INTRODUCTION

• Assessment is an integral part of learning, guiding the process and stimulating further learning. It can be seen at the various purposes for assessment that occurs routinely in classrooms. 
• Classroom assessment is a complex undertaking that means something different to different audiences and in different situations. 
• Teachers have to engage in a broad range of assessment roles. Clearly, these roles overlap, and teachers try to manage the assessment activities and juggle them to satisfy the various goals.
•  Below are the roles that teachers need to play in engaging assessment.

1. Teachers act as mentor.  Provide feedback and support to each student. 

2. Teachers act as guide. Gather diagnostic information to lead the group through the work at hand. 

3. Teachers act as accountant. Maintain records of students’ progress and achievement. 

4. Teachers act as reporter. Report to parents, students, and the school administration about student progress and achievement. 

5. Teachers act as program director Make adjustments and revisions to instructional practices. (Source: Adapted from Assessment Roles and Goals (Wilson, 1996)

• Assessment has many purposes that sometimes support one another and sometimes compete or conflict with one another. 
• There are three approaches of classroom assessment. These three approaches all contribute to student learning but in vastly different ways. 
• The three approaches are Assessment of Learning, Assessment for Learning and Assessment as Learning. 

1. ASSESSMENT OF LEARNING (SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT)

• Assessment of Learning is the predominant kind of assessment in schools. Its purpose is summative, intended to certify learning and report to parents and students about students’ progress in school, usually by signalling students’ relative position compared to other students. 
• Assessment of Learning in classrooms is typically done at the end of something (eg, a unit, course, a grade, a Key Stage, a program) and takes the form of tests or exams that include questions drawn from the material studied during that time.
•  The results are expressed symbolically, generally as marks across several content areas to report to parents. This is the kind of assessment that still dominates most classroom assessment activities, especially in secondary schools, with teachers firmly in charge of both creating and marking the test. 
• Teachers use the tests to assess the quantity and accuracy of student work, and the bulk of teacher effort in assessment is taken up in marking and grading. 
• A strong emphasis is placed on comparing students, and feedback to students comes in the form of marks or grades with little direction or advice for improvement. 
• These kinds of testing events indicate which students are doing well and which ones are doing poorly. 
• Typically, they don’t give much indication of mastery of particular ideas or concepts because the test content is generally too limited and the scoring is too simplistic to represent the broad range of skills and knowledge that has been covered. 
• They have been widely accepted by parents and the public. 

2. ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING (FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT)

• Assessment for Learning offers an alternative perspective to traditional assessment in schools. 
• Assessment for Learning shifts the emphasis from summative to formative assessment, from making judgments to creating descriptions that can be used in the service of the next stage of learning. 
• When they are doing Assessment for Learning, teachers collect a wide range of data so that they can modify the learning work for their students. 
• They craft assessment tasks that open a window on what students know and can do already and use the insights that come from the process to design the next steps in observation, worksheets, questioning in class, student-teacher conferences or whatever mechanism is likely to give them information that will be useful for their planning and teaching. 
• Marking is not designed to make comparative judgments among the students but to highlight each students’ strengths and weaknesses and provide them with feedback that will further their learning. 
• Clearly, teachers are the central characters in Assessment for Learning as well, but their role is quite different from that in the prior approach.
•  In Assessment for Learning, they use their personal knowledge of the students and their understanding of the context of the assessment and the curriculum targets to identify particular learning needs. 
• Assessment for learning happens in the middle of learning, often more than once, rather that at the end. It is interactive, with teachers providing assistance as part of the assessment. It helps teachers provide the feedback to scaffold next steps. 
• Record keeping in this approach may include a grade book, but the records on which teachers rely are things like checklists of student’s progress against expectations, artefacts, portfolios of students work over time, and worksheets to trace the progression of students along the learning continuum. 
• Assessment for Learning can go a long way in enhancing student learning. 

3. ASSESSMENT AS LEARNING (MONITORING METACOGNITION)

• Assessment as Learning reinforce and extend the role of formative assessment for learning by emphasizing the role of the student, not only as a contributor to the assessment and learning process, but also as the critical connector between them. The student is the link. 
• Students act actively, engaged, and critical assessors, can make sense of information, relate it to prior knowledge, and master the skills involved. 
• 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.
•  Assessment as Learning is the ultimate goal, where students are their own best assessors. 
• At some point, students will need to be self-motivating and able to bring their talents and knowledge to bear on the decisions and problems that make up their lives. 
• They can’t just wait for the teacher to tell them whether or not the answer is “right.” Effective assessment empowers students to ask reflective questions and consider a range of strategies for learning and acting. 
• Record keeping in assessment as Learning is a personal affair. Students and teachers decide (often together) about the important evidence of learning and how it should be organized and kept. 
• Students routinely reflect on their work and make judgements about how they can capitalise on what they have done already. 

CONCLUSION

• To conclude, all the three assessment approaches have their place. The only trick is to get the balance right. 
• As from now onwards, Assessment of Learning is less vital because it focused on measuring learning after the fact and used for categorising students and reporting these judgements to others.
•  On the other hand, the use of Assessment for Learning is by building in diagnostic processors which is today vital and needs to be implemented in classroom learning – formative assessment and feedback at stages in the program – and giving students second chances to improve their marks. 
• As a whole, assessment would make up a large part of the school day, not in the form of separate tests, but as a seamless part of the learning process. 
• At the same time, there would be tests when the decisions to be made require identification of a few individuals or groups, or when a summative description is important for students and others as a milestone or rite of passage.

References: 

1. Earl, Lorna (2003) Assessment as Learning: Using Classroom Assessment to Maximise Student Learning. Thousand Oaks, CA, Corwin Press. Printed from The Learning, Teaching and Assessment Guide http://www.ltag.education.tas.gov.au
2. Assessment Roles and Goals (Wilson, 1996)