Assessment Capability and Student Self-regulation: The Challenge of Preparing Teachers

Abstract

Research over several years has found that "effective learners tend to monitor and regulate their own learning and, as a result, learn more and have greater academic success in school" (Andrade, 2010, p. 90). In New Zealand primary schools, the primary purpose of assessment and evaluation is to improve students' learning and teachers' teaching as both respond to the information it provides. To bring this purpose to fruition, teachers need to be educated to facilitate genuine engagement by learners in assessment processes; known in New Zealand as having assessment capability. In this study, we investigated to what extent, and how, teacher candidates learn to involve their students in formative assessment of their own work. Participants were a cohort of undergraduate, elementary school teacher candidates in a 3-year undergraduate program taught across three campuses at one university in New Zealand. Surveys and interviews were used to investigate assessment capability. Although the survey results suggested the teacher candidates may be developing such capability, the interviews indicated that assessment capability was indeed an outcome of the program. Our findings demonstrate that these teacher candidates understood the reasons for involving their students and are beginning to develop the capability to teach and use assessment in these ways. However, developing assessment capability was not straight forward, and the findings demonstrate that more could have been done to assist the teacher candidates in seeing and understanding how to implement such practices. Our data indicate that a productive approach would be to partner teacher candidates with assessment capable teachers and with university lecturers who likewise support and involve the teacher candidates in goal setting and monitoring their own learning to teach.Keywords: formative assessment, assessment literacy, assessment capability, teacher candidates, student involvement in assessment inTrODUcTiOn In New Zealand elementary schools, the primary purpose of assessment is to improve students' learning and teachers' teaching. To bring this purpose to fruition, teachers need to be educated to facilitate genuine engagement by learners in assessment processes, known in New Zealand as having assessment capability. Following a contextual introduction to assessment purposes and structures in New Zealand elementary education, this article provides an introduction to the place of formative assessment in bringing forth self-regulation. Next, an argument for increasing the assessment capability of teacher candidates grounded in the relationship between assessment and teaching is made to set the scene for the investigation of teacher candidates' preparedness to involve their students in classroom assessment processes. The neW ZealanD cOnTeXTUnlike many other Western education jurisdictions where standardized, state and national tests, or assessments are required throughout schooling, there are no compulsory tests in New Zealand elementary schools. Instead, accountability...

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