Dann, Ruth. (2002). Promoting Assessment as Learning:
Improving the Learning Process. London & New York:
RoutledgeFalmer
Pp. vi-162
$25.95 (Paper) ISBN 0-415-24007-7
Reviewed by Michael Friga
State University of New York College at Cortland
January 5, 2004
Educational assessment, both in the United Kingdom
and the United States, increasingly focuses on uniform
educational standards and accountability for students and
teachers in order to meet common educational standards. Small but
growing groups of researchers are now turning their attention to
assessment embedded in the context of the classroom (Stiggins,
2001a; Shepard, 2001). Studies of classroom-based assessment
frequently open with salvos aimed at the negative effects
large-scale testing programs (Wiggins, 1993; Kohn, 2000). Ruth
Dann does not waste words discussing the merits of accountability
assessment. While acknowledging teachers’ responsibilities
in preparing students for external standards, she avoids
complaining about the “lemons” of large-scale
standardized testing and instead turns her attention to making
lemonade by emphasizing the “ . . . capacity to transform
any educational encounter into a valuable learning
experience” (p. 3). She utilizes the framework of
accountability assessment, but transforms the intent in order to
serve learning rather than merely evaluating it.
Assessment of student learning appears, on the
surface, to be an objective, clearly definable and scientific
process. One need only determine the standards of achievement,
outline the objectives necessary in acquiring these standards,
and then create the tests to determine the acquisition of
objectives. In other words, educators must create “tests
worth taking” and teachers will align their classrooms to
the agreed upon standards (Resnick & Resnick, 1989). The
current push for standards-based educational reform in England
and the United States is predicated on the assumption that
large-scale testing paired with performance-based consequences
will improve student learning.
While standards-based assessment may tell us how many students
can hurdle the bar we set for them, it contributes little to the
strategies for improving teaching and learning in the classroom.
In the first two chapters of Promoting Assessment as Learning:
Improving the Learning Process, Ruth Dann develops the idea
that teachers may use accountability assessment for the purpose
of improving student learning outcomes. She acknowledges the
necessity of holding students and teachers to similar standards,
but emphasizes the limitations of reducing the educational
process to the constraints inherent in the tests of
achievement.
Two visions of education are at the heart of Ruth
Dann’s argument. In the first, large-scale standardized
assessment most closely follows the behaviorist or
"objectives” model in assuming that specific
“objectives and targets may be established and used to
frame learning” (p. 13). This model assumes that we can
summarize well-defined content areas into clear objectives
presented to students in a linear fashion and assessed through
objective measures. Dann terms this assumption the
“achievement agenda” (p.21).
The second vision of education combines two models of
education: the “social constructivist” and
“self-regulatory” models. The first focuses on the
individual learner within the social context of the classroom
("social constructivist" model). In the second, assessment
provides feedback to the learners and their peers so they may be
better equipped to aid each other and themselves in improving
their understanding of the curriculum ("self-regulatory" model).
Dann describes the orientation of these two models as a
“learning agenda.” This orientation acknowledges the
centrality of the learner in the educational experience.
Woven throughout the text are examples of the summative and
formative purposes of assessment. In Chapter 3, she defines
large-scale assessment as focusing on summative assessment or
knowledge as a product acquired after a period of learning. In
contrast, formative assessment involves learning within the
context of acquisition and during the process of learning. It is
within this context that teachers and students can effectively
use assessment data to improve learning.
The difficulty with formative assessment is that each student
acquires knowledge uniquely, not necessarily within a lock-step
hierarchy prescribed by external standards. Especially in the
early grades, students learn and develop at widely differing
rates. This demands that teachers apply their own intuition and
awareness of the diversity of learning styles within the
assessment process. Dann points out that while large-scale
evaluation relies exclusively on objective measurement, intuition
and subjectivity have a valid role in the dynamic interplay of
classroom-based assessment.
Framing classroom-based assessment as both an art and a
science is not a new idea. Scates (1938, 1943) described the
assessment environment in which teachers draw upon recurrent
interactions and observations to form picture of learning.
According to Scates (1943) a scientist is “concerned with
abstracting a specific element out of a complex...” while
the “...teacher’s concern is just the opposite. He is
working with variable individuals to build a variable
product” (p. 3).
Teachers evaluate students using assessment data, repeated
observations, and an understanding of student variability. Test
scores inform teachers’ professional judgments, but other
sources of information also play a role in evaluating students.
Why would we assume otherwise? If doctors spent as much time in
assessing their patients as teachers spend assessing students,
would we assume a single external test could do a better job at
diagnosing the clients’ needs than the professional?
