THE ASSESSMENT DESIGN TOOLKIT

Introduction
The purpose of The Assessment Design Toolkit is to establish the essential classroom assessment knowledge for application to the
GTPA. It has been informed by a large body of published assessment research, policy material and professional papers and represents a
distilled set of foundation assessment knowledge, skills, capabilities and dispositions relating to three key questions:

1. How might I know what students know?

2. How can I support students as they come to know themselves as learners?
3. How can I use assessment to interpret, modify and transform my teaching practices to improve student learning?
The aim of the Toolkit is to focus on teacher practice and in this way, remove the barrier that assessment can represent to efforts to
improve learning.

Core Principle: Students at the centre of assessment

1. How do you develop student abilities to use their existing knowledge and construct new knowledge?
2. How do you provide opportunities to develop students’ agency in learning and assessment?
Possible strategies include:
– Productive experiential strategies to support progress
– Sharing learning intentions and criterial knowledge
– Providing learning opportunities to transfer knowledge and skills to new contexts
– Developing student skills in goal setting and self- and peer-assessment
– Providing choice for students to represent their learning
– Engaging students in dialogic feedback conversations
– Providing students with opportunities to reflect on and report on progress against goals.

Element 1: Features of quality task design to address validity

The features below can be used to scaffold thinking about quality assessment task design. The function of the stated features is to alert
teachers to barriers that can remain implicit in how they design and enact assessment with students.

Feature 1: How do assessments align with the official curriculum, achievement standards, and the teaching plan? What discipline/domain
knowledge and skills need to be taught before students can undertake the tasks?
Feature 2: What is the level of intellectual challenge for students at different levels of achievement (at/above/below standard)?
How will you engage diverse learners?
Feature 3: How clear and accessible is the task design, including the language for your students? Is it free of cultural and gender bias?
Feature 4: What literate and numerate, and other general capabilities do students need, if they are to succeed?
Feature 5: What is the range of performance contexts for the tasks? What
levels of performance can be demonstrated through this
assessment task? What options for modes of presentation
could be provided to meet needs of diverse learners,
including extension opportunities?
Feature 6: How will you monitor student progress and how will you
provide feedback to progress learning?
Feature 7: What opportunities are provided for students’ self- and
peer-assessment?
Feature 8: What data (e.g. observation, consultation, and focused
analysis) will you collect and what other data sources are
available to you to improve your teaching practices?
What planned and ongoing formative activities will
support student success?
Feature 9: Which data will you use to design interventions for individual
students and for whole class groups? What is the critical
evidence that would demonstrate achievement of the
standards?

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 Element 2: Terminology and concepts for an assessment mindset
– Alignment: Connecting curriculum, assessment and pedagogy
– Front-ending assessment: Bringing assessment to the fore to inform planning for teaching and learning (also referred to as
backward mapping)
– Fitness for purpose: Suitability of assessments to achieve intended purposes (validity). Identifying assessment to be used for
formative purposes (learning improvement) and summative purposes (reporting)
– Validity: The soundness of the design of the assessment. (Does it assess what it claims to assess? Is there sufficient justification for
the interpretations made from the data?)
– Fidelity: The trustworthiness and faithfulness of the assessment design
– Reliability: Consistency of judgements: It includes both teacher consistency with self over time and cross-teacher consistency. This is
supported through moderation where the focus is on the application of stated features of quality and comparability.
– Standards: Formulations of expected features and levels of quality
– Standards-referenced assessment: An assessment approach in which judgements about the quality of student work are made
against stated standards of performance
– Assessment Criteria: Criteria are features or characteristics of quality
– Teacher criterial knowledge: Explicit, latent (emerging and meta-criteria)
– Assessment for formative purposes: Assessment used to diagnose learning needs and current levels, and determine next stage
teaching and learning
– Assessment for summative purposes: Assessment used primarily to award a grade to be used for reporting (either terminal at the end of a
course of study, or a key juncture point in a teaching program such as end of semester reporting) to determine a result.

Element 3: Closing the loop: Assessment data to inform next-step

teaching
– What processes will you put in place in your classroom to establish next
learning goals with students?
– What processes will you put in place in your classroom to profile student
achievement over time?
– How can student evidence of learning be compiled and easily accessed?
E.g. through student folios including e-folios?
– What processes need to be in place for students to complete their
reflections on learning and set learning goals?
– What data, evidence and resources need to be compiled for parent-
teacher interviews?

Element 4: Moderation: Standards-referenced assessment and

judgement practice
Moderation provides a context in which you can share student evidence
(actual pieces of work) and engage in professional conversations about the
achievement
standards. Dialogue and critical review of student samples calibrate your judgements against those of colleagues.
– What are the critical features that determine achievement at a designated standard?
– What samples of students’ evidence would you choose to illustrate various features of quality and achievement at various levels
(Above Standard, At Standard and Below Standard/At risk, C-level, Aspirational level)?
– What are the expected principles, protocols and practices for moderating student work against stated standards in your
school?
– How do you use standards to inform your judgements of student work? How do you combine features of quality at different
student levels? How do you use trade-offs or compensations between aspects of work that are higher and lower levels?
– How do the moderation conversations inform your next planning decisions and future teaching?

Resources: Drawing on relevant artefacts at system and local levels

– Australian Curriculum – NAPLAN – Benchmarks and assessment criteria
– Australian Curriculum Achievement Standards at – State syllabus and curriculum documents
subject/discipline level - School curriculum and assessment plans
– A-E Reporting Framework – Subject/discipline level developmental progression maps
– NAPLAN data – School documents
- Diagnostic assessment data and evidence
Adapted from Wyatt-Smith, C. (2008) in Wyatt-Smith, C. & Bridges, S. (2008). Meeting in the middle–assessment, pedagogy, learning and students at educational
disadvantage. Final Evaluation Report for the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) on Literacy and Numeracy in the Middle years of Schooling.
Brisbane, QLD: DEST. (Out of print)


Questions to guide assessment design
1. Is there alignment between the curriculum, your assessment and your teaching and learning plan?

2. What discipline knowledge, understandings and skills needs to be taught before students can
undertake the assessment?

a. How can you link this to students’ prior or existing knowledge?

b. This includes knowledge from both in-school and out-of-school contexts.

3. What is the level of intellectual challenge of your assessment task?

a. Is it designed to provide rigour for all students working across a range of abilities?

b. Are there opportunities to extend high-performing students?

c. Will you need to make adjustments to enable all students to demonstrate their achievement?

4. What is the nature or range of performance contexts for the assessment task?

a. What are the assessment conditions – supervised in classroom time, in own time or a combination
of both?

b. If the latter, what additional resources, including ICTs, will students need to access?

c. Can the students seek feedback for formative purposes from others?

d. How will feedback be provided?

5. What literate, numerate and/or digital capabilities do students need to successfully complete the task?

6. How clear and accessible is the language used in the assessment task? Is it free of cultural and gender
bias?


Further considerations when planning your assessment
1. How will you share knowledge of the criteria and standards and the expected quality of work for this
task with your students?

a. When will you do this?

2. What formative assessment activities are built into your planning to support students’ successful
completion of the assessment?

3. What opportunities are provided for students to peer- and self-assess?

4. What processes will you use to profile student achievement over time?

a. What form of records will you keep to provide evidence of student learning?

5. What work samples will you collect to evidence student learning?

6. How will you use standards to make a judgement of the quality of student work?

a. How will you combine features of quality at different levels?

7. What moderation practices will you engage in with professional colleagues to verify your judgements
of student work?

8. How will you use your evaluative experience to inform your next-step teaching to improve student
achievement, and for whole class planning?