Self-Regulated Learning and Educational Assessment

• In Event: Toward the Integration of Formative Assessment and Self-Regulated Learning

Abstract

1. Objectives and Theoretical Framework

Black and Wiliam (1998) pointed out that self-regulated learning should be a primary goal for using assessment formatively. The purpose of the current paper is to present and discuss relevant keystones since that publication that inform current understandings of the relationship between formative assessment and the self-regulation of learning.
Self-regulation of learning occurs when learners set goals and then systematically carry out cognitive, affective, and behavioral practices and procedures that move them closer to those goals (Zimmerman & Schunk, 2011). Scholarship on self-regulation organizes cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational aspects into a general view of how learners understand and then pursue learning goals. Different theorists have presented models of how students activate cognition, metacognition, and motivation in order to learn. The most comprehensive treatments of self-regulation of learning tend to present these aspects in a phase (Pintrich & Zusho, 2002; Wigfield, Klauda, & Cambria, 2011) or cyclical (Zimmerman, 2011) view.
Research and theory on classroom assessment emphasize very similar regulatory goals and processes. Defined as a process of collecting, evaluating, and using evidence of student learning in order to monitor and improve learning (McMillan, 2013), effective classroom assessment is used by teachers and students to articulate the learning targets (goal-setting), collect feedback about where students are in relation to those targets (monitoring progress toward the goal and interpretation of feedback derived from monitoring), and prompt adjustments to instruction by teachers as well as changes to learning processes and revision of work products by students (adjustment of goal-directed action). Drawing on Sadler (1989), Hattie and Timperley (2007) summarize this regulatory process in terms of three questions to be asked by students: Where am I going? How am I going? and Where to next?
However, this view of classroom assessment as very much aligned with the self-regulation of learning is relatively recent. Historically, research on classroom assessment has investigated how teachers design and use summative assessment. How did it come about that classroom assessment and self-regulation of learning are converging on an interest in helping students manage their own learning?

2. Method, Results, and Significance

A selective literature review was undertaken. Beginning with seminal works (e.g., Crooks, 1988; Sadler, 1989) that formed part of the foundation for the Black and Wiliam (1998) review, the review analyzes watershed articles published in the last three decades. This paper traces the change in classroom assessment scholarship from a focus on summative assessment to a focus on formative assessment, and from a focus on teacher practices to a focus on student self-regulation of learning. The result is a map that clarifies development to the current level of knowledge and suggestions for next steps as classroom assessment and self-regulation incline more and more toward one another.

Authors

• Susan M. Brookhart, Duquesne University

• Heidi L. Andrade, University at Albany - SUNY

• Ernesto Panadero, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid