While it is frequently argued that assessment sits at the heart of the learning process, in practice assessment often remains narrowly focused on qualifications and reporting achievements, driven by ...institutional and societal aspirations and tensions such as accountability and economic well being. Yet, the need for assessment to account for the knowledge, skills, dispositions and attitudes necessary to equip young people for a changing and increasingly digital world is also increasingly acknowledged. Based on our recent research review, this article critically examines the role of technology enhanced assessment (or TEA). We argue that while technology offers many potentially creative opportunities for innovation and for rethinking assessment purposes, there are also numerous risks and challenges. In particular we highlight ethical concerns over social exclusion and new forms of digital dividedness and the increasing risks associated with big data and the rise of learning analytics. Finally, we note that much research and innovation happens in silos, where policy, research and practice on assessment, technology enhanced assessment and ethical and political concerns are not linked up. We conclude that there needs to be a much more wide-ranging, critical and nuanced discussion in educational and policy circles so that debates about the potential of technology can be linked to improving assessment in the light of the range of social and political challenges that such progress presents. We end with some critical questions for policy, practice and research communities, which we offer as a starting point for future thinking and ways forward.
This article presents a revised version of the author’s Samuel Messick
Memorial lecture in 2003. Messick’s emphasis on consequential validity is
used to identify some of the negative effects of ...current practices as they affect
the quality of students’ learning and motivation. It suggests that there
have been many ‘dark alleys’ in which poorly understood
assessment technologies have been used thoughtlessly or have been located on
‘blind bends’ in which a lack of sufficient preparation and
knowledge has resulted in assessment practices that are dangerous and, potentially,
very damaging to learners.
In the light of these problems the article argues for a more constructive approach to
assessment. Taking the particular context of language learning, the article
describes a new assessment tool, The Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory (ELLI),
which has a very different purpose: the identification of an individual’s
power to learn. It argues the need to replace the conventional lexicon of testing
with a focus on key learning dimensions such as confidence, collaboration, critical
curiosity and creativity - the feelings and dispositions that are argued to be
central to learning.
The focal paper by Baird et al. in this special issue argues that there are few issues more important in education than the relationship between assessment and learning. On the one hand, learning is ...the ultimate goal of all educational interventions; on the other, assessment has become a leviathan that constrains and shapes virtually all of that formal educational activity. Thus, the argument in "Assessment and Learning: Fields Apart" (Baird, Andrich, Hopfenbeck & Stobart, 2017) that theories of learning and theories of assessment should be developing more closely with each other is very welcome. In response to this article, the author addresses three central issues that she feels merit further discussion. These are: (1) What are the really key issues in this relationship that need urgent attention as opposed to those issues which are more "academic niceties" and why?; (2) Is there more to be said about learning theory that is relevant to assessment than is discussed in the stimulus article? ;and (3) Are there novel theoretical or practical developments--either in the field of education or more generally--that might facilitate a more fruitful coming together of the two fields of assessment and learning? This article is a commentary on Jo-Anne Baird, et al.'s "Assessment and Learning: Fields Apart" (EJ1149539).
This book reassesses the contributions of comparative educational research and theory to the understanding of contemporary educational problems and educators' capacity to solve them. The chapters ...arose from a series of seminars that examined the many changes in comparative education. The volume is divided into three parts. Part 1, "Comparative Education in the 1990s: Theory, Method, and Context," contains 6 chapters: "On Comparing" (D. Phillips); "Comparative Education in the 1990s" (P. Broadfoot); "Coping with Complexity in Comparative Methodology" (J. Schriewer); "Late Modernity and the Rules of Chaos" (R. Cowen); "Comparative and International Education at United Kingdom Universities" (M. Schweisfurth); and a "Postscript" (J. Betts and S. Wilde). Part 2, "Comparing Classrooms and Schools," also features 6 chapters: "Comparing Classrooms, and Schools" (R. Alexander); "Method and Meaning in Comparative Classroom Ethnography" (J. Tobin); "Creating a New Methodology for Comparative Educational Research" (D. Reynolds); "Culture in Pedagogy, Pedagogy across Cultures" (R. Alexander); "Interpreting Classroom Practice around the Globe" (M. Galton); and a "Postscript" (M. Schweisfurth). Part 3, "Comparing Pupil Achievement," includes 7 chapters: "Comparing Pupil Achievement" (P. Broadfoot); "Measuring the Quality of Educational Outputs" (H. Steedman); "International Comparisons of Educational Attainment and Economic Performance" (P. Robinson); "Comparative Research on Pupil Achievement" (P. Broadfoot); "Comparing Children's Learning, Attitude and Performance in French and English Primary Schools" (M. Osborn and C. Planel); a "Commentary" (D. Hawker and G. Bonnet); and a "Postscript" (P. Broadfoot). (RJM)
The completion of the first ten years of this journal is an occasion for review and reflection. The main issues that have been addressed over the ten years are summarized in four main sections: ...Purposes, International Trends, Quality Concerns and Assessment for Learning. Each of these illustrates the underlying significance of the themes of principles, policy and practice, which the journal highlights in its subtitle. The many contributions to these themes that the journal has published illustrate the diversity and complex interactions of the issues. They also illustrate that, across the world, political and public pressures have had the effect of enhancing the dominance of assessment so that the decade has seen a hardening, rather than any resolution, of its many negative effects on society. A closing section looks ahead, arguing that there is a move to rethink more radically the practices and priorities of assessment if it is to respond to human needs rather than to frustrate them.
The paper describes the evolution of a multilateral evaluation strategy within the PRAISE project. The account describes how the approach started with an initial commitment to 'meta-evaluation' as a ...means of cross-validating emerging data and its interpretation, but gradually evolved into a more explicit partnership where the overall research design now depends on the integration of both levels of evaluation. Having presented the case study, the paper uses it to help identify key issues in multilateral evaluation. These include: the need for a common set of ethical guidelines and the closely related issue of working practices and access to data; the issue of integrating the different purposes and audiences of different levels of evaluation; the role of funding agencies and, particularly, central government, in initiating such multilateral programmes. More generally the paper explores vertical versus horizontal models of collaboration and their implications for different epistemologies of educational research and evaluation. It concludes with an appraisal of the overall strengths and weaknesses of multilateral evaluation which may be identified at this relatively early stage of its development.
This paper reports the initial results of a study that was designed to develop and test an instrument that could identify the elements of an individual's capacity for lifelong learning. We ...anticipated that the components of this capacity would include a complex mix of dispositions, lived experiences, social relations, values, attitudes and beliefs and that these various factors would coalesce to shape the nature of an individual's engagement with any particular learning opportunity. The instrument that was developed-the Evaluating Lifelong Learning Inventory-was trialled with pupils across a range of ages and subject to factor analytic study. The data have proved robust over successive factor analytic studies, allowing the identification of seven dimensions of learning power and reliable scales to assess these. These dimensions appear to be capable of differentiating between efficacious, engaged and energized learners and passive, dependent and fragile learners. Whilst further, larger scale field trials will be necessary to confirm these early results, the findings would appear to have significant implications for conventional models of curriculum design and classroom practice.
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