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Research on formative classroom assessment practices and professional development is richer at the classroom/teacher level than at the building/administrator level. Yet administrator leadership is known to be critical for school reforms, including a change to more formative, learning-oriented assessment practices. The researchers conducted an exploratory study using two years of data from a large, rural school district to describe administrators' learning as they participated in a professional development project designed to increase their knowledge and leadership of formative assessment. Teachers skilled at formative assessment, in the view of their administrators, shared learning targets with students in multiple ways and before, during, and after the lesson. The leadership of administrators was critical to the implementation of formative classroom assessment in their buildings. Administrators who became the leading learner focused their observations in classrooms more intently than before on what the s...

Motivation and effort patterns associated with achievement on classroom assessments in middle-school science and social studies were studied with a sample of 223 8th graders in different classroom assessment environments. Classroom assessment environments were characterized by student perceptions of the importance and value of assessment tasks, perceived self-efficacy, and mastery goal orientations. It was expected that both classroom assessment environment and the particular assessment would be related to differences in motivation, effort, and their effects on achievement, even after controlling for prior achievement. The classroom assessment environment did make a difference in classroom achievement, with an effect size comparable to the effect for prior achievement. Motivational variables added to the prediction of classroom achievement after controlling for prior achievement and for classroom environment; perceived self-efficacy was the strongest motivational predictor. After controlling for backgroun...

The purpose of this case study was to describe a variety of classroom assessment events in high school social studies classes. This study included data from 12 classroom assessment events in the classes of a teacher-researcher in an urban high school. Four assessments in each course of the teacher-researcher's entire teaching load were studied. The courses were world cultures, honors U.S. history, and philosophy. The total number of students was 96; sample sizes for individual assessment analyses ranged from 11 to 39. Results supported the conclusion that even within the same classroom assessment environment, student perceptions of the assigned task and self-efficacy for the task, reported mental effort invested, goal orientations, and learning strategy use differed by assessment. The mean level of these variables differed by type of student. Observed correlations among these variables differed between paper-and-pencil tests and performance assessments. Potential implications for classroom assessment prac...

A theoretical framework describing the role of classroom assessment in student effort and achievement expected positive relations among perceived characteristics of the assessment task, perceived self-efficacy to do the task, amount of effort invested in the task, and achievement for each classroom assessment event within a classroom assessment environment. Furthermore, the classroom assessment environment and the particular assessment events themselves were hypothesized to make a difference. A study investigating this theoretical framework was designed, using observation, survey, and interview techniques to collect data from 4 classroom assessment events in each of 2 Grade 3 classrooms. In general, expected relations were found among perceptions of task, self-efficacy, effort, and achievement. An exception was that for some assessments, perceived self-efficacy was not correlated with effort. Interview data suggested that extremely high self-efficacy, coupled with an assessment task that posed no challeng...

This article presents a theory about the role of classroom assessment in motivating student effort and achievement. The theory postulates that in any particular class, the classroom assessment environment is played out in repeated classroom assessment events, activity segments with associated expectations and assessments. Within a classroom assessment event, a teacher communicates to students through assignments, activities, and feedback on performance, and students respond according to their perceptions of these learning opportunities and their perceived efficacy to accomplish the tasks. The classroom assessment environment concept offers a way to integrate individual (students) and group (a class with one teacher) aspects of effort and achievement into one theoretical framework. The classroom assessment event concept offers a mechanism for how curriculum, instructional activities, and assessmerits impact student effort and achievement.

This article is organized into two parts: (a) a review of literature on teachers' grading practices, and (b) a discussion of the findings about teachers' grading practices in light of evaluation and motivation theory. The discussion considers both research implications and practical recommendations.