Assessment as learning involves students reflecting on their own progress, setting learning goals, and developing strategies to achieve those goals. It builds metacognition and helps students take responsibility for their past and future learning. Effective assessment as learning empowers students by having them ask reflective questions, consider different learning strategies, and determine next steps when they don't understand something. Teachers play a role in helping students develop specific and worthwhile learning goals and providing structures to support reflective thinking, while students are responsible for monitoring their goals over time through self-assessment.

1. Assessment Professional Learning
Assessment AS Learning
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2. Assessment AS learning:
• Occurs when students reflect on and
monitor their progress to inform their
future learning goals.
• It is regularly occurring, formal or informal
(e.g. peer feedback buddies, formal self
assessment) and helps students take
responsibility for their own past and future
learning.

3. It builds metacognition as it involves
students in understanding the standards
expected of them, in setting and monitoring
their own learning goals, and in developing
strategies for working towards achieving
them.
(Because it helps shape learning it is
formative assessment.)

4. “Effective assessment empowers students to ask
reflective questions and consider a range of
strategies for learning and acting … students
move forward in their learning when they can
use their personal knowledge to construct
meaning, have skills of self-monitoring to realize
that they don’t understand something, and have
ways of deciding what to do next.”
(Lorna Earl 2003, p. 25).

5. 30-second think
HOW have you organized
assessment AS learning?
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6. The purpose of assessment AS learning
is to:
“ • Increase learner autonomy
• Advance understanding of the subject
• Elevate the status of student from
passive learner to assessor
• Involve students in critical reflection
• Demonstrate to students the concepts of
subjectivity and judgement.”
(Hinnett & Thomas, 1999, cited on http://www.ucd.ie/teaching/assess/as9.htm)

7. Assessment as learning requires that students
take an active role in their own learning and
assessment.
To do this they must understand what is
expected of them i.e. the syllabus and your
learning intentions for them.

8. The Student’s role is to:
• have some responsibility to develop their own
learning goals
• decide which strategies to use to achieve their goals
• monitor their learning goals over time
(using reflective & metacognitive thinking, and self
assessment tools)
• evaluate their achievements.

9. The Teacher’s Role is to:
• help students develop their own specific, manageable
and worthwhile learning goals
• decide which broad short and longer term learning
goals are appropriate for this class and these students
• provide structures and processes to support students
in thinking reflectively and metacognitively to
monitor their goals.

10. Assessment AS learning strategies
include
• self-assessment that is free-writing in learning logs
• written reflections responding to prompts or probes
• oral discussion (with peers and/or the teacher)
• using checklists or rubrics
• metacognitive self-questioning
• using graphic organisers (concept maps, PMI tables)
• “traffic lighting” their own (or a peer’s) work
Encourage assessment of feelings as well as of thinking
and doing because research shows that emotional
involvement makes learning ‘stick’.

11. “It is very difficult for students to achieve a
learning goal unless they understand that
goal and can assess what they need to do to
reach it. So self-assessment is essential to
learning.”
(Paul Black et al. 2003, p. 49).

12. “Traffic light” - where were you:
Stopped?
Cautious?
Going
straight ahead?

13. Self-Assessment involves students in
• “reflecting on past experience
• seeking to remember and understand what took
place
• attempting to gain a clearer idea of what has
been learned and achieved. …
• sharing responsibility for the organisation of
their work
• keeping records of activities undertaken
• making decisions about future actions and
targets.”
(Paul Weeden et al. 2002, p. 73).

14. Self assessment
• can be the best feedback (as students
understand what they need to do and are not
waiting for teachers to give feedback)
• may initially need to be “scaffolded”
(e.g. by helping to decode the criteria in the
rubrics you create/negotiate)
• must focus on the quality (not quantity) of the
work - and on constructive criticism
• self-monitoring and self-correction can be
powerful motivators for improvement.

15. Rubrics can be useful when:
• students assist in the rubric design process
• the rubric is used for assessment AS learning
purposes by helping students understand what
Standards are expected of them
• students use the rubric in peer and self assessment
• they empower students to become more self-
directed in their learning - they understand where
they are headed and know how to get there.

16. Sample prompts for written
reflections:
“My strength today was …
“I feel frustrated when …
“I need to find out more about …
“I need help with …”
“What I can do to improve is …”
“My highest priority learning goal now is …”
The sentence stems need a short space between them
(3 or 4 are enough for any one reflection session).

17. Peer Assessment can be:
• observation (example: of an oral presentation)
• conferences or interviews (example: with a
‘draft buddy’)
• reading written reflections
• having email/e-Forum discussion
• a learning experience as students see how
others work.
You can create protocols to keep peer assessment
running smoothly.

18. Gender matters in self and peer
assessment
There are some gender differences in trends in
peer and self-assessment:
• boys tend to be easier on themselves and
harder on their peers (a bit too ruthless)
• girls tend to be harder on themselves and easier
on their peers (a bit too kind)
(and this may be compounded in different
cultural, religious, and/or ethnic groups).

19. Self assessment of group working
together
• Did I encourage another person today?
• Did I help “block” a put-down today?
• Did I contribute an idea today?
• Did I use active listening today?
• Did I keep my hands & feet to myself today?
• Did I ask a useful question today?

20. Peer assessment of group working
together:
• Did we settle quickly today?
• Did we keep our voices down today?
• Did we keep together today?
• Did we actively listen to each other?
• Did we concentrate on our tasks?
• Did we each have a chance to speak to the
whole group today?

21. When students develop learning
goals, think reflectively, self-
monitor their learning it is
Assessment Assessment AS Learning
FOR learning
Assessment
OF learning
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