Doctors certainly rely on external tests in the process of
evaluation, but they provide the interpretation, diagnosis and
intervention. For teachers the situation is reversed: their
opportunities to observe, assess and evaluate their students may
be discounted and a single external assessment used to determine
high-stakes educational outcomes. In a recent example in the
state of Florida, over 30,000 students failed the 3rd
grade language arts assessment resulting in recommendations for
grade retention (Farrington, August 24th, 2003). In
determining which students to retain, a single test determined
the outcome, nullifying the teachers’ role in evaluating
the students.
The first developer of standardized tests, Alfred Binet, also
recognized the unique opportunity of teachers to repeatedly
evaluate their students. He commented that teachers’
evaluations were “based upon long observation, continued
during weeks and months…” and recognized the benefits
of repeated observations:
… they are numerous, diverse, and when needful they
correct one another. Herein lies the incontestable superiority of
observation over the test; the latter is an experiment; moreover
a short experiment, which, therefore, contains a certain element
of chance. (Binet & Simon, 1916; p. 311).
Binet’s recognition of the superiority of
“observation over the test” reflects a position
rarely articulated in discussions about assessment. Stiggins
(2001a) suggests that in the years since Binet expressed his
opinion, teachers’ assessment competence has decreased due
to lack of training in valid classroom-based assessment
procedures.
Dann attempts to shift the emphasis back to the classroom by
putting forward an agenda for co-opting the culture of national
assessment to support the learning environment in the classroom.
In Chapter 4, she tactfully defines this process as a
“creative reinterpretation of policy directives and
guidance in the midst of severe regulatory pressures” (p.
48) and explains the limitations of high stakes testing on the
improvement of classroom learning. Bolstering her explanation,
the author presents a small study in which eleven teachers, in
partnership with Keele University in England, developed
strategies to improve student performance on national tests while
creating a learner-centered classroom environment. She suggests
teachers create opportunities for students to revisit important
concepts related to curriculum standards (“reminder
opportunities”), increase student fluency in key tasks
(“repetition opportunities”), and generalize student
knowledge to new contexts (“recontextualising
opportunities”) (p. 70). Teachers must also help students
link their knowledge together through problem-solving tasks,
discussion, and concept mapping (“reconceptualising
opportunities”). Finally, teachers should encourage
students to think about their own learning through
self-assessment (“reflection opportunities) (p. 71).
Dann then expands upon the theme of self-assessment in Chapter
5. She presents a case study supporting her premise that student
involvement in the assessment process reframes testing as a
method of dialogue rather than a summary of achievement. Creating
dialogue, however, requires teachers to listen to student
understanding and motivation rather than to determine the
“correctness” of their responses. Teachers who
participated in this study found that their students’
perceptions of achievement often had more to do with their own
educational histories than with the criteria emphasized by the
teacher. The impact of grading also played an important role in
students’ perceptions of achievement. Discussions between
students and teachers regarding achievement often boiled down to
the grade assigned to a classroom product. Such negotiation
between teachers and students regarding grades adds a level of
complexity to discussions of classroom learning that must be
addressed for self-assessment to serve purely learning-oriented
goals.
While introducing the issue of evaluation for learning and
grading, Dann does not provide an opinion as to how teachers
should address these potentially conflicting purposes of
assessment. Others have tackled this thorny issue more directly
and suggested that meeting course requirements (e.g. turning
papers in on time) and the acquisition of knowledge should be
graded separately (Siggins, 2001b).
Utilizing the two assessment perspectives developed throughout
the book, Dann synthesizes a framework that enables teachers to
balance measuring student performance and influencing student
learning. In Chapter 6, she points out that teachers must go
beyond simply teaching students to interpret their assessment
data; they must also help students maintain their confidence and
motivation as learners. Our current assessment culture emphasizes
what is wrong with student performance. Teachers must learn to
emphasize and encourage what is right with it.
Once again, by introducing the relationship between assessment
and motivation, the author introduces an aspect to testing that
receives too little attention. Student motivation represents the
greatest source of “content-irrelevant variance”
during testing. I would speculate that test score improvement on
high-stakes tests has more to do with teachers getting students
to take the tests seriously than any real improvement in student
learning. Teachers are situated to reduce this variance by
assessing children on many occasions and in different moods.
Dann assumes that teachers’ primary goal should be to
foster students to become independent or
“self-regulated” learners. Self-regulation involves a
sense of self-efficacy, the motivation to improve, the
metacognitive ability to examine self-performance, and meaningful
feedback from teachers (p. 113). This goal requires teachers to
spend individual time with students to encourage them toward
their successes, ask questions that lead them toward greater
examination of their own learning, and describe for them the
academic areas where they should focus. In a sense, teachers
strive for their students to become self-regulated, motivated
learners as meta-goals in teaching. Moreover, if these
meta-goals are important learning outcomes, teachers must
evaluate students’ learning in these areas.
