Building a Strong Assessment Culture in Schools: A Situational Analysis

Abstract

Ensuring effective learning and teaching requires a strong assessment culture in schools where teachers and students are supported to use assessment to increase student outcomes. However, building a strong assessment culture requires a deeper analysis of the personal, social-emotional, conceptual, paradigmatic, practical, contextual, structural, organisational and policy contexts of the school to determine the best strategies to implement to achieve the aims of the reforms. This protocol paper demonstrates how we will help schools develop their assessment culture. We will use situational analysis to explore the various elements influencing the school’s assessment culture to gain an in-depth understanding of the situation. In addition, we will use activity theory to understand the patterns of social activities and the relationships of various elements to develop a strong assessment culture.

Keywords

school assessment culture assessment to support learning and teaching school leaders’ role teacher assessment practices

Introduction

Assessment plays a central role in effective learning and teaching (Alonzo, 2020; Baird et al., 2017; Black, 2017). Thus, teachers’ assessment disposition, knowledge, and skills, known as assessment literacy (Alonzo, 2016; Popham, 2009), are critically important for the effective use of assessment in the classroom. Many studies show that the school assessment culture influences teachers’ literacy (Alonzo, Labad, et al., 2021; Davison, 2013). The school’s shared organisational assessment culture supports teachers’ assessment practices and students’ engagement in assessment. This assessment culture is characterised by a shared understanding of assessment principles, processes, and practices (Arsyad Arrafii, 2021), common assessment language to have a common reference for discussing competing understandings and conceptualisations (Davison, 2013), strong leadership support (Christoforidou & Kyriakides, 2021; Lee, Alonzo, Beswick, Abril, et al., 2024), student engagement in assessment (Hannigan et al., 2022) and the presence of enabling and supporting mechanisms (Alonzo, Labad, et al., 2021).

Various approaches are used and reported in the literature to build a strong assessment culture, including teacher-led initiatives (Adie et al., 2021), school-led whole-school approaches to building teacher capacity (Hopfenbeck et al., 2015), development and implementation of assessment frameworks or tools (Prytula et al., 2013), and the enactment of system-level policies (Verhoeven & Devos, 2005). Implementing a school-based assessment reform to address the context-specific needs of teachers (Oo et al., 2023) is critical to any of these approaches. As assessment is context-based (Alonzo et al., 2023c), there are personal (Taylor, 2013), social-emotional (Loughland & Alonzo, 2019), conceptual (Black, 2017), paradigmatic (Baird et al., 2017), practical (DeLuca et al., 2020), contextual, structural, organisational (Alonzo, Leverett, & Obsioma, 2021; Hopfenbeck et al., 2015), and policy changes (Christoforidou & Kyriakides, 2021) needed for schools to develop their assessment culture.

In this study, we support five schools in developing their assessment culture. As there is no one-size-fits-all approach, we will be working with school leaders and teachers at each school to develop their context-dependent culture. We will explore the dominant discourses around assessment that exist in each school, the major issues/debates, both at the system level and school level, that influence teachers’ assessment practices, and the temporal, spatial, political, and socio-cultural issues that shaped the current assessment culture of the school, and the key decision-makers and implementers of assessment reform in each school.

Research Questions

To achieve the aims of our study, the following research questions will be answered:

1. What is the dominant discourse around assessment that exists in schools?

2. What are the major issues/debates that influence teachers’ assessment practices?

3. What are the temporal, spatial, political, and socio-cultural issues that shaped the current assessment culture of the school? and

4. Who are the key decision-makers and implementers of assessment reform in schools?

Context of the Study

The project is part of the broader project, The New South Wales Equity Consortium: Whole-of-cohort outreach with Years 7–9, a participatory, longitudinal and mixed-methods project that seeks to examine and evaluate changes (if any) to students’ imagined futures, expectations and aspirations, literacies, and further education choices over 5 years of their schooling; and capacity building across the full spectrum of participants (university partners, school partners, teachers, students, parents). The consortium is particularly interested in exploring teachers’ capacity for action research. Using participatory research, we will jointly (teachers and researchers) develop an understanding of practices, perceptions, and feelings about undertaking literacy-focused action research. The study protocol described in this paper reports only the component that builds schools’ assessment culture.

Theoretical Framework

The activity theory will be used as a theoretical framework to build a strong assessment culture in participating schools. The activity theory (Engestrom, 1987) is based on Vygotsky’s (1978) proposition of the primacy of culture rather than individual cognition in mediating action, learning, and meaning-making. In this view, the social interactions of individuals within the community facilitate learning. This view will help explain how teachers’ interactions within the school (i.e., with other teachers, school leaders, students, parents/carers) and at the system level influence their understanding, views, beliefs, perceptions and knowledge about assessment. In addition, the activity theory is useful for understanding how different factors work together to influence various socially and culturally mediated activities to achieve the intended outcomes.

