Types of Classroom Assessment
Making assessment an integral part of daily mathematics instruction is a challenge. It requires planning specific ways to use assignments and discussions to discover what students do and do not understand. It also requires teachers to be prepared to deal with students' responses. Merely spotting when students are incorrect is relatively easy compared with understanding the reasons behind their errors. The latter demands careful attention and a deep knowledge of the mathematics concepts and principles that students are learning… The insights we gain by making assessment a regular part of instruction enable us to meet the needs of the students who are eager for more challenges and to provide intervention for those who are struggling.
Burns 2005, p. 31
Assessment is integral to the teaching–learning process, facilitating student learning and improving instruction, and can take a variety of forms. Classroom assessment is generally divided into three types: assessment for learning, assessment of learning and assessment as learning.
Assessment for Learning (Formative Assessment)
The philosophy behind assessment for learning is that assessment and teaching should be integrated into a whole. The power of such an assessment doesn't come from intricate technology or from using a specific assessment instrument. It comes from recognizing how much learning is taking place in the common tasks of the school day – and how much insight into student learning teachers can mine from this material.
McNamee and Chen 2005, p. 76
Assessment for learning is ongoing assessment that allows teachers to monitor students on a day-to-day basis and modify their teaching based on what the students need to be successful. This assessment provides students with the timely, specific feedback that they need to make adjustments to their learning.
After teaching a lesson, we need to determine whether the lesson was accessible to all students while still challenging to the more capable; what the students learned and still need to know; how we can improve the lesson to make it more effective; and, if necessary, what other lesson we might offer as a better alternative. This continual evaluation of instructional choices is at the heart of improving our teaching practice.
Burns 2005, p. 26
Assessment of Learning (Summative Assessment)
Assessment of learning is the snapshot in time that lets the teacher, students and their parents know how well each student has completed the learning tasks and activities. It provides information about student achievement. While it provides useful reporting information, it often has little effect on learning.
Comparing Assessment for Learning and Assessment of Learning
Assessment for Learning
(Formative Assessment) |
Assessment of Learning
(Summative Assessment) |
Checks learning to determine what to do next and then provides suggestions of what to do—teaching and learning are indistinguishable from assessment.
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Checks what has been learned to date.
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Is designed to assist educators and students in improving learning.
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Is designed for the information of those not directly involved in daily learning and teaching (school administration, parents, school board, Alberta Education, post-secondary institutions) in addition to educators and students.
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Is used continually by providing descriptive feedback.
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Is presented in a periodic report.
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Usually uses detailed, specific and descriptive feedback—in a formal or informal report.
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Usually compiles data into a single number, score or mark as part of a formal report.
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Is not reported as part of an achievement grade.
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Is reported as part of an achievement grade.
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Usually focuses on improvement, compared with the student's “previous best” (self-referenced, making learning more personal).
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Usually compares the student's learning either with other students' learning (norm-referenced, making learning highly competitive) or the standard for a grade level (criterion-referenced, making learning more collaborative and individually focused).
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Involves the student.
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Does not always involve the student.
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Adapted from Ruth Sutton, unpublished document, 2001, in Alberta Assessment Consortium, Refocus: Looking at Assessment for Learning (Edmonton, AB: Alberta Assessment Consortium, 2003), p. 4. Used with permission from Ruth Sutton Ltd.
Assessment as Learning
Assessment as learning develops and supports students' metacognitive skills. This form of assessment is crucial in helping students become lifelong learners. As students engage in peer and self-assessment, they learn to make sense of information, relate it to prior knowledge and use it for new learning. Students develop a sense of ownership and efficacy when they use teacher, peer and self-assessment feedback to make adjustments, improvements and changes to what they understand.
Authentic Assessment
An authentic assessment usually includes a task for students to perform and a rubric by which their performance on the task will be evaluated.
How is Authentic Assessment similar to/different from Traditional Assessment?
The following comparison is somewhat simplistic, but I hope it illuminates the different assumptions of the two approaches to assessment.
By "traditional assessment" (TA) I am referring to the forced-choice measures of multiple-choice tests, fill-in-the-blanks, true-false, matching and the like that have been and remain so common in education. Students typically select an answer or recall information to complete the assessment. These tests may be standardized or teacher-created. They may be administered locally or statewide, or internationally.
