Enabling all students to learn through assessment: A case study of equitable outcomes achieved through the use of criteria and standards

The overall focus of this chapter is on how assessment may be used to improve the learning of all children, based on the premise that all children are able to learn and all children’s learning can be improved. The context for our discussion is classroom-based assessment with judgment of student learning by teachers, and the use of criteria and standards to guide student performance and self-improvement. We demonstrate that the underlying rationale for this discussion is located at the convergence of five theoretical or paradigmatic approaches in assessment and learning. As an exemplar we provide the discourse of a student with a history of learning difficulties as he engages with and constructs meaning within the criteria and standards of a performance assessment task, in order to examine his own performance and how to improve.