Perhaps this article from Teachers College record by Ginette Delanshere, "Assessment as Inquiry" can help inform our discussion.  The article can be downloaded, but requires a TC subscription.

Following the brief TC description, I include the authors introduction.  The article is 24 pages.
  
George Demetrion
  
  
  
TCRecord for the Week of June 7th, 2004 -- http://www.tcrecord.org

This Week's Featured Article:

If what we know cannot be separated from how we know and
from the experiences and activities that shape it, then
the assessment questions have to be framed in such a way
as to be consistent with this theoretical perspective and
include social, cultural, and ethnical issues that have not
been typically addressed.  The questions asked would
therefore be different.  For example, accountability questions
could not be answered merely by measuring predetermined
learning outcomes of individual students.  Instead of
measuring what students do not know with regard to a fixed
domain, students' educational experiences and the activities
in which they engage would need to be considered to
understand what and how they know and learn.

Ginette Delandshere considers this and other issues regarding
current approaches to assessment in:

Assessment as Inquiry


** This article is featured on TCRecord's home page:

http://www.tcrecord.org
Introduction

Assessment as Inquiry  
  
 Ginette Delandshere
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
Author Bio | E-mail Author


For more than 10 years now, arguments have been constructed regarding the need for new forms of educational assessment, and for a paradigm shift with a focus on supporting learning rather than on sorting and selecting students. The call for change in assessment follows an almost unanimous recognition of the limitations of current measurement theory and practice. The conceptions of learning represented by theories of learning and cognition appear strikingly different from those implied in current educational assessment and measurement practices. Indeed, most educational measurement specialists are still working from century-old understandings and behaviorist perspectives. Although the call for change is clear, the proposals and recommendations being put forward have limitations of their own and are unlikely to yield the kinds of fundamental changes envisioned by researchers. These limitations lie either in the focus of the work, in the lack of a clear articulation of the theories and concepts, in the nature of the assumptions made about learning (many of which remain implicit and unchanged), in the exclusion of certain conceptions of learning, or in some combination of these problems. This article explores the possibility of using inquiry as a way to understand, and hence to assess, learning. After an initial review of the assessment literature in which the need for change has been asserted and analysis of the theoretical and epistemological foundations that seem to undergird these writings, the focus shifts to the meaning of learning, knowing, and teaching implied in this literature and to the limitations of its recommendations. Later sections consider notions of learning that seem to be excluded from current assessment practices and begin to uncover similarities between learning, knowing, and inquiring that could make inquiry an appropriate metaphor for what we currently know as educational assessment. Finally, there is discussion of important issues that would need to be considered in an inquiry framework for assessment.  
  





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Plus two new book reviews:


Connie J.S. Monroe reviews:
Teaching as Community Property:  Essays on Higher Education
by Lee S. Shulman

Thomas V. O'Brien reviews
Seeking Common Ground:  Public Schools in a Diverse Society
by David Tyack

** These reviews are featured on TCRecord's home page:

http://www.tcrecord.org

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Plus don't forget to return to TCR this weekend for the

TCR Weekend Edition on Assessment - Papers from the TCR Collection

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