Student Perspectives on Assessment

What Students Can Tell Us About Assessment for Learning

Edited by:
Dennis M. McInerney, The Education University of Hong Kong
Gavin T. L. Brown, The Hong Kong Institute of Education
Gregory Arief D. Liem, University of Sydney

A volume in the series: Research on Sociocultural Influences on Motivation and Learning. Editor(s): Gregory Arief D. Liem, The Education University of Hong Kong.

Published 2009

Assessment for learning is meant to engage, motivate, and enable students to do better in their learning. However, how students themselves perceive assessments (both high-stakes qualifications and low-stakes monitoring) is not well understood. This volume collects research studies from Europe, North and South America, Asia, and New Zealand that have deliberately focused on how students in primary, secondary, and tertiary education conceive of, experience, understand, and evaluate assessments. Assessment for learning has assumed that formative assessments and classroom practices would be an unqualified success in terms of student learning outcomes. Making use of a variety of qualitatively interpreted focus groups, observations, and interviews and factor-analytic survey methods, the studies collected in this volume raise doubts as to the validity of this formulation. We commend this volume to readers hoping to stimulate their own thinking and research in the area of student assessment. We believe the chapters will challenge researchers, policy makers, teacher educators, and instructors as to how assessment for learning can be implemented.

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION. Student Perspectives of Assessment: Considering What Assessment Means to Learners, Gavin T. L. Brown, Dennis M. McInerney, and Gregory Arief D. Liem. PART I. STUDENTS’ PERSPECTIVES OF ASSESSMENT IN COMPULSORY SCHOOLING. Accessing Primary Pupils’ Conceptions of Daily Classroom Assessment Practices, Ana Remesal. “Drawing” Out Student Conceptions: Using Pupils’ Pictures to Examine Their Conceptions of Assessment, Lois R. Harris, Jennifer A. Harnett and Gavin T.L. Brown. My Teacher and My Friends Helped Me Learn: Student Perceptions and Experiences of Classroom Assessment, Bronwen Cowie. Students’ Voices in School-based Assessment of Hong Kong: A Case Study, Manman Gao. PART II. STUDIES WITH THE STUDENTS’ CONCEPTIONS OF ASSESSMENT INVENTORY. Analyzing the Dimensionality of the Students’ Conceptions of Assessment (SCoA) Inventory, Anke Weekers, Gavin T. L. Brown, and Bernard P. Veldkamp. Beliefs that Make a Difference: Adaptive and Maladaptive Self-regulation in Students’ Conceptions of Assessment, Gavin T.L. Brown, Elizabeth Peterson, and Earl Irving. Test-Taking Effort and Score Validity: The Influence of Student Conceptions of Assessment, Steven L. Wise and Melynda R. Cotten. A Multimethod Examination of University Students' Views of Assessment, Lisa F. Smith and Kelly Holterman ten Hove. PART III. UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ PERSPECTIVES OF ASSESSMENT. Assessment Practices in Higher Education in Brazil from the Students’ Point of View, Daniel A. S. Matos, Sergio D. Cirino, and Gavin T. L. Brown. How Can We Increase Student Motivation During Low-Stakes Testing? Understanding the Student Perspective, Anna Zilberberg, Allison R. Brown, J. Christine Harmes, and Robin D. Anderson. Formative Assessment in Higher Education: Frequency and Consequence, Jeffrey K. Smith and Anastasiya A. Lipnevich. Changing Insights in the Domain of Assessment in Higher Education: Novel Assessments and Their Pre-, Post- and Pure Effects on Student Learning, Mien Segers, Filip Dochy, David Gijbels, and Katrien Struyven. Index. About the Authors.