Specifically, the third generation of activity theory will be used (Engestrom, 2015). This theory describes the six elements and how they interact. These include the subjects (people who are the focus of the study/engaged in activity), roles of the objects (experiences, knowledge and physical products), tools (documents, resources, etc), and community (people or stakeholders), rules (policy, codes, conventions, agreements), division of labour (division of activity amongst participants in the activity). The subjects work as part of the community to achieve the object or outcome of the activity. Their interactions are guided by the rules and divisions of labour. The quality of the interactions among objects, tools and the community determines the quality of the outcomes. In other words, the tools mediate the relationships between the subject and the object of activity. The ultimate goal is to transform the object into outcomes, which requires the effective use of tools available in the system.

Applying this activity theory in this study highlights the elements of the school system. The subjects include the school leaders, teachers, and students, who are the key players in building a strong assessment culture (objects). The tools are the assessment frameworks, methods, ideas, procedures, and assessment exemplars. The rules include shared practices, policies, and regulations, amongst other things. Apart from school leaders, teachers, and students, the school community may include parents, department personnel, and other stakeholders. The division of labour is activities distributed among the stakeholders. Thus, this analytical framework is useful for reflecting on different elements of the school to understand the patterns of social activities and the relationships of various elements to develop a strong assessment culture.

Methods

Research Design

We will use a situational analysis to explore the various elements influencing the school’s assessment culture. Situational analysis is an extension of grounded theory where the analysis is not confined to human action but to a broader situation (Clarke et al., 2017). The situation includes non-human actors, discourses, debates, issues, implicated actors, and power relations. The situational analysis is used in many contexts, including community development (Alonzo, Baker, et al., 2023; Armstrong et al., 2023), public health (Martin et al., 2016), environmental research (Faehnrich, 2018), conservation studies (Alonso-Yanez et al., 2016), and many others.

The situational analysis will provide a lens to capture the complex and heterogeneous nature of building an assessment culture and how the various elements, actors, and factors intersect. The strong adherence of situational analysis to the context in analysing the situation (Clarke et al., 2017), in this study, the assessment culture resonates with the context-dependent nature of assessment. In addition, situational analysis will generate “situational maps”, “relational maps”, “social maps” and “positional maps” that show the interactions of key actors (i.e., school leaders, teachers, students) with the dominant discourse, major issues/debates that influence teachers’ assessment practices, the temporal, spatial, political, and socio-cultural issues that shaped the current assessment culture of the school. Through situational analysis, we will explore the internal and external environments of the school, including elements (i.e., related discourses, symbolic, spatiotemporal) to identify opportunities and challenges for building a strong assessment culture in the five participating schools.

Through situational analysis, we will explore the following information:

1. Aspiration for using assessment in schools;

2. The key decision-makers and implementers of assessment reform in schools;

3. The non-human elements/actants (e.g., technology, resources, etc.) in enacting assessment reform in your school;

4. Dominant discourses around assessment (e.g., validity and reliability of teachers’ assessment), if any, hindering or supporting teachers’ assessment practices;

5. Major issues/debates (e.g., formative vs. summative; accountability vs. learning function of assessment) in schools about the use of assessment;

6. Major issues/debates at the system level or wider academic community (e.g., too much reliance on NAPLAN data) that impact school assessment practices;

7. Temporal elements (historical, seasonal, crisis, or trajectory aspects) impacting school assessment practices;

8. Spatial elements (geographical, local, state, national, global spatial issues), if any, impacting school assessment practices;

9. Policy/political/economic issues, if any, impacting school assessment practices; and

10. Socio-cultural issues (e.g., power relation, ethnicity), if any, impact school assessment practices.

Study Setting

This study will be conducted in five public schools in Sydney that are participants of the consortium of three universities in New South Wales, Australia. Our engagement in these five schools started in 2021 with a broader research and evaluation project in

Pilot Work

An initial work has been going on, delivering professional learning (PL) with English teachers, which aims to build teachers’ data literacy and decision-making. These teachers’ knowledge and skills are critical factors for effective learning and teaching (Mandinach & Gummer, 2013). In recent years, teachers’ data use has been a major focus of educational reforms. However, teachers’ use of data in the classroom remains limited (Reed, 2015; Vanlommel & Schildkamp, 2019) due to their limited technical knowledge and skills to analyse data, which undermines their confidence in generating and using classroom data (Lee, Alonzo, Beswick, Oo, et al., 2024; Mandinach & Gummer, 2016).

