Assessment for student and teacher learning

There are few educational topics that engender as much heated debate and confusion as assessment. Everyone has a view – students, teachers, parents, principals, researchers, policy-makers and politicians. For some of these groups assessment is about what happens at the end of a teaching sequence in order to grade and report on student achievement. For others, assessment in science refers to the process of gathering and interpreting information about the progress of students’ learning in relation to scientific knowledge and understanding, skills, values and attitudes (Hackling, 2004). This chapter explores the complexities around assessment, which are exemplified in a number of vignettes and videos highlighting the different perspectives of the student, preservice teacher, early career teacher and highly experienced teacher-educator. Further, the chapter provides examples of a range of assessment strategies that can be used to gauge student understanding in many ways depending on the purpose of assessment. Our focus is to deliberately challenge existing stereotypes that a specific form of assessment can only be used in one way e.g., a test - to demonstrate that it can be used summatively, formatively or diagnostically in equally valuable ways for both the student and the teacher.