The Impact of Assessment Systems on Students’ Psychological, Cognitive, and Social Well-Being

• In Event: More Than a Mark: Understanding The Social and Cultural Dimensions and Consequences of Grading

Abstract

Objectives: In 2011, major assessment reforms were implemented in the Swedish school system, which resulted in earlier introduction of grades (in 6th Grade: 12 year olds), and more frequent grading, which overall created a stricter high-stakes assessment system. The aim of the study was to investigate how the assessment reform affected student´s school-related well-being by comparing two cohorts of pupils born 1998 (did not experience reform) and pupils born 2004 (experienced full reform). Another aim was to investigate the dimensionality and measurement invariance of the well-being construct, and whether the construct differed between students.

Perspective: Little research has been made that investigates how school-related dimensions of well-being are structured and can be measured. However, the term well-being is neither defined nor measured consistently between research projects, which have created confusion about what is actually measured. Pollard and Lee (2003) argue that well-being should be understood as a construct that consists of several facets, which means that well-being should not be generalized as “well-being” unless all facets are represented in the measurement. An incomplete construction and presentation of a measurement instrument could thus mean that important nuances are overlooked. Psychological, cognitive and social well-being are examples of school-related facets that are a part of the general well-being construct, and these facets were the main focus in the present study.

Methods: By conducting confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with data from Evaluation through Follow-Up project (Härnqvist, 2000) the dimensionality of well-being was investigated. Comparisons of the construct dimensionality was made with tests of measurement invariance, with data of Swedish students born 1998 and 2004. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted to investigate the structure of well-being in relation to pre-reform/post-reform schooling, gender, educational background and cognitive ability.

Results: The results supported well-being as a multi-dimensional phenomenon and should thus be empirically investigated as such. The findings indicate that the reforms affected pupils’ psychological and social well-being negatively. Girls reported lower psychological well-being compared to boys, while pupils’ cognitive ability had particularly strong effects on psychological and cognitive well-being. However, the relation between cohort and cognitive well-being, differs from the overall pattern. Students who were exposed to the reform seem to have higher cognitive well-being, compared to students who were not exposed, however the reform were only beneficial for students’ cognitive well-being if they had high cognitive ability.

Significance: Previous studies regarding well-being have had a tendency to fail discussing the dimensionality of the construct well-being, which in actuality is a multifaceted construct. By overlooking the complexity of the construct well-being, statistical results may be portrayed incorrectly and lack important nuances. The present study contributes with knowledge of how the psychological, cognitive and social well-being dimensions can be measured and how the effects of exposure to the reform, and background characteristics differ between Swedish students. This calls for a re-evaluation of the values which the Swedish school currently is built on, from result based values to learning based values, to create school environments that foster well-being and health (Public Health Agency of Sweden, 2018).

Authors

• Thea Klapp, University of Gothenburg

• Alli Klapp, University of Gothenburg

• Jan-Eric Gustafsson, Goteborg University