Can teachers’ summative assessments produce dependable results and also enhance classroom learning?

Abstract

Summative assessments that are integrated within the daily pedagogy of teachers are problematic. Some argue that they cannot both be helpful to pedagogy and yield results that are comparable across and between schools. Others claim that there is enough evidence to show that these targets can be achieved. The project described in this paper explored how teachers might enhance their competence in summative assessment in ways which might also have a positive effect on their teaching and learning. A strategy was developed based on five key features of summative assessment practices. The findings, from a longitudinal study with 18 teachers, are based on the teachers’ opinions, both about the quality of the results which they achieved, and about the positive impacts on the involvement of pupils, on collaboration between teachers, and on interaction with parents. The project involved teachers of English and mathematics in three schools, working with the authors, over two-and-a-half years.

Keywords:

• teachers’ assessments
• summative
• validity
• portfolios
• pedagogy

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the subject teachers in the three schools, and to their senior managements, for the willing collaboration on which this project was based. We also acknowledge the help of Dorothy Kavanagh and her colleagues in the Oxfordshire Local Authority for helping to set up the project and for guidance and support throughout, both to the teachers and to ourselves. Finally, we acknowledge initial funding by the DfES and subsequent support from the Nuffield Foundation.

Notes

1. GCSE: the General Certificate of School Education – subject examinations taken in England, Wales and Northern Ireland by most pupils at age 16, the end of compulsory secondary education. The changes had little effect on the teachers involved here as they were due to happen after, or near the end of, the project.

2. There were at least two teachers from each school department, and there were some changes and substitutions made by the schools during the course of the project.

3. Quotations ascribed to teachers are given exactly as expressed in their oral contributions in interview, or as written by each.

4. Blind marking is a procedure in which each marker sees the work with no marks or comments added, and assigns a mark without consultation with others; these independent marks are then tabled at the outset of a meeting between the markers.

5. Key Stage 3: the first three years of secondary education, ages 11 to 14.

6. Crooks, Kane, and Cohen (1996) treat reliability as one of the components that determine validity. In this paper, we treat reliability and validity as separate components of dependability or quality.