Literature review-domain B !

Literature Review- “Assessment: The Bridge Between Teaching and Learning”


Amy Hutton


National University


TED 690- Professor Weintraub

Literature review-domain B !2

Abstract:

In the following paper, I will be doing a literature review on the article “Assessment: The

Bridge Between Teaching and Learning (Wiliam, 2013, p. 15).” Wiliam the author of the article

feels that teachers can make any assessment a formative one. This way the teacher is

analyzing what the student knows, needs to know, and what needs to be done to get the student

there. He proposes that we should use five different strategies to accomplish the three

components of formative assessment that I listed above. Within these five strategies, william

also assigns responsibility and accountability to not only the teacher but the students and their

peers. I really appreciated seeing how the peers and the students can be more involved in the

assessment process beyond just being test takers, and by being involved they are much more

likely to learn.
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Assessment is such an important element to instruction. Without assessment, a teacher

will not know whether a student has learned the concept or not. Some assessments especially

pre-assessments and formative assessments help the teacher know where the students’

comprehension is on a topic and this can give the teacher direction towards how or what they

teach. Since this is such an important part of teaching and it is one of the domains (Domain B),

I decided increase my knowledge in this area and I found the article “Assessment: The Bridge

Between Teaching and Learning (Wiliam, 2013, p. 15).” In the following literature review, I will

summarize what the article is about and what I was able to learn from the article.

“Assessment: The Bridge Between Teaching and Learning (Wiliam, 2013, p. 15)” was

written by Dylan Wiliam, and he talks about how we can make any assessment a formative one,

and how we can involve students in the assessment process. First thing Wiliam does is clarify

what formative assessment means to him, which is any assessment that will help the teacher to

know what the students knows and what still needs to be taught. Wiliam (2013) says that in

there are “three key process in learning: 1. Where the learner is right now 2. Where the learner

needs to be (and) 3. How to get there (p. 15 & 16).” If cognitive of these processes, and

performing them regularly then we as teachers can become more effective at formative

assessment.

Wiliam (2013) has five different strategies for assessing more effectively and formatively.

Within these assessments he also includes who would be performing them. William (2013)

says that not only the teacher can perform the assessment, but the student and their peers can

also perform the assessment. The more that a teacher can involve the students and their peers

in the process the better off the assessment will be. The nice thing that William (2013) does is

create a table of the strategies and shows who should perform them. The first strategy is

“clarifying, sharing, and understanding learning intentions (Wiliam, 2013, p. 16).” This strategy

addresses learning process number one of “where the learner is right now ((Wiliam, 2013, p.
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16).” With this strategy the teacher, student, and peers are involved in deciding what should be

accomplished. The teacher will present a project, and multiple completed projects at different

levels of quality. The students along with the teacher come up with a unique rubric for the

quality of their project. By doing this the student is fully aware of what needs to be presented

and participated in the critical thinking that got it there.

The second strategies is “engineering effective discussions, activities, and tasks that

elicit evidence of learning (Wiliam, 2013, p. 2013). This strategy falls solely on us as teachers,

and it addresses number two of the learning process, which is “ where the learner needs to be

(Wiliam, 2013, p. 16).” We need to ask the right questions during discussions and follow-up

with the right questions to a students answers to make sure we are assessing the right concept.

The third strategy, which looks at “ how to get there (Wiliam, 2013, p. 16),” is “feedback that

moves learning forward (Wiliam, 2013, p. 16).” This again is teacher directed. The teacher

needs know when and how to push the student to illicit the best response. This takes rapport

building between the teacher and the student. This way the teacher know when, how hard to

push the student. They also can also use the feedback as way to scaffold the students learning.

The last two strategies fall on the student and their peers and pulls in the “where the

learner needs to be (and) how to get there (Wiliam, 2013, p 15) part of learning. The fourth

strategy is for the students to use each other as “learning resources (Wiliam, 2013, p 18).” This

strategy requires that the students work together to create a quality assignment. This

sometimes mean that they create one, while other times it means that they review their peers’

work to make sure it is reaching it’s fullest potential. By holding both the producer of the work

and the editor accountable the students will strive to produce the best. The final strategy is to

have the “student owning their own learning (Wiliam, 2013, p. 19). Students need to practice

and realize that success comes from practice. We can promote this as teachers by not putting

emphasis on talent but rather on the effort. To get the students to learn the needed concepts,
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then we need them to buy into it and take ownership of the process of getting there, even if it

means a lot of practice. As Wiliam (2013) so eloquently says, “the most important instructional

decisions are not made by teachers—they are made by students (p.19).”

In conclusion, I found that this article was a greater refresher on a lot of the assessment

information that I have learned and have been producing in the classroom. I too believe that

even summative assessments can help to direct future learning for students. Wiliam lays this

out in a very clear way. I appreciate how he breaks apart the formative assessment strategies

into who is responsible for each one. I often complete the teacher portion, but I really liked how

he involved the students and their peers in the assessment process too. This is very important

as eventually individuals will need to be able to direct their own learning and be responsible for

what they know. Case and point, is what I and my peers are doing as we completing our

masters. We need to look at what we know and don’t know and we need to figure out how to

get there.

Reference:
California Teaching Performance Expectations. (2013, March). Retrieved April 12, 2019

from https://www.ctc.ca.gov/docs/default-source/educator-prep/standards/adopted-

tpes-2013.pdf

Wiliam, D. (2013). Voices from the middle, 21(2) 15-19.