Assessment and Innovation
Eminent Conference, Zurich
Janet Looney
European Institute of Education
and Social Policy
13 November 2014
An Overview: Three kinds of assessment
• Summative assessment
– Teacher-developed tests
– Large-scale standards-based tests
– May be norm-referenced or criterion-referenced
• Formative assessment
– Classroom-based dialogue, extended questioning, student projects
– Feedback (timely, task-focused, includes suggestions for
improvement)
– Always criterion-referenced
• Ipsative assessment
– Portfolios, tracking tools
– Referenced to the individual student’s progress
Each of these assessment methods gathers different kinds of
information for different purposes, and on a different timeline
Large-scale, standards-based are useful for
monitoring student and school performance, but a
number of issues must be taken into consideration:
• Educational measurement technologies have not kept pace with
advances in the cognitive sciences
• Results from large-scale assessments are usually delivered too late and
with too little detail to have an impact on instruction
• High stakes assessments often lead to a narrowing of instruction, limit
“open learning” They may undermine innovation in education
• Performance-based assessments measure higher order skills, but often
have lower reliability
Improving assessment
• Develop summative assessment systems that
• Are based on multiple measures over time
• Support R&D for new approaches to assessment that
provide a reliable measure of higher-order thinking
• Balance accountability/improvement roles
• Improve teacher capacity for formative assessment
• Place a greater emphasis on student self improvement and
assessment of open learning
Different tools for different purposes
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Large-scale standardised tests
ICT-based assessments of complex skills
Test banks
Comment-only feedback
Student peer- and self-assessment
Portfolios
Rubrics
Tracking tools focused on improvement
Thank you
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