Chapter 29: Assessment for Teachers: Designing a Practice-Based Learning Path

The topic of assessment in teacher preparation has recently grown in terms of both stature and scope (Popham, 2011; Shepard, Hammerness, Darling-Hammond, & Rust, 2005). In its most basic sense, assessment refers to the process of using students’ responses on tasks that are either designed or naturally occurring to make inferences about their knowledge and skill (Popham, 2000). While essentially a process of reasoning from evidence, assessment in practice becomes quite complicated as it can serve a variety of purposes and audiences (Pellegrino, Chudowsky, & Glaser, 2001). Pellegrino and colleagues cite three key educational assessment purposes: (1) to make formative decisions about how students are learning and shape immediate feedback to assist their progress; (2) to make summative decisions regarding the level of success students achieve in a particular unit or program of study; and (3) to make evaluation decisions about the effectiveness of particular programs and/or teachers. With these levels of purpose, the topic of assessment in teacher education intersects with a variety of issues of vital importance to teachers including instruction, grading, learning standards, standardized testing, and teacher evaluation, to name only a few. What, then, is most important for teachers to know and be able to do? How can teacher educators and educational psychologists design optimal learning experiences for teacher candidates to develop assessment literacy?