Emergency assessment: rethinking classroom practices and priorities amid remote teaching

ABSTRACT

Systemic disruptions from COVID-19 have transformed the assessment landscape in Canada and across the world. Alongside repeated shifts to emergency remote teaching, large-scale assessments and summative evaluations were cancelled in many jurisdictions, and repeated concerns were raised about ensuring equity and access to quality education. This paper investigates the rapid – and in many cases innovative – responses teachers offered to these challenges at the height of the pandemic. Drawing on prolonged semi-structured interviews with 17 secondary school teachers in Ontario, Canada, the paper provides a detailed account of Ontario’s approach to assessment during COVID-19, exemplified by participants’ lived experiences. Results highlight the notion of emergency remote assessment, the vital role of assessment in stemming widening equity and well-being gaps, and emerging consequences from this period. These data offer critical insights into the future of our forever-changed education landscape, and position classroom assessment as a priority player in this work.

KEYWORDS:

• Emergency remote assessment
• classroom assessment
• equity and well-being
• COVID-19

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amanda Cooper

Amanda Cooper is an Associate Dean of Research and Strategic Initiatives in the Faculty of Education at Queen’s University and Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy. She founded the Research Informing Policy, Practice, and Leadership in Education (RIPPLE) program to increase the use of evidence in public service sectors. Dr. Cooper’s research on knowledge mobilization includes four areas of inquiry: research producers (funders and universities), research users (practitioners and policymakers), research brokers, and measuring research impact

Christopher DeLuca

Christopher DeLuca is an Associate Dean in the School of Graduate Studies and Professor of Educational Assessment in the Faculty of Education at Queen's University. He leads the Classroom Assessment Research Team and is the Director of the Queen’s Assessment and Evaluation Group. Dr. DeLuca’s research examines the complex intersection of curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment as operating within the current context of school accountability and standards-based education. His work largely focuses on supporting teachers in negotiating these critical areas of practice to enhance student learning experiences

Michael Holden

Michael Holden is a PhD student at Queen’s University and the Conference Manager for the Canadian Society for the Study of Education (CSSE). His research interests include classroom assessment, teacher education, and equity. His professional interests include enhancing how we prepare emerging teachers and developing stronger collaborative networks between education communities in Canada

Stephen MacGregor

Stephen MacGregor is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. His research explores how multi-stakeholder networks can mobilize research evidence to achieve societal impacts. In particular, he focuses on how universities in Canada can build their capacity in knowledge mobilization: a range of activities to connect research producers, users, and mediators. Mixed methods approaches are a recurring theme in Stephen’s work, including the use of social network analysis to analyze interaction patterns among diverse research stakeholders