The Nail In The Coffin

The learning and teaching aspect of assessment falls under the umbrella of AiFL as a sub-category Assessment AS Learning: learning how to learn where learners become more aware of what they learn, how they learn and what helps them learn (LTS ). Learning how to learn has parallels with Vygotsky’s constructivist model of learning where adult interaction and discussion enables teachers to extend children’s understandings (Durkin K 1995). Giving a mark or a basic comment are no longer deemed appropriate to enable a child to progress as the mark or vague comment only gives a message of what a child did not achieve not how they can achieve it. Research reveals that marking is really a teacher chore that they do because they need to have all the work marked to date resulting in the ‘time monster’ being against them. Marking is also done ‘away’ from children with feedback coming too late after the learning. What Assessment AS Learning advocates is that feedback to children should be more constructive with comments about how to achieve rather than marks. This does not eliminate using marks as children do need to know how well they are doing but they do not need constant reminders when they are failing they need advice where:

‘The real purpose of marking is to give good feedback to children about how well they did against a specific learning intention and some ideas about how they can improve.’
(Smith I 2004: 18)