The title to the final chapter of her book summarizes her
central thesis in three words: "Assessment as learning." For
assessment to directly influence the educational process, it must
not be considered an extraneous measure of outcomes, but a piece
of the dialogue that occurs between students and teachers. By
moving assessment back into the educational process, teachers'
roles as professionals are acknowledged. In the end, effective
assessment does not alienate teachers and students, but brings
them together as parties motivated for successful learning.
Successful assessment requires students who want to improve and
teachers who are professional participants. Without aligning
assessment with motivation of classroom participants, large scale
testing will merely document the increasing disenfranchisement of
the students and teachers who are subject to the evaluative
process.
Ruth Dann contributes a timely and persuasive argument for
teachers in favor of utilizing assessment to foster learning in
the classroom. She also frames the context for conducting
research in classroom-based assessment that emphasizes the social
milieu and self-regulatory aspects of learning. With so much
interest in large-scale testing, researchers often ignore the
student's role as an active participant in the assessment
process.
As Dann states in the introduction, this book is not intended
as a practical guide, but as a means of drawing attention toward
using assessment to improve the learning process. I would like to
see Dann expand upon Promoting Assessment as Learning to
provide the practical guide that many seek. For assessment to
effectively reflect a student’s learning, teachers and
researchers must consider the influence of motivation and other
student characteristics on achievement. The book effectively
provides a waypoint for this examination, but does not offer a
guide.
Ruth Dann provides a valuable contribution to the dialogue on
academic assessment. She introduces the idea that a
child’s educational history and the cultural influence of a
society focused on numbers will add to the challenge of using
assessment to help learning. She only briefly explores the
increasing disparity between the teacher’s professional
role and the growing influence of single test scores. Teachers
are in the situation of being the closest educational
professional to the child, with opportunities to assess needs
over an extended time and in many areas not within the narrow
boundaries of standardized tests. Despite this, their voices are
being disregarded in a culture focused on a prescribed and
uniform set of standards. Dann takes a pragmatist’s
approach, facing the realities of a culture focused on
assessment, identifying how teachers can improve their assessment
practices, and pointing out the importance of what students bring
to the assessment environment.
While the study presented in the book is small scale, it
introduces the importance of learner characteristics
(self-efficacy, motivation, metacognition and response to
feedback) on successful assessment. In addition, the study points
to the obstacles faced by teachers in creating learner-centered
assessment. Dann takes the metaphor of assessment as
yardstick and reframes it into a metaphor that is more
powerful: assessment as lens. Teachers who use assessment
as a lens to focus their instruction take a significant step in
developing learner-centered classrooms.
References
Binet, A. & Simon, T. (1916). The Development of
Intelligence in Children, Vineland, NJ: The Training School at
Vineland New Jersey.
Farrington, B. (2003, August 24). 5 times more Florida kids to
repeat 3rd grade: State’s new policy links
promotion to reading test scores, The Washington Post, pp.
A12.
Kohn, A. (2000). The Case Against Standardized Testing:
Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools. Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann.
Resnick, L.B., and Resnick D.P. (1989). Assessing the Thinking
Curriculum: New Tools for Educational Reform. Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania: Learning Research and Development Center:
University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University.
Scates, D. E. (1943). Differences between measurement criteria
of pure scientists and of classroom teachers. Journal of
Educational Research, 37 (1), 1-13.
Scates, D. E. (1938). The improvement of classroom testing,
Review of Educational Research, 8, 523-36, 560-563.
Stiggins, R. J. (2001a). The Unfulfilled Promise of Classroom
Assessment, Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 20(3),
5-15.
Stiggins, R. J. (2001b). Student-Involved Classroom Assessment
(3rd ed). Columbus, OH: Merrill Prentice Hall. Pp.
409-466
Shepard, L. (2000). The role of assessment in a learning
culture. Educational Researcher, 29 (7), 1-14.
Shepard, L. (2003). A Survey of Teachers’ Perspectives
on High-Stakes Testing in Colorado: What Gets Taught, What Gets
Lost. University of Colorado at Boulder: CRESST Technical Report
588. Pp. 1-81.
Wiggins, G. P. (1993). Assessing student performance:
Exploring the purpose and limits of testing. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass Publishers. Pp. xi – 307.
About the Reviewer
Michael Friga is an assistant professor at the State
University of New York College at Cortland. He teaches
measurement and evaluation for teachers as well as courses in
research methods. He received his doctorate from University of
California Berkeley in 2001.
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