Positive Assessment and Self-assessment – How to Conduct These Assessments and Teach Them to Students

If during the assessment a teacher focuses on problems, demonstrates power, divides children into «good» and «bad», tries to average-out their achievements, oppose them and focus on their behavior in the past («you have never spoken to the point»), then such an assessment will not support and will not help students move along their educational trajectory.

In order to reach the opposite effect, it is necessary to build on child’s strengths, empower them, promote diversity in the classroom, guide them to new achievements, focusing on the task rather than competition between students, and look at a specific situation and the future. And for moving along the educational trajectory, it is equally important to conduct self-assessment.

Finnish experts Anja Huurinainen-Kosunen and Riia Palmqvist spoke about positive assessment and self-assessment during the training for ITTI trainers of NUS teachers carried out within the framework of the Learning Together project.

The assessment focuses primarily on students’ work skills and behavior, and it is performed by all teachers who work with the child. However, do not ignore student’s overall learning results and progress in learning. At the same time, children should feel that the assessment system is aimed at supporting their achievements and creating opportunities for growth.

That is why the assessment involves not only teachers, but also the principal, who is responsible for the overall assessment culture in the school, and ensures that the assessment system adopted in the school promotes learning and motivates children and teachers. Children and their parents/guardians should be familiar with various assessment systems and take part in assessment.

The Finnish experts believe that assessment is not only a process, but also a skill of all educational process participants, which means that everyone should have it.

Teachers should make the assessment positive

When conducting assessments, teachers are guided by the legislation, curriculum and standards. They should also take into account the school assessment culture and their positive experiences.

Currently, schools use four types of assessment, which every teacher should be familiar with.

Diagnostic assessment. It takes place at the beginning of a school year – before starting the classes, the teacher finds out students’ level of knowledge, skills and competencies. As a result, he or she gets an understanding of the best way to build teaching and learning;

Formative assessment. It is held throughout the year and should promote learning. Teachers, students and parents are involved. The basis of this assessment is goals, which are set by both adults and children. It’s not just about knowledge, but also about any situations and behavior at school. It can be conducted not only in writing, but also orally.

An interim assessment is considered to be part of the formative assessment. In Finland, for example, it is held more often in the middle of the school year. But the school has the right to have its own schedule. The interim assessment helps assess interim learning outcomes and adjust goals of learning. Students are actively involved in this. It is also advisable to discuss the results received with students and their parents in order to raise the efficiency of their further work;

Summative assessment. It takes place at the end of a certain period of study (semester, year, topic, module, etc.) and assesses the accomplishment of set goals, level of student’s competencies, knowledge, skills and achievements;

Prognostic assessment. This is, in fact, setting new goals and reflecting on the future – what and how it is better to study in the future, what kind of help the child expects from the teacher and parents in order to achieve better results.

The teacher should see a complete picture of the assessment and organize it in such a way that it contributes to motivation and involvement in learning, the formation of trust-based relations with students and parents, and creates new opportunities for children’s growth.

The Finnish experts recommend to pay special attention to assessing children with special educational needs, especially when such students have an individual learning trajectory. The same concerns students who do not live in the country of their origin (migrants). In both cases, it is worth keeping in mind additional difficulties faced by children of these categories, and focusing therefore on their achievements and individual trajectories, and helping.

How to teach students to perform self-assessment and reflect

Students have not been born with assessment skills, so the teacher should be patient to teach these skills to students. Teacher’s task is to support, encourage, motivate, contribute to self-efficacy, let students make and correct mistakes.

At the beginning of the work, teachers should familiarize children with the goals and content of their subjects, explaining what will happen in the classroom during the school year and how. The classroom should have rules of behavior and communication, and children should be involved in active discussion and adoption of these rules.

It is advisable that all students set goals for themselves that they would like to achieve during a certain period of time. To do this, they need to answer the following questions:

• Where am I now?
• Where am I going to?
• What am I trying to achieve?
• How can I achieve my goal?

As recommended by the Finnish experts, teachers should discuss their work and achievements with students individually at certain intervals (usually set by the teacher or prescribed in school rules). The discussion at such meetings can be based on students’ learning results (essays, workbooks, crafts, etc.), documents related to studies (also the ones about numeric assessment) – the teacher should propose to review and analyze the student’s portfolio together.

However, it is necessary to offer the child to conduct self-assessment and provide him or her with reasoned feedback.

They believe in Finland that the objective of self-assessment is that students realize their strengths, determine the areas for further development and also gain confidence in their capabilities. First, the teacher helps students think about and assess their strengths, competencies and areas where they need to invest more efforts or ask for help. Self-assessment can start with an oral discussion, and later the student can conduct it independently in writing.

You can offer to conduct self-assessment of student’s work and behavior at the end of a working day, week, at the end of a module or topic, during the study of some subjects, etc. A prerequisite is that child’s self-assessment (and adult’s help!) should be constructive and free from negativity or criticism.

The teacher should also help the child with reflection. In order to create a friendly and frank atmosphere the adult is to be open and positive in this conversation. It is worth asking the student the following questions:

• What do you think about your work at school?
• What are your strengths as a student or classmate?
• What subjects are you good at?
• What should you work more on?
• What subjects do you need support with? What kind of support?
• How can your parents or teachers help you?
• What are you interested in at school?
• Is there something that you don’t like here?

The result of such discussion should be the adjustment of learning goals or setting of new ones, which are then jointly presented to parents.

It is also important to teach children to conduct peer assessment. It should also be constructive, well-reasoned and, if possible, be free of any criticism or negative comments.

Children are trained to provide feedback in pairs or groups when working on joint tasks – solving problems, working with text, creating crafts and works of art, doing research, etc. Students are taught to reflect on the group work and individual experiences in collective collaboration. For example, they can be proposed to answer the following questions: 

• What have we learned? How did the group work together?
• What was my role in the group?
• Was the division of work successful?
• What didn’t work in the group? Why?
• What can we improve next time?

The experts propose to start teaching self-assessment with group assessment as children consider this method safer and fairer. In groups, they learn to provide constructive feedback and reflect, and after mastering these skills they will be able to use them for self-assessment.

What parents should know about assessment

According to the speakers, cooperation with parents is extremely important, because they are the experts in their children’s growth and development, while teachers are experts in teaching and learning.

At the beginning of a school year, teachers should familiarize parents with goals and content of each subject, explain school practices and methods of work, tell about the forms and methods of assessment, note that both children and their parents participate in the assessment, and explain how this will happen.

It is recommended to discuss student’s achievements with their parents 1-2 times a year (based on a decision of the teacher and school administration). During such discussions, parents get informed about the results of students’ work during the previous period, oral and written assessment of their achievements and self-assessment.

As a rule, such meetings are held together with students. The child is given the opportunity to speak out and share his or her impressions and thoughts about learning. The task of the teacher is to create a comfortable and friendly atmosphere for everyone. Parents should also be able to discuss their vision of their child’s learning with the teacher. The teacher, of course, shares his or her observations, but the experts recommend the teacher to listen more rather than insist on his or her opinion.

At a meeting with parents, it is recommended for a teacher to have documentary results of student’s work at hand – workbooks, tests, crafts and artwork as well as digital products (student’s presentations, animations, etc.). If the meeting is conducted by a classroom teacher, they usually collect information from subject teachers so that parents are able to get a general idea of the child’s performance.

This material has been prepared for the Learning Together project and published on the NUS portal following a series of webinars carried out by the Learning Together project + the EU project and the Reform Support Team at the end of 2021.

This document was produced with the financial assistance of the European Union and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union or the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland.