Assessment for Teaching

About this book

This is the second edition of the text on assessment for teaching. Like the first edition the content is based on a mixture of teaching and research – it is informed by practice, theory and research in the classroom. It gives teachers what they have requested to improve teaching and learning. Like the first edition, it is not just another book on assessment. Many of you will have read generalised books on assessment, and some of you will even have written them. Patrick Griffin published one in the 1990s. This book is different. It is a clinical approach to assessment and the use of data in the classroom. It is about changing the culture of schools based on the use of assessment data and developing skills among teachers so they can use assessment information to make decisions about targeted teaching intervention. The book introduces a new kind of thinking, though some of the content is not new – note the case study written in 1970 that commences the Introduction.

The approach propounded here is simple, but it is not simplistic. It is one that demands conceptual reasoning and higher order thinking. In the eight years that the Master of Teaching program has been taught at the University of Melbourne it has developed and matured. We now know that pre-service teachers can cope with this form of assessment and that in-service teachers can also change their practices in the light of it. Over 1500 teachers have participated in the program through online and face-to-face delivery. Over 3000 student teachers have studied the program and many have told us that they secured employment because of their knowledge of this approach to assessment. Many of the 1500 practising teachers who have participated in the online program have testified that it has changed their thinking about the use of assessment data and the way in which it can help teachers to organise classrooms. Of course, some did not change.

There is no point in adding to the assessment literature based on translating psychometric theory and multiple-choice test design. This is not a book that regurgitates the old ideas about assessment wrapped up in the language of psychometrics. It takes a new approach.