Behind traditional and authentic assessments is a belief that the primary mission of schools is to help develop productive citizens. That is the essence of most mission statements I have read. From this common beginning, the two perspectives on assessment diverge. Essentially, TA is grounded in educational philosophy that adopts the following reasoning and practice:
1. A school's mission is to develop productive citizens.
2. To be a productive citizen an individual must possess a certain body of knowledge and skills.
3. Therefore, schools must teach this body of knowledge and skills.
4. To determine if it is successful, the school must then test students to see if they acquired the knowledge and skills.
2. To be a productive citizen an individual must possess a certain body of knowledge and skills.
3. Therefore, schools must teach this body of knowledge and skills.
4. To determine if it is successful, the school must then test students to see if they acquired the knowledge and skills.
In the TA model, the curriculum drives assessment. "The" body of knowledge is determined first. That knowledge becomes the curriculum that is delivered. Subsequently, the assessments are developed and administered to determine if acquisition of the curriculum occurred.
In contrast, authentic assessment (AA) springs from the following reasoning and practice:
1. A school's mission is to develop productive citizens.
2. To be a productive citizen, an individual must be capable of performing meaningful tasks in the real world.
3. Therefore, schools must help students become proficient at performing the tasks they will encounter when they graduate.
4. To determine if it is successful, the school must then ask students to perform meaningful tasks that replicate real world challenges to see if students are capable of doing so.
2. To be a productive citizen, an individual must be capable of performing meaningful tasks in the real world.
3. Therefore, schools must help students become proficient at performing the tasks they will encounter when they graduate.
4. To determine if it is successful, the school must then ask students to perform meaningful tasks that replicate real world challenges to see if students are capable of doing so.
Thus, in AA, assessment drives the curriculum. That is, teachers first determine the tasks that students will perform to demonstrate their mastery, and then a curriculum is developed that will enable students to perform those tasks well, which would include the acquisition of essential knowledge and skills. This has been referred to as planning backwards (e.g., McDonald, 1992).
If I were a golf instructor and I taught the skills required to perform well, I would not assess my students' performance by giving them a multiple choice test. I would put them out on the golf course and ask them to perform. Although this is obvious with athletic skills, it is also true for academic subjects. We can teach students how to do math, do history and do science, not just knowthem. Then, to assess what our students had learned, we can ask students to perform tasks that "replicate the challenges" faced by those using mathematics, doing history or conducting scientific investigation.
Authentic Assessment Complements Traditional Assessment
But a teacher does not have to choose between AA and TA. It is likely that some mix of the two will best meet your needs. To use a silly example, if I had to choose a chauffeur from between someone who passed the driving portion of the driver's license test but failed the written portion or someone who failed the driving portion and passed the written portion, I would choose the driver who most directly demonstrated the ability to drive, that is, the one who passed the driving portion of the test. However, I would prefer a driver who passed both portions. I would feel more comfortable knowing that my chauffeur had a good knowledge base about driving (which might best be assessed in a traditional manner) and was able to apply that knowledge in a real context (which could be demonstrated through an authentic assessment).
Defining Attributes of Traditional and Authentic Assessment
Another way that AA is commonly distinguished from TA is in terms of its defining attributes. Of course, TA's as well as AA's vary considerably in the forms they take. But, typically, along the continuums of attributes listed below, TA's fall more towards the left end of each continuum and AA's fall more towards the right end.
Traditional --------------------------------------------- Authentic
Selecting a Response ------------------------------------ Performing a Task
Contrived --------------------------------------------------------------- Real-life
Recall/Recognition ------------------------------- Construction/Application
Teacher-structured ------------------------------------- Student-structured
Indirect Evidence -------------------------------------------- Direct Evidence
Let me clarify the attributes by elaborating on each in the context of traditional and authentic assessments:
Selecting a Response to Performing a Task: On traditional assessments, students are typically given several choices (e.g., a,b,c or d; true or false; which of these match with those) and asked to select the right answer. In contrast, authentic assessments ask students to demonstrate understanding by performing a more complex task usually representative of more meaningful application.
Contrived to Real-life: It is not very often in life outside of school that we are asked to select from four alternatives to indicate our proficiency at something. Tests offer these contrived means of assessment to increase the number of times you can be asked to demonstrate proficiency in a short period of time. More commonly in life, as in authentic assessments, we are asked to demonstrate proficiency by doing something.