In the context of the NEC program, building teachers’ data literacy is critical for identifying students’ individual needs and providing interventions to support them in improving their literacy. The program strongly focuses on using assessment to support educationally disadvantaged students (Alonzo, Davison, & Salhberg, 2023). We followed a multi-stage approach to building teachers’ data literacy. These are described as follows:

Stage 1. Analysis of NAPLAN Data

We analysed the 2019 National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) results of the participating schools using the generalised partial credit model of the Rasch model (Masters, 1982). The results of the item parametisation, which shows the distribution of the micro-skills based on their difficulty and the distribution of students based on their ability, informed our decisions on what skills will be the focus of the literacy piece.

Stage 2. Development of the Unit for Work and Pre/Post-test

To support teachers, a unit of work was co-designed with consultants. An integral part of this process is the development of pre/post-tests. Each item in the test is aligned to the skills focus of the unit of work.

Stage 3. Implementation and Analysis of Pre-test Results

In every iteration, the pre-test is administered before implementing the unit of work. The results are analysed using the macro-based data analyser, which can rank students based on their score, group students based on the skills they have manifested, and group skills that students most or least manifest. A professional learning was delivered for teachers to use the data analyser and reflect on how they can use the results to inform their implementation of the unit of work. Teachers perceived the benefits of this PL as evident in the quotes below:

If you know that this [student] doesn’t do well in sentence structure, then as a teacher you can use that data to inform your practice and target that. And the same thing with cohesion, paragraphing. I think that’s where the advantage lies. – FG1T2

It’s been really good, I have been well-informed about how to use data more effectively, so there some practices that I’ve been involved [in] and observed and that I've actually been able to do as well [which] has really helped me as a teacher. – FG2T1

I think after the first PL… that really helped, because it was identified where those weaknesses were with students. And then I was able to use the resources that they were given, expand on those resources, and add my own resources, which was around persuasive language and the techniques that they were weak on. – FG3T3

Stage 4. Implementation of the Unit of Work and Post-test

The units of work are implemented as per teachers’ insights during the PL. In the final week of the term, the post-test is administered. The results are entered into the data analyser to compare them to the pre-test. The analyses show the learning gains of individual students and effect size, the skills developed by individual students, and the areas needing more improvement. Another PL is conducted to discuss the results and plan how to further support the students in the next term.

Overall, based on teacher interviews, their engagement in PL has given them opportunities to improve their data literacy:

One of the things that everybody should see when we return to our schools is the before and after, the pre-test and the post-test, because seeing that today again, I was like, “Whoa, they actually improved,” and given all the different factors that you have to consider in those classrooms, especially in our context, sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of that. But when you have the pre-test and post-test results right there and you put them together, I was like, “That can build teacher morale up.” – FG1T2

Looking at the data today and seeing my own students and what they’re able to actually achieve …... I felt that it was well-worth the effort that my colleague put into our class and that we’re starting to reap the benefits …. it’s actually made me excited for Year eight next term. – FG2T2

People are like, “I don’t see how beneficial it’s going to be.” But all three of us that are here today are frankly blown away at the results.... We’ve already talked about the plans to go back in our faculty meeting and say, “Hey, we have actual data here that’s beneficial to us, that shows that there’s a benefit” – FG3T1

Given the success of this initial and ongoing work, the project will be scaled up across the different key learning areas.

Participants

School leaders and teachers from the five participating schools will be invited to participate in this study. The school leaders (executive team) include the principals, deputy principals, and department heads. We will recruit at least three school leaders from each school. Their inclusion in the study is critical because they are the key decision-makers in schools. In the context of this study, their role in building a strong assessment culture spans from analysing the needs of their respective schools, developing strategies to support the reform, providing support to teachers, monitoring the reform, and reporting for accountability. As noted in many studies, school leadership plays a significant role in supporting teachers in implementing effective assessment practices (Alonzo et al., 2014, 2021b; Drake, 2021).

Teachers with different accreditation levels will be recruited to participate in this study. The dispositions (views, perceptions, beliefs, and aptitudes), knowledge, and skills of teachers are influenced by years of experience, and hence, the inclusion of teachers from a range of accreditation levels will provide the research team with significant insights for developing a differentiated approach to supporting teachers.

Data Collection

Focus group interviews will be used to collect data. Using focus groups is deemed appropriate to the research aims and to answer the research questions. This method allows participants to interact with each other, discuss their responses, and react to other participants’ responses, which creates a richer discussion with various perspectives critiqued and examined (Bryman, 2016). The interviewer can also ask follow-up questions to the group, leveraging the current discussion into a deeper exploration of the issues being investigated. For school leaders, one focus group with five to six participants will be conducted for each school. For teachers, two focus groups for each school will be conducted.

Privacy and Confidentiality

The interviews will be audio-recorded, and no identifiable information will be gