The Role of Assessments in creating a

Positive Classroom Environment

University of the People
EDUC 5240: Creating Positive Classroom Environments
Group 0011C
Instructor: Dr. Sean Warman
August 3, 2022

Team Leader: Giulio Chinappi

Recordkeeper: Darrel Munge Nkumbe
Progress Chaser: Marwan Nabawy
Presentation Organizer: Aisha Thornton
 Introduction
Assessment is a vital part of education as its goal is to provide continuous
feedback on whether students are succeeding or need to make improvements,
and strategies they need to improve their learning (Berry, 2008).

When students can see how they are doing in class, they can figure out whether
or not they are grasping the topic.

Having clear goals and receiving essential feedback about one’s progress
towards their goals motivates students to take responsibility for their learning.

Assessment aids instructors in the same way it aids students they can also use
assessment to ensure that students acquire what they need to know to satisfy
the course learning objectives.
 Definition of student assessment
Assessment is often confused with evaluation. In reality, assessment covers a
much broader scope than evaluation, which instead can be considered as a
synonym for summative assessment. We can therefore consider the following
definitions:

“Assessment is classroom research to provide useful feedback for the

improvement of teaching and learning. Assessment is feedback from the student to
the instructor about the student’s learning”.

“Evaluation uses methods and measures to judge student learning and

understanding of the material for purposes of grading and reporting. Evaluation is
feedback from the instructor to the student about the student’s learning”
(“Assessment and Evaluation - What is the Difference?”, n.d., para. 2).
 Definition of student assessment
Taking into consideration the definitions presented in the previous slide, we can
say that assessment benefits both the student and the teacher.

Students receive constructive feedback that supports them in their learning

process, enhances motivation, encourages them to be more inquisitive and fosters
further knowledge.

At the same time, teachers can not only monitor the progress of their students'
learning process, but they can also collect data to better plan future lessons and
adjust their teaching method according to the characteristics of their students.

“Assessment practices lead to differentiated learning when teachers use them to

gather evidence to support every student’s learning, every day in every class” (Earl
& Katz, 2006, p. 8).
 Three
Assessment Approaches

Formative vs Traditional vs
Alternative
Definitions of Formative, Traditional and
Alternative Assessment
Formative assessment is an expression for any kind of assessment that
collects student observation and enhances instruction. These
assessments take place during the learning procedure, most often
when students are busy doing other projects. Subjective records,
intermittent essay writing or quizzes, diagnostic tests and in-class or
homework assignments are all types of formative assessment because
they give credible evidence about a student's class progress. Examples
can be: making a concept map to demonstrate comprehension of a
topic; presenting a few sentences indicating the theme of a lecture or
handing in a research proposal for prior evaluation.
Definitions of Formative, Traditional and
Alternative Assessment
“Traditional assessment refers to the conventional methods of testing
which usually produces written document, such as quizzes or exams”
(Quansah, 2018). Example include standardized tests, most state
achievement test such as General Certificate of Secondary Education
and Advanced Level exams in the United Kingdom. The aim of the tests
given by the state or teacher is to measure how much students have
learned. Traditional assessment examples include multiple-choice
tests, true or false tests, short answers, and essays.
Definitions of Formative, Traditional and
Alternative Assessment
Alternative assessment is a type of value judgement that evaluates a
student’s degree of expertise in a subject instead of the student’s
measurement of knowledge. The broad objective of alternative
assessment is to let students to present their knowledge and carry out
activities. It is also known as an achievement test or valid assessment
as it measures an individual’s capability to do tasks by taking advantage
of recently-acquired knowledge. Alternative assessments, requires
student to do relevant activities that show a distinct comprehension of
the learning and teaching goals. Examples include students creating a
portfolio, doing projects as a group or open-book or take-home
assessments where the students are given real life problems to solve
by applying their knowledge of the course content.
 Comparison and Contrast
Comparison

- These three assessment approaches (formative, traditional and

alternative) help educators monitor the progress towards learning
objectives and to also improve the learning process as well as the
teaching practice.

- The common goal is to establish the current strengths and

weaknesses of each student, but also to track their development and
improvement through time.

- All three approaches can use a wide range of different strategies,

such as quizzes, multiple choice, true or false and essay, as tools to
assess students learning.
 Comparison and Contrast
Contrast
"Formative assessment is a method of collecting real-time feedback from
learners during the course and focuses on how much the students know, while
summative assessment is a type of course evaluation that happens at the end
of a program and focuses on measuring the student's performance at the end
of the class using some defined criteria" (“Formative vs summative assessment:
15 key differences and similarities”, 2021).

