An Introduction to Educational Assessment, Measurement and Evaluation provides an introduction to the construction and design of assessments, their scoring, interpretation, and reporting. Important theoretical issues underlying school- and teacher-based assessment are covered. Specifically, these include: conceptions of assessment, validity, reliability, classical and modern test theory, cognitive taxonomies, assessment policy, intelligence testing, evaluation, secondary school qualifications, and current New Zealand assessment resources.

A critical, evidence-based approach is taken to current issues in assessment, such as formative vs summative assessment, professional judgement vs testing, multiple-choice questions, and reporting performance.

The text is intended for use in introductory courses in educational or psychological assessment. While written for teacher education students, it will be accessible and relevant to those with an interest in educational or psychological assessment. It aims to help readers create, administer, interpret, and report in a valid manner.

About this book
The text is based on the authors’ extensive research and development experience in devising educational assessments for use in New Zealand primary and secondary school settings in both English and Maori languages. This experience has included the Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning (asTTle) system published by the New Zealand Ministry of Education, the Essential Skills Assessments: Information Skills (ESA:IS) published by NZCER, and School Certificate mathematics. The authors have also incorporated their  own published research into the text; including teachers’ and students’ conceptions of assessment (Brown), student evaluation of teaching (Irving), and vocabulary development in Maori-medium education (Keegan).

The text provides information on how to:

• create worthwhile assessments of many different types
• evaluate assessment created or published by others
• administer a variety of assessments
• interpret and report results from an assessment
• base instructional decisions on assessment results.

Educational resources in the book include:

• Brown’s Teachers’ Conceptions of Assessment inventory
• discussion starters
• self-tests on multiple-choice questions
• check-lists for validity
• illustrations for the many different assessment types discussed
• internet links to New Zealand educational assessment resources.

Part One: Creating teacher-based assessments
Chapter 1: Purposes and conceptions of assessment
Chapter 2: Principles of assessment
Chapter 3: Methods of assessment
Chapter 4: Paper-and-pencil items
Chapter 5: Guiding professional judgement
Chapter 6: Self- and peer assessment
Chapter 7: Rating portfolio and performance assessments

Part Two: Principles and theories of assessment
Chapter 8: Validity and reliability
Chapter 9: Sensitivity and bias
Chapter 10: Test scores and theories
Chapter 11: Assessing cognitive processes
Chapter 12: Intelligence: Its role in assessment and education
Chapter 13: Feedback and reporting
Chapter 14: National assessment policies and resources
Chapter 15: Evaluation

Concluding thoughts
References

Gavin Brown was a secondary- and tertiary-level ESOL and English teacher before going into full-time research. Gavin learned about assessment from Prof. Jack Upshur at Concordia University, Montreal, and made use of those skills as a secondary teacher in New Zealand by taking on the evaluation of new and ESOL students for placement in appropriate programs. He completed a Master’s degree thesis on Samoan-born students’ skills in reading both English and Samoan. After 10 years of secondary teaching, he became an assessment researcher at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research where he worked on developing items for the Assessment Resource Bank and the Essential Skills Assessments: Information Skills programs. He managed the Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning (asTTle) Project at the University of Auckland for five years. During that time he trained teachers in writing, reviewing, and scoring assessment tasks; additionally, he was an active item writer in reading comprehension. Gavin’s doctorate was an investigation into how New Zealand primary teachers conceive of assessment – an interest he has extended to include secondary school students and overseas teachers. Currently, Gavin is a Senior Lecturer in Research Methodology in the Faculty of Education at the University of Auckland.

Prior to returning to university to commence PhD studies, Earl Irving spent 29 years in secondary schools as a mathematics teacher and deputy principal. During that time he was Assistant Chief Examiner for School Certificate Mathematics, Chief Examiner for Manukau Mathematics, and an examiner for the Auckland Mathematics Certificate, as well Mathex Director for a number of years. Earl’s Master’s thesis studied the use of a student evaluation of a teaching instrument in nine secondary schools, and the impact of these evaluations on teacher behaviour. In his PhD, he used National Board for Professional Teaching Standards for highly accomplished teaching to develop a student evaluation instrument, and found that students could dependably identify highly accomplished mathematics teachers. Earl has lectured and tutored tertiary courses in Education, Psychology and teacher education. Currently he is Research Consultant for Cognition Consulting Limited, Auckland.

Peter Keegan (Waikato-Maniapoto, Ngati Porou) received his PhD in Applied Linguistics from Victoria University of Wellington in 2003. He is a Lecturer in Te Puna Wānanga, the Faculty of Education, University of Auckland. He coordinated the Māori language developments of Project asTTle (Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning). Peter’s research interests include Māori language (in particular Māori word formation and changes in Māori pronunciation), Māori-medium education and Māori achievement (in both English and Māori-medium contexts). He is also interested in attitudes to Māori language and culture, and Māori identity.