Assessment in the Classroom

Abstract

Classroom assessment is broadly conceived of in this entry as what teachers and students do regularly to gather, analyze, and share information to improve teaching and learning. Classroom assessment is an area of the field of language assessment that gives attention to the social aspects of learning and language development rather than to the more cognitively oriented high‐stakes interpretation of scores that are distal to classroom learning. Sociocultural theory provides a basis for assessment in the language classroom by highlighting social interaction between teachers and students as well as active engagement among students in meaning making. From this perspective classroom assessment creates opportunities for multilingual learners to express themselves in multimodal ways through their participation in student‐centered projects, products, and performances as evidence of their content and language learning. Rather than maintaining the dichotomy of assessment for formative or summative purposes, in some circles, more productive concepts are assessment as learning, assessment for learning, and assessment of learning. This three‐way distinction of classroom assessment purposes offers a framework for empowering students and teachers as decision makers about the integration of classroom assessment.