“Formative assessment seeks to find out how much students know as they
move from one learning phase to another. No high stakes are attached to
formative evaluation and the students' performances are not measured against
a rubric or standardized benchmark”. On the other hand, “summative
assessment is a traditional method of evaluation where the teacher measures
the student's performance using a standardized benchmark” (“Formative vs
summative assessment: 15 key differences and similarities”, 2021).
 Comparison and Contrast
Contrast
It is important to underline that formative assessment happens continuously
during the lesson, while summative assessment happens at the end of a unit,
semester or academic year.

According to an article by Promethean (n.d.), examples of formative

assessment include; impromptu quizzes or anonymous voting, short
comparative assessments to see how pupils are performing against their peers,
one-minute papers on a specific subject matter, lesson exit tickets to
summarise what pupils have learnt, silent classroom polls, and asking students
to create a visualisation or doodle map of what they learnt. Meanwhile,
examples of summative and traditional assessments are; end-of-term or
midterm exams, cumulative work over an extended period such as a final
project or creative portfolio, end-of-unit or chapter tests, and standardised
tests that demonstrate school accountability and are used for pupil admissions;
SATs, GCSEs and A-Levels.
Comparison and Contrast
Contrast

Source: Alternative Assessments (n.d.). Baylor University.

https://www.baylor.edu/atl/index.php?id=984874
 Impact on Classroom Environment
“As the methods used to assess students are some of the most critical of all influences on their
learning, it is well known that assessment have a deep impact on what and how students study, how
much they study and how effectively they study” (Jimaa, 2011, p. 718).

The use of formative and alternative assessment can foster the creation of a positive learning
environment and offers benefits to both students and teachers.

Benefits for students

● Students acquire control over their learning process;

● Students get more motivated and involved;
● Students develop positive and cooperative relationships with their peers;
● Students can receive an effective feedback from the teacher;
● Students see the connection between what they learn and real life.

Benefits for teachers

● Teachers develop a deeper insight about their students;

● Teachers can better assess their students’ understanding;
● Teachers can support students more effectively;
● Teachers can use the data collected to plan future lessons and activities more effectively (Steele,
2019).
 Impact on Classroom Environment
On the other hand, the use of summative assessment, particularly in its traditional standardized
form, can lead to deterioration of the learning environment. This type of assessment in fact
brings anxiety and fear of making mistakes in students, while teachers tend to
teach-to-the-test. Moreover, “testing all children in the same way, usually a multiple-choice
test, is a one-size fits all mentality that does not consider the complexity, diversity, uniqueness,
and individuality of children” (Harris, 2005, p. 9).

It is important that the teacher strives to develop a positive learning environment throughout
the year, in order to reduce stress in view of the summative assessment, as well as teach for
understanding rather than teach for knowledge (Ritchhart, 2015). Developing collaboration
among students helps to counteract the competition that can degenerate in view of traditional
assessments, while a positive approach to error, considered as a means of learning, reduces
anxiety during tests.

That said, summative assessment also has positive aspects, as students have the chance to
demonstrate their competences and skills and can receive a feedback from their teacher. If the
feedback is not limited to a numerical grade, but includes constructive comments, the
summative assessment can also take the form of a formative assessment, and it can help the
students make decisions about their future learning endeavours (Earl & Katz, 2006).
Impact on Classroom Environment
Source: Bohemia, E., Harman, K. & McDowll, L.
(2009, December). Intersections: The utility of
an ‘Assessment for Learning’ discourse for
Design educators. Retrieved from Research
Gate.
Best Practices and their Educational Merit
Formative Assessment

● Promote teacher influence to direct the process. Assessment design should stem
from the staff members’ basic queries of the importance of their input towards
developing program and student progress.
● Describe the goals in the environment of the institution’s mission statement. A
joint vision that focuses on student learning is vital to a district’s evaluation system.
Staff must be able to visualize how to use the evaluation equipment and outcomes in
a K-12 efforts for ongoing progress.
● Concentrate on cooperation and partnership. Staff members must have the same
opinion on evaluation objectives for structuring to be purposeful. Internal cooperation
of a grade standard/department, in between grade levels/departments, and with
administration will promote the most optimal results when designing evaluations. In
between staff, evaluation abilities are more effectively created and improved when
colleagues help each other by sharing procedures and strategies.
Best Practices and their Educational Merit
Traditional assessment

