How can data analysis inform effective assessment practice?

Assessment is central to learning. It is not just about testing or measuring learning; it is a key part of the whole learning process. Positive experiences of assessment can enable students' capacity for self-directed learning throughout life, making them curious, goal-orientated, aware of success criteria (or able to formulate their own criteria), and effective evaluators of their own work.

There have been significant changes in how curriculum authorities, schools and teachers approach learning, teaching and assessment. Teachers need to know how to design effective and engaging assessment, how to assist and encourage their students, how to provide feedback that enables learning, how to make judgements and to measure the extent to which students reached the standards at the end of a learning period, how to interpret data and report on students' progress.

This text demonstrates how and why assessment should be firmly embedded in the day-to-day practices of teaching and learning. Teachers learn as much from the assessment as their students do. The reflective practices required to capitalise on this knowledge to further learning are addressed throughout the book.
This book will give pre-service teachers, and current teachers as well, ways of developing the skills, competencies and confidence necessary to conduct assessments that will complement their teaching and enrich their students' learning.

Features

• Based on theory and evidence, but is a practical guide for pre-service teachers
• An integrated approach to assessment that guides pre-service teachers on:
• planning day-to-day classroom assessment strategies
• responding to differentiated student needs through assessment, particularly students with special learning needs and indigenous students
• designing authentic and constructively aligned assessment
• integrating preparation for and data gathered from high stakes testing
• developing a positive attitude to assessment (for teachers and students!)
• grounded in the realities of classroom practice and concentrated on helping teachers to understand assessment that will place learning at the centre of the process.
• demonstrates the importance of using 'data' from all types of assessments
• demonstrates and links the assessment process to how students learn
• uses the Australian national curriculum information and gives examples from all states and territories

New to this Edition

• Addresses the growing need for data analysis by showing students how to use data to inform their assessment practice. This will also assist students in meeting the fifth AITSL professional practice standard: ‘Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning’
• Chapter 15: Classroom Implications of Standardised Testing and Examinations has been revised and updated to align with the national curriculum
• Chapter 4: From Assessing with Standards to Assessing with Learning Progressions explores an increasingly important trend in assessment – determining student progress, rather than attainment. One of the main recommendations of the Gonski 2.0 report (2018) was that schools should be able to demonstrate that all students had made one year’s progress in one academic year. What this means for classroom assessment is introduced and explored in this chapter
• Chapter 13: Assessment in Primary and Lower Secondary Years in State and Australian Curricula allows for a greater focus on the primary and lower secondary years. Along with Chapters 12 to 14 looking at the differences between assessment practices in different stages of education from early childhood to senior secondary.

Part 1: Assessment Principles
1. Developing Healthy Attitudes to Assessment for Teachers
2. Developing a Healthy Attitude to Assessment among Students
3. Non-Negotiables in Assessment
4. From Assessing with Standards to Assessing with Learning Progressions

Part 2: Assessment Practices
5. Planning and Programming Assessments
6. Classroom Formative Assessment Processes
7. Creating Helpful Feedback Cycles  
8. School-based Summative Assessment: Design, Development and Conduct
9. Accommodations of Assessment for Students with Special Needs
10. Making Judgments about Student Achievement
11. Recording and Reporting, Reviewing and Responding

Part 3: Assessment Perspectives
12. Planning and Assessment in the Early Years
13. Assessment in Primary and Lower Secondary Years in State and Australian Curricula  
14. Assessment in the Senior Phase
15. Classroom Implications of Standardised Testing and Examinations  
16. Using Emerging Technologies to Engage with Assessment

Conclusion: Charting the Territory for Assessment Futures

Kylie Readman, Pro Vice Chancellor-Education, Murdoch University

Bill Allen, Senior Lecturer, Edith Cowan University

Nathanael Reinertsen, Research Fellow, Australian Council of Educational Research