Davies presented a keynote address entitled “Involving Students in Assessment: Why Bother? What Does it Look Like?” at the ELC, an event sponsored by Dover-based Measured Progress as a way to encourage dialogue between education leaders of all kinds. Superintendents, teachers, principals, directors of professional development, testing and assessment directors, curriculum coordinators, directors of special education and other education leaders gathered on May 11 and 12 in Wakefield, Massachusetts, to address the conference’s central theme: “Taking the Lead: Assessment Literacy for School Improvement.” 

Davies is an international consultant and author who has held many roles in education from classroom teacher to district coordinator, department of education planner, school administrator and university instructor. She has written numerous books, articles and multimedia resources, including the bestselling Making Classroom Assessment Work, and the Knowing What Counts series.  

Davies began her presentation by establishing a distinction between evaluation and assessment. The root of “evaluation,” she said, is in the word “value,” while “assessment” comes from the Latin for “to sit beside.” It is crucial, she said, to involve students in self-assessment and to refrain from over-evaluating them. 

She also distinguished between formative assessment, which she described as something that teachers do, and assessment for learning, which involves students. Research shows, she said, that the more assessment for learning teachers do, the more students learn. The more assessment of learning that occurs, the more the learning process is interrupted. 

Davies described three classroom techniques that can make a difference—involving students in assessment, increasing specific, descriptive feedback and decreasing evaluative feedback. Feedback should be constant, she said, and come not only from the teacher, but also from the students and their peers. 

Davies presented video clips showing teachers and students engaged in assessment for learning. In one kindergarten classroom, a student described several writing examples, ranging from beginner work to more complex efforts, and discussed the criteria for distinguishing between levels of writing. By framing criteria in children’s language and encouraging participation, she said, teachers can foster student ownership and commitment to success. 

Davies also showed video clips of students from many other grade levels, including middle school students assembling portfolios of their work and high school students engaged in peer editing. In all of the clips, students talked about the criteria they had to meet and how they could meet these criteria. Then students did the work involved and evaluated whether they met the criteria.   

These examples are more than just good teaching; they are high-quality, research-based assessment, according to Davies. She told the participants that if teachers do not involve students in setting criteria, they cannot hope that students will speak the language of assessment. The students in the videos were articulate, she said, because their teachers made it clear what they are expected to know and to be able to do. 

Davies presented six “essential elements to closing the achievement gap.”

1. Setting and using criteria helps students understand what high-quality work looks like.
2. Self-assessment “gives students a chance to figure out what they know and what they need to learn next.”
3. Feedback FOR learning supports learning and describes “strengths upon which further learning can be built and areas that need to be improved.”
4. Setting goals is essential because research has shown that goal-setting triggers an area of the brain linked to motivation.
5. Collecting evidence of learning from a variety of sources increases the validity of classroom assessments.
6. The final “essential element” is communicating using evidence of learning. When students present evidence of their own learning, Davies said, teachers help by responding to questions and other students give feedback, providing an opportunity for everyone to better understand learning. 

Davies told the assembled educators that if they want to get started in involving students in self-assessment—a process that produces results one educator described as being like “teaching in heaven”—they need to examine what needs to be learned, decide on what the evidence of that learning would be and invite students to get involved in the process. Student involvement, she said, is key; these processes should always begin with the student in mind.