A framework for classroom assessment, learning, and self-regulation

ABSTRACT

We present a conceptual framework that leverages synergies between classroom assessment (CA) practices and self-regulated learning (SRL) theory to support academic growth and instruction. We articulate the processes shared by CA and SRL, drawing on a model of SRL with three phases: forethought, performance, and self-reflection. We blend this SRL model with CA to create the CA:SRL framework in four stages: (1) pre-assessment, (2) the cycle of learning, doing, and assessing, (3) formal assessment, and (4) summarizing assessment evidence. We elucidate how SRL processes are involved at each stage and can be drawn on to support learning development and teacher understanding and co-regulation of learning. This framework is important in that it depicts how assessment and learning processes interact dynamically for both teachers and students in classrooms, and demonstrates that such interactions encompass the full breadth of purposes in CA, from planning through summation of evidence.

KEYWORDS:

• Classroom assessment
• self-regulated learning
• assessment for learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peggy P. Chen

Peggy P. Chen, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the School of Education at Hunter College and is an affiliated faculty in the educational psychology program at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her research centers on the processes that intersect self-regulated learning and classroom assessment for both students and teachers.

Sarah M. Bonner

Sarah M. Bonner, Ph.D., is faculty in the School of Education at Hunter College, City University of New York, where she teaches classroom assessment and educational measurement. Her area of research is validity in classroom assessment. She is most recently co-author of Systematic Assessment: An Approach for Learning and Self-Regulation with Routledge Press. She currently leads a design team of researchers and teachers to develop and study formative assessment tasks that incorporate self-regulated learning in computer science.