Assessment, Feedback and Recording of Learning
5. Assessment, Feedback and Recording of Learning
This domain tests whether you assess to help learning or only to rank it. Expect items on formative and summative purposes, classroom assessment tasks, school-based assessment, test construction, rubrics, feedback quality, and how records and reports should be kept and used.
Core rules
- Three purposes: assessment for learning (ongoing, diagnostic, used to adjust teaching), assessment as learning (learners self-assess and set next steps), assessment of learning (summative judgement at the end).
- The learning indicator is the criterion. If a task does not test the indicator, it is not evidence for it, however neat the marking.
- Use varied methods: observation checklist, oral questioning, practical task, project, portfolio, written exercise. A single test is one narrow sample of a wide curriculum.
- Classroom assessment tasks are recorded continuously, and school-based scores are combined with end-of-term examinations according to the assessment guidance in force - the weighting is set centrally, not chosen by the teacher.
- Good tests: a table of specification mapping items to indicators, clear instructions, one defensible answer, no trick wording, and a marking scheme written before marking begins.
- Feedback should be timely, specific, about the task and process, and forward-looking: what is right, what is wrong, what to do next.
- Records must be accurate, dated, secure and current; reports should state what the learner can do and the next target, not only a position in class.
Worked example
Two teachers return the same story. Teacher A writes 'Good work, 12/20'. Teacher B writes '12/20. Your opening sets the scene well. Your middle has no problem - the character simply walks. Add one event where she loses something, then finish it. See me at break if you want to check the plan.' Reasoning: A's comment is summative only, and the pupil cannot act on it. B gives feedback (what is right and wrong), feed-forward (the next move) and a specific revision instruction, while keeping the score. Improvement is most likely where feedback names both the gap and the action.
Traps that cost marks
- Equating assessment with tests, and assessment with end-of-term only.
- Giving marks with no comment, or praise with no information.
- Narrowing teaching to the test format.
- Reconstructing records from memory at the end of term instead of recording as tasks are marked.
- Not re-teaching after assessment - assessment that changes nothing is not assessment for learning.