioning in Performance Assessment: Review and Recommendations

How can we best extend DIF research to performance assessment? What are the issues and problems surrounding studies of DIF on complex tasks? What appear to be the best approaches at this time?     

Portfolios in Large-scale Assessment: Difficult But Not Impossible

Can districtwide portfolio assessment yield reliable scores? How can content and scoring be standardized? How can such assessment be integrated with instruction? What are the costs?     

国际技术教育课程评价:困境、经验与启示

近年来,随着技术教育成为各国基础教育关注的热点领域,其课程评价日益成为一个共同的焦点问题。技术教育课程应该由谁来评价?评价什么?怎样评价?有哪些合适的评价方式?通过对别国及地区的实践考察,技术教育课程评价应积极建立基于"专业"与标准的国家质量监测体系,努力寻求适合"技术"自身特性的多元评价方式。     

Criterion-Referenced Measmment: A Valwable Perspective Clouded by Surplus Meaning

What is the relevance of criterion-referenced measurement to the performance-based assessment movement? Why do we need to strip away surplus meaning from the term criterion-referenced measurement? What confusions exist around the place of cut scores and other concepts in CRT?     

Standards of Validity and the Validity of Standards in Performance Asessment

What are six distinct aspects of construct validation? How do these aspects apply to performance assessment? Are the consequences of performance assessment on teaching and learning relevant to construct validation?     

Evaluating Classroom Assessment Training in Teacher Education Programs

What should training for teachers look like? Do our assessment practices align well with what we would like our students to do? How can you self-assess assessment training at your institution?     

Formative assessment and teaching practice: the point of view of Italian teachers

Over the years the debate on the aims, approaches, and impacts of formative assessment has never stopped to grow. Parallel to this growth is the awareness that it is crucial to understand what conceptions teachers have of assessment in order to guarantee more effective teacher education. This paper tries to connect these two fields of research: formative assessment and teacher education through an analysis of teachers’ conceptions: What do teachers think about assessment? What aims do they pursue through it? Do teachers really distinguish between formative and summative assessment? On the backdrop of the formative assessment literature, the article reports on an exploratory research study. Limitations and issues are analysed in order to shed light on teacher education implication and on future educational research paths in the educational assessment field.     

The Conceptual Framework for the Development of a Mathematics Performance Assessment Instrument

How can you align instruction, learning, and assessment in an educationally sound way? How can you define and measure competence in mathematics? What areas of competence do you need to specify and how? How can one evaluate the validity and consequences of using a particular assessment instrument or technique?