● Use various processes and principles relevant to the resources. Efficient evaluation designing can only
happen when effectively assisted with enough time, monetary assistance, and feedback. Varied
evaluation procedures that address differences in learning types and variations in kinds of learning are
vital for putting together detailed outcomes that direct towards suitable support services.
● Establish ambitious academic goals. High expectations have the power to improve students’
achievements: “The dramatic positive and negative impacts of expectations are well established by
education research” (Hill, n.d., p. 30).
● Administer ongoing evaluations with precise and attainable deadlines. An efficient evaluation
method includes distributing evaluation tasks during the whole year and spread out to the following
years. The objective should be to construct a reliable evaluation strategy that is subtle and progresses
consistently from the curriculum guidelines. Evaluation works well to advise instructional resolutions
when it is continuous and not sporadic.
● Assess the evaluation strategies. Outcomes from evaluation tasks should be assessed to discover their
dependability, credibility, and usefulness. Less than average student achievement can reveal restricted
learning or an inappropriately developed evaluation design. Investigating how efficiently the evaluation
planning addresses student requirements is a crucial attempt in a school or district design innovation.
Best Practices and their Educational Merit
Alternative assessment

● Explain the purpose of the evaluation. Assessments can encourage student learning or
give a proof for responsibility specifications through an evaluation of abilities and
limitations. The overall objective is for students to acquire an explicit and beneficial
reward from their participation in evaluation tasks.
● Determine explicit, deductive, and progressive student learning. Distinguishing and
discussing student-centered learning perceptions and goals helps teachers develop a
platform on which students may create their learning and accomplishments and, hence
give an effective performance.
● Assist students to do well on evaluation tasks. Students do well in evaluation tasks
when teachers communicate clear expectations, detailed directives, and give examples or
specimens of efficient performance. Students achieve the most from prospects where
they can practice before the evaluation and when provided with a prompt and detailed
response about the worth of their productivity.
● Discern and use evaluation outcomes accurately. An evaluation should be an incentive
for progress, renovation, and improvement.
The Role of Teacher Self-Assessment
The goal of self-assessment is to help teachers play an informed and active role in advancing
their own way of work. Self-assessment helps teachers create a critically reflective practice in
their actions (Järvinen-Taubert, 2020).

Critical self-reflection on one's teaching practice is a process that leads the teacher to carry
out a profound self-analysis and to make changes to their teaching practice in order to make
it more effective. This process does not only concern the effectiveness of single practices, but
can also lead to changes in the teacher's prior assumptions regarding teaching and learning
Larrivee, 2009).

In order to analyze their own teaching practice, the teacher can use formative assessment.
While in the past the assessment was seen only as an assessment of the learning process,
today the assessment is considered as concerning both learning and teaching. In fact, a
well-conceived formative assessment provides the teacher with information that can be
useful for improving their teaching practice: “That information needs to be seen by teachers
as something that informs teaching and learning, rather than as a reflection of the capability
of individual students and to be used for sorting, labelling and credentialing” (Timperley,
2009, p. 21).
The Role of Teacher Self-Assessment
Teacher self-assessment makes you learn about holes in students' understanding. Through this
practice, you can build an exciting and interesting class every day. Moreover, teacher
self-assessment can also improve their relationship with their students (Hue & Li, 2008).
Trying to ameliorate your methods and attitudes lead to a more thoughtful and conscientious
approach to teaching and conducting effective lessons.

Teacher self-assessment will create a positive classroom environment because:

● Teachers will engage in critically reflective practice on their actions;

● It will strengthen teachers' responsibility for their work and increase control and
ownership of their professional development;
● Teachers will have the opportunity to evaluate their theoretical knowledge, methods of
work, and practical interactions with students from an outsider's perspective;
● Nurturing teacher-students relationships will prevent misbehavior and help maintaining a
positive discipline program (Baker et al., n.d.).
The Role of Teacher Self-Assessment

Source: Timperley, H. (2009) Using assessment data

for improving teaching practice. Research
Conference. Australian Council for Educational
Research (ACER).
https://research.acer.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic
le=1036&context=research_conference
 References
Assessment and Evaluation - What is the Difference? (n.d.). Illinois Central College.
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Baker, K., McCallum, K., McGibbon, M., Steeves, N., & Zirpolo, J. (n.d.). Cooperative discipline model
Linda Albert.
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Berry, R. (2008). Assessment for learning. ProQuest Ebook Central. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Earl, L., & Katz, S. (2006). Rethinking classroom assessment with purpose in mind. Winnipeg,
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Harris, S. (2005). Bravo teacher: Building relationships with actions that value others. Taylor & Francis
Group. Retrieved from LIRN.
 References
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Hue, M. & Li, W. (2008). Classroom management: Creating a positive learning environment. Hong Kong
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Järvinen-Taubert, J. (2020, May 29). Self-assessment as a tool for teacher’s professional development.
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Jimaa, S. (2011). The impact of assessment on students learning. Procedia, Social and Behavioral
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Promethean. (n.d.). Types of summative assessment and formative assessment. Promethean World.
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Quansah, F. (2018). Traditional or Performance Assessment: What is the Right Way in Assessing
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