REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
2.7 Key strategies for formative assessment practices
2.7.4 Activating students as owners of their own learning
54 Table 2.2: Feedback strategies
Feedback strategies can vary in …
In these ways ... Recommendations for good feedback
Timing
• When given
• How often
• Provide immediate feedback for knowledge of fact (right /wrong)
• Delay feedback slightly for more comprehensive reviews of students’
thinking and processing
• Never delay feedback beyond when it would make a difference to the students
• Provide feedback as often as is practical for all major assignments
Amount • How many points made
• How much about each point
• Prioritise – pick the most important points
• Choose points that relate to major learning goals
• Consider students’ development level
Mode • Oral
• Written
• Visual / demonstration
• Select the best mode for the message
• Interactive feedback is best when possible
• Given written feedback on written work or on assignment cover sheets
• Use demonstration if ‘how to do something’
is a problem or if students need an example
Audience • Individual
• Group / class
• Individual feedback sends the message that
‘the teacher values my learning’
• Group / class feedback works if most of the class missed the same concept on an assignment, which presents an opportunity for re-teaching
Source: Adapted from Brookhart (2017, p. 13).
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Black and Wiliam (2009), this is relevant to the development of students’ own capacity to learn how to learn and to learners’ autonomy.
Self-assessment is a cognitive strategy which focuses on students’ learning rather than learning outcomes (Alquraan, Bsharah, & Al-Bustanji, 2010). According to Falchikov (2013), self- assessment deals with students assessing their own learning and thinking. This is consistent with the thoughts of Black and Wiliam (2009), who posit that self-assessment is an activity that might be used to actively involve students as owners of their learning. Similarly, McMillan and Hearn (2008) defined self-assessment as a process through which students: 1) monitor and evaluate the quality of their thinking and behaviour when learning, and 2) identify strategies that improve their understanding and skills. Boud (1991) proposed the following as the defining characteristics of self-assessment:
… the involvement of students in identifying standards and or criteria to apply to their own work and making judgements about the extent to which they have met these criteria and standard.
It is worth noting that self-assessment goes beyond students grading their own work. Teachers are required to involve the students in the process of determining what is good work in any given situation. To the constructivist, learning is co-constructed; hence students’ self-assessment in the teaching and learning process enables students to take ownership of their own learning. If students are asked and encouraged to delve into and talk about their own work, assessment can become more of a dialogue than a monologue and contribute to the educational development of students (Crooks, 2001). This encourages them to improve their learning approaches and provide more active engagement and increases competence, motivation, confidence and control over their learning (Klenowski, 1996). Similarly, Harlen and James (1996) pointed out that one feature of FA is that:
… Students have to be active in their own learning (teachers cannot learn for them) and unless they come to understand their own strengths and weaknesses, and how they might deal with them, they will not make progress.
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This places special attention on the role of the students and promotes the active engagement of students in the learning process. Students take responsibility for their own learning, and this can be done if the students have a clear picture of the goals that their learning is meant to attain. Thus, students have to know what it is they need to focus their learning on in order to evaluate themselves. Black and Wiliam (1998b) remarked that for FA to be productive, students should be trained in self-assessment so that they can understand the main purposes of their learning and thereby grasp what they need to do in order to achieve. Self-assessment does not mean that students develop their ideas in isolation from the views and judgements of others (Boud, 2013).
The role of self-assessment in the development of professional competence has been recognised, and Boud (2013) argues that one of the characteristics of effective learners is that they have a realistic sense of their own strengths and weaknesses. In Wiliam (2007a), students note that assessing their own work helps them to understand the material in a new way. Rolheiser and Ross (2001) provide a detailed overview of the effects of self-assessment on students’ achievement:
When students evaluate their performance positively, self-evaluation encourage students to set higher goals … and commit more personal resources or effort … to them. The combination of goals … and effort … equals achievement … A student’s achievement result in self-judgment …, such as a student contemplating the question, “were my goals met?” the result of self-judgment is self-reaction …, or a student responding to the judgment with the question, “How do I feel about that?” Goals, effort, achievement, self- judgement, and self-reaction all can combine to impact self-confidence … in a positive way.
The credence that Rolheiser and Ross (2001) give to self-evaluation was based on the claim that students’ learning will improve because: (i) self-evaluation will focus student attention on the objective measured, (ii) the assessment provides teachers with information which they would otherwise lack, (iii) students will pay more attention to the assessment, and (iv) student motivation will be enhanced.
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According to Ward, Gruppen and Regehr (2002) self-assessment has consistently been associated with improving students’ learning. For example, Lopez and Kosack (2007) reported that a relationship between performance and self-assessment over time resulted in the course grades of students showing a consistent increase across the unit tests. Similarly, Dochy, Segers and Sluijsmans (1999), in their review studies on the use of self-, peer and co-assessment in higher education, concluded that self-assessment improves performance and the quality of students’
learning. The premise is that for students to be able to improve, they must have the capacity to monitor their own work.