Finding the Future of Assessment in the Service of Learning

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

This symposium will provide an opportunity to review, critique, and focus the emerging movement in educational assessment that shifts perspectives on the role of testing from documenting the status or achievement of students to one that enriches and supports learning. For too long, accountability has functioned as the de facto North Star of assessment, using large-scale assessment as its method. Long overdue is an integrated redesign of assessment illuminating how learning happens and how it can be improved.

What if, instead, improving teaching and learning were the true north star of assessment? In that case, we will need not only to fundamentally redesign assessments to serve the aim of learning improvement but to reconsider and likely reformulate the core ideas underlying assessment quality. If the question is “How does this assessment help students learn?” We need to capture attributes of the learning situation as well, including personalization, complexity, and the role of learner experiences.

This reimagining of assessment “in the service of learning” set the stage for the groundbreaking three volume series entitled The Handbook for Assessment in the Service of Learning published in 2025 by the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries https://openpublishing.library.umass.edu/ This Handbook is intended to function as both a guide and an invitation—by highlighting promising practices, acknowledging remaining challenges, and encouraging iterative improvement. One of the major areas identified for needed study is the question of assessment quality. This symposium will bring together assessment and measurement experts and scholars in learning and teaching to consider how notions of validity and the quality validity evidence should change in learner-centered, growth-enabling assessment systems. The focus of the panel discussions will be on how evidence-based insights can be obtained, and foster meaningful assessment practices at scale.

Sub Unit

• AERA Honorary President Edmund W. Gordon Series

Participants

• Eva L. Baker, University of California - Los Angeles

• Howard T. Everson, City University of New York

• Andrew Ho, Harvard University

• Jennifer Randall, University of Michigan

Moderator

• Stephen G. Sireci, University of Massachusetts - Amherst