Page 29 - Learning for All – A Guide to Effective Assessment and Instruction for All Students, Kindergarten to Grade 12, 2013

3. Assessment for Learning Types of Assessment
Recent research in education, as reflected in the ministry policy document Growing Success: Assessment, Evaluation, and Reporting in Ontario Schools (2010), has focused on three types of assessment:
• assessment for learning;
• assessment as learning;
• assessment of learning.
Rethinking Classroom Assessment with Purpose in Mind (Western and Northern Canadian Protocal for Collaboration in Education (WNCP), 2006, pp. 13–14) describes these three types of assessment as follows:
1. Assessment for learning is designed to give teachers information to modify and differentiate teaching and learning activities. It acknowledges that individual students learn in idiosyncratic ways, but it also recognizes that there are predictable patterns and pathways that many students follow. It requires careful design on the part of teachers so that they use the resulting information not only to determine what students know, but also to gain insights into how, when, and whether students apply what they know. Teachers can also use this information to streamline and target instruction and resources, and to provide feedback to students to help them advance their learning.
2. Assessment as learning is a process of developing and supporting metacognition for students. Assessment as learning focuses on the role of the student as the critical connector between assessment and learning. When students are active, engaged, and critical assessors, they make sense of information, relate it to prior knowledge, and use it for new learning. This is the regulatory process in metacog- nition. It occurs when students monitor their own learning and use the feedback from this monitoring to make adjustments, adaptations, and even major changes in what they understand. It requires that teachers help students develop, practise, and become comfortable with reflection, and with a critical analysis of their
own learning.
3. Assessment of learning is summative in nature and is used to confirm what students
know and can do, to demonstrate whether they have achieved the curriculum out- comes, and, occasionally, to show how they are placed in relation to others. Teachers concentrate on ensuring that they have used assessment to provide accurate and sound statements of students’ proficiency, so that the recipients of the information can use the information to make reasonable and defensible decisions.
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