In teachers college, we pulled apart assessment a lot and unpacked the different types and why they are of value. I recall thinking about assessment as a cycle: an assessment for learning provides meaningful, immediate information for the educator to use to construct their lessons and content while also providing some meaningful feedback to the student, followed by assessment as learning whereby the student evaluates their learning with the careful guidance of the educator in order to achieve that critical awareness of themselves as a learner, and lastly the assessment of learning whereby the teacher (hopefully) creates a purposeful, differentiated, dynamic, culturally responsive task which allows the student to demonstrate that they can achieve the overall expectations in the curriculum.
We were taught to critically reflect on assessment of learning - to note that it is not always accurate (professional judgement should be used), it is not always equitable, and it can break that cycle of learning that comes from assessment for and as learning - the revision and feedback loop is ended, and the final results (in most circumstances) are - well - final. My education in teacher's college can be considered radical; I was prompted to consider what education would look like without assessment of learning. That is not to say that it doesn't have value, but rather to acknowledge that it is a complicated, nuanced practice that is easy to get wrong. This is something I ponder to this day.
A great quote that really speaks to this idea is as follows: "Interestingly, if we're living up to the promise of teaching every student, not just the easy ones, we could turn all summative assessments into formative ones. The only reason students can't redo a final exam, project, or standardized test after they receive feedback and revise their learning is that someone in a policy-making capacity declared it so -- not because it's bad pedagogy." (Reporting Student Learning, O'Connor and Wormeli, 2011)
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