Classroom Assessment as the Self- and Co-Regulation of Learning

• In Event: Bridging Self-Regulated Learning and Classroom Assessment

Abstract

Purposes
In this paper, we use the literature review method to give substance to a theory of classroom assessment (CA) as the co-regulation of learning by teachers, students, instructional materials, and contexts.

Perspectives
Until recently, the classroom assessment literature emphasized the role of teachers and tests (e.g., Bangert-Drowns, Kulik, Kulik, & Morgan, 1991; Wise, 1993). As constructivist theories of learning developed, classroom assessment research expanded into investigations of the role of assessment in learning (Penuel & Shepard, 2016; Shepard, 2001). For example, current theories of formative assessment recognize that the agency for learning resides with the student (Andrade, 2010), and that successful students also use summative assessment as information for learning (Brookhart, 2001). These and other recent developments in assessment reflect socio-cultural theories and the self-regulation of learning (Pintrich & Zusho, 2002; Pryor & Crossouard, 2008; Zimmerman, 2011). The theory of assessment now in use in most CA research has changed but the theoretical framework is underdeveloped.
Although some researchers (e.g., Butler & Winne, 1995; Winne & Hadwin, 1998) explicitly acknowledged the role of external feedback in self-regulation, regulation by others is a relatively new focus of the SRL literature which, by definition, focused on self-regulation. While SRL focuses on understanding the processes by which learners set goals and then plan, execute, and reflectively adjust their learning (Hadwin, Järvelä, & Miller, 2011; Zimmerman, 2000), in educational contexts SRL processes often occur under the joint influence of students and other sources, such as teachers, peers, curriculum materials, and assessment instruments (Allal, 2011). As a result, SRL can be conceptualized as a matter of co-regulation: student learning is regulated by multiple classroom elements acting together.

Method
We organize the literature using a version of Pintrich and Zusho’s (2002) theory of the phases and areas of the self-regulation of learning (Table 1), expanded to include the co-regulation of learning, in order to demonstrate how classroom assessment is related to all aspects of the regulation of learning.

Results and conclusions
Our paper begins with definitions of classroom assessment and self- and co-regulated learning. We expand Pintrich and Zusho’s (2002) model of the phases and areas of the self-regulation of learning to include regulation by others (co-regulation), including teachers and materials. For ease of discussion, we divide the framework into the four areas of regulation. (see tables 2, 3, and 4).

Significance
We thus have an analytical and theoretical framework to support the claim that classroom assessment is related to all areas of the regulation of learning. In the paper we present evidence that recent CA studies are concerned with aspects of the self- and co-regulation of learning across the phases and areas. We conclude by pointing out the ways in which this is a useful expansion for the field.

Authors

• Heidi L. Andrade, University at Albany - SUNY

• Sue Brookhart, Duquesne University