1. Rethinking Classroom
Assessment With
Purpose in Mind
Lorna M. Earl, Ph.D.
3219 Yonge St. Suite # 240 Toronto ON M4N 3S1
aporia@attglobal.net
tel 4 1 6 . 6 8 6 . 2 2 7 9 fax 4 1 6 . 6 8 6 . 4 1 6 2

2. Rethinking Classroom
Assessment With Purpose in Mind
Assessment for Learning
Assessment as Learning
Assessment of Learning
2006
Western and Northern Canadian
Protocol for Collaboration in Education
www.wncp.ca, classroom assessment

3. What is AfL?
In your own words, describe AfL.
– Write it on the sticky note on your table and
stick it in the front of your packet.

4. Overview
Why Rethink Classroom Assessment?
Assessment, Learning and Motivation
Purposes of Classroom Assessment
Making the Change
Getting There

5. Why Change Classroom
Assessment?
– Societal Changes
– Classroom Assessment, Learning and
Motivation?
– Using Classroom Assessment for
Differentiated Learning?

6. History of Assessment
Plato
Trade Guilds
Industrial Revolution and Legislated
Universal Education
High Quality Education for All

7. 3 Powerful Insights about How
People Learn (National Research Council)
• People come to learning with
preconceptions about how the world
works. If their initial understanding is
not engaged, they may fail to grasp
the new concepts and information
that are taught or may learn them
superficially and revert to their
preconceptions in real situations.

8. Assessment, Learning and
Motivation
Jojo Story

9. 3 Powerful Insights about How
People Learn (National Research Council)
• To develop competence in an area of
inquiry, people must:
• have a deep foundation of factual
knowledge
• understand facts and ideas in the
context of a conceptual framework
• organize knowledge in ways that
facilitate retrieval and application

10. Using Assessment to
Differentiate Learning
From “Deficit” Explanations Of Diversity To “Inclusive”
Strategies For All
Deficit Paradigm Inclusion Paradigm
What’s wrong with the child What’s wrong with the environment
Focus on deficits Focus on strategies
Prescriptive Malleable
Diagnoses diversity Values diversity
Tolerates differences Embraces differences
Reliance on external expert Teacher/parent/student as expert
Professionalized Personalized
(adapted from Philpott et al., 2004)

11. Stages in Growth from Emergent
to Proficient
Emergent Proficient
No practical Analytical. Locates Uses analysis and Understands the context.
Expects definitive
experience. and considers synthesis. Sees the Has a holistic grasp of
answers. Some
Dependent on possible patterns. whole rather than relationships. Considers
recognition of
rules. Has internalized the aspects. Looks for links alternatives in an iterative
patterns. Limited
experience. Still key dimensions so and patterns. Adjusts way and integrates ideas
relies on rules. that they are to adapt to the into efficient solutions.
automatic. context. Solves problems and makes
ongoing adaptations
automatically.

12. 3 Powerful Insights about How
People Learn (National Research Council)
• A “metacognitive” approach to instruction
can help people learn to take control of
their own learning by defining learning
goals and monitoring their own progress
in achieving them.

13. BREAK

14. Purposes of Classroom
Assessment
Assessment for learning
Assessment as learning
Assessment of learning
Balance and Tensions in Assessment
Purposes

15. FOR OF
FOR AS OF

16. Assessment For Learning
Assessment for learning is designed to give
teachers information to modify the teaching and
learning activities in which students are engaged in
order to differentiate and focus how individual
students approach their learning.
It suggests that students are all learning in
individual and idiosyncratic ways, while recognizing
that there are predictable patterns and pathways
that many students go through.
The emphasis is on teachers using the information
from carefully-designed assessments to determine
not only what students know, but also to gain
insights into how, when, and whether students use
what they know, so that they can streamline and
target instruction and resources.

17. Assessment As Learning
Assessment as learning emphasizes using assessment
as a process of developing and supporting
metacognition for students.
Assessment as learning focuses on the role of the
student as the critical connector between assessment
and learning. Students, as active, engaged and critical
assessors make sense of information, relate it to prior
knowledge, and use it for new learning.
This is the regulatory process in metacognition. It occurs
when students personally monitor what they are
learning and use the feedback from this monitoring to
make adjustments, adaptations and even major
changes in what they understand.
When teachers focus on assessment as learning, they
use classroom assessment as the vehicle for helping
students develop, practice and become comfortable with
reflection and with critical analysis of their own learning.

18. Assessment Of Learning
Assessment of learning is assessment used to
confirm what students know, to demonstrate
whether or not the students have met the standards
and/or show how they are placed in relation to
others.
In assessment of learning, teachers concentrate on
ensuring that they have used assessment to provide
accurate and sound statements of proficiency or
competence for students, so that the recipients of
the information can use the information to make
reasonable and defensible decisions.

19. Shifting the Balance Among
Assessment Purposes

20. Task – What are the properties of
AfL
Think of the last good lesson you gave
or observed
List the properties of that lesson that
make you think it had good AfL
practice?
In your groups share your properties
List shared properties on the chart
paper

21. Properties of Assessment For
Learning
1. Clarity of Purpose
2. Explicit Learning Progression
3. Intended Transparency of Current Knowledge
4. Pedagogical Next Steps Informed by Evidence
5. Students’ Next Steps as Informed by Evidence
6. Assessment supports Meta-Cognition
Development
7. Multiplicity and Intentionality
8. Assessment Differentiates
9. Integration

22. Learning How to Swim Full Front
Crawl
Arms, kicking,
breathing every
stroke
Gliding with a flitter
kick & breathing
Gliding with a
flutter kick &
breathing
Glide & flutter kick
Glide Saad's learning how to
swim progression.
Floating,
breathing,
comfortable
in water

23. Explicit Learning Progression:
Description
There are explicit links to learning
expectations that describe the road to
proficiency
Clear and explicit curriculum links
Clear and explicit learning progression
Students understand expectations
Teachers can target instructional
supports

24. Multiplicity and Intentionality
Is this purple?

25. Multiplicity and Intentionality
Assessment for Learning activities are
intentional and planned
Students’ learning is made transparent
AfL draws on multiple forms of
evidence

26. Integration
Assessment for learning is an integrated
process rather than an isolated event
Assessment is seamless with teaching
and learning
The properties are tightly correlated
Integration is hard to see

27. Task - The Assessment Story
Guided Reading

28. Assessment As Learning – The
Ultimate Purpose
We must constantly remind ourselves that the
ultimate purpose of evaluation is to enable
students to evaluate themselves. Educators
may have been practicing this skill to the
exclusion of the learners. We need to shift
part of this responsibility to students.
Fostering students’ ability to direct and
redirect themselves must be a major goal—or
what is education for?
Costa (1989)

29. For students to be able to improve, they
must develop the capacity to monitor the
quality of their own work during actual
production. This in turn requires that
students possess an appreciation of what
high quality work is, that they have the
evaluative skill necessary for them to
compare with some objectivity the quality
of what they are producing in relation to
the higher standard, and that they
develop a store of tactics or moves which
can be drawn upon to modify their own
work.
» Sadler, 1989

30. Task – Assessment For Learning
Guidelines
Individually, complete the Assessment
for Learning Guidelines Task Sheet
Discuss the guidelines and your
examples in your group

31. Levels of Learning
New learning for the adults in schools and beyond

32. Learning Imperatives for You
In groups:
– What Do We Need to Learn?

33. Making the Change
Changing Minds
– Schools are for learning
– Assessment is a significant part of
learning
Changing Practices
– Learning at the core
– Teaching each student “just in time” to
maximise learning and minimise
misconceptions
– Feedback for learning
– Communication to ourselves, to students,
to parents, to the community

34. Getting There
Think About What You Believe To Be True
Learn About Learning
Know Your Subject
Be An Expert Teacher
Work Together
Be Gentle With Yourself; But, Don't Give up
Self-monitoring and Self-Development For
You Too
Get The Support You Need
Put it All Together

35. If you make a change and it feels
comfortable, you haven’t made a
change.
» Lee Trevino

36. Never doubt that a small group of
thoughtful and committed citizens can
change the world. In fact, it has never
happened any other way.
» Margaret Mead