Recall/Recognition of Knowledge to Construction/Application of Knowledge:Well-designed traditional assessments (i.e., tests and quizzes) can effectively determine whether or not students have acquired a body of knowledge. Thus, as mentioned above, tests can serve as a nice complement to authentic assessments in a teacher's assessment portfolio. Furthermore, we are often asked to recall or recognize facts and ideas and propositions in life, so tests are somewhat authentic in that sense. However, the demonstration of recall and recognition on tests is typically much less revealing about what we really know and can do than when we are asked to construct a product or performance out of facts, ideas and propositions. Authentic assessments often ask students to analyze, synthesize and apply what they have learned in a substantial manner, and students create new meaning in the process as well.
Teacher-structured to Student-structured: When completing a traditional assessment, what a student can and will demonstrate has been carefully structured by the person(s) who developed the test. A student's attention will understandably be focused on and limited to what is on the test. In contrast, authentic assessments allow more student choice and construction in determining what is presented as evidence of proficiency. Even when students cannot choose their own topics or formats, there are usually multiple acceptable routes towards constructing a product or performance. Obviously, assessments more carefully controlled by the teachers offer advantages and disadvantages. Similarly, more student-structured tasks have strengths and weaknesses that must be considered when choosing and designing an assessment.
Indirect Evidence to Direct Evidence: Even if a multiple-choice question asks a student to analyze or apply facts to a new situation rather than just recall the facts, and the student selects the correct answer, what do you now know about that student? Did that student get lucky and pick the right answer? What thinking led the student to pick that answer? We really do not know. At best, we can make some inferences about what that student might know and might be able to do with that knowledge. The evidence is very indirect, particularly for claims of meaningful application in complex, real-world situations. Authentic assessments, on the other hand, offer more direct evidence of application and construction of knowledge. As in the golf example above, putting a golf student on the golf course to play provides much more direct evidence of proficiency than giving the student a written test. Can a student effectively critique the arguments someone else has presented (an important skill often required in the real world)? Asking a student to write a critique should provide more direct evidence of that skill than asking the student a series of multiple-choice, analytical questions about a passage, although both assessments may be useful.
These two different approaches to assessment also offer different advice about teaching to the test. Under the TA model, teachers have been discouraged from teaching to the test. That is because a test usually assesses a sample of students' knowledge and understanding and assumes that students' performance on the sample is representative of their knowledge of all the relevant material. If teachers focus primarily on the sample to be tested during instruction, then good performance on that sample does not necessarily reflect knowledge of all the material. So, teachers hide the test so that the sample is not known beforehand, and teachers are admonished not to teach to the test.
With AA, teachers are encouraged to teach to the test. Students need to learn how to perform well on meaningful tasks. To aid students in that process, it is helpful to show them models of good (and not so good) performance. Furthermore, the student benefits from seeing the task rubric ahead of time as well. Is this "cheating"? Will students then just be able to mimic the work of others without truly understanding what they are doing? Authentic assessments typically do not lend themselves to mimicry. There is not one correct answer to copy. So, by knowing what good performance looks like, and by knowing what specific characteristics make up good performance, students can better develop the skills and understanding necessary to perform well on these tasks. (For further discussion of teaching to the test, see Bushweller.)
You can also learn something about what AA is by looking at the other common names for this form of assessment. For example, AA is sometimes referred to as
- Performance Assessment (or Performance-based) -- so-called because students are asked to perform meaningful tasks. This is the other most common term for this type of assessment. Some educators distinguish performance assessment from AA by defining performance assessment as performance-based as Stiggins has above but with no reference to theauthentic nature of the task (e.g., Meyer, 1992). For these educators, authentic assessments are performance assessments using real-world or authentic tasks or contexts. Since we should not typically ask students to perform work that is not authentic in nature, I choose to treat these two terms synonymously.
- Alternative Assessment -- so-called because AA is an alternative to traditional assessments.
- Direct Assessment -- so-called because AA provides more direct evidence of meaningful application of knowledge and skills. If a student does well on a multiple-choice test we might infer indirectly that the student could apply that knowledge in real-world contexts, but we would be more comfortable making that inference from a direct demonstration of that application such as in the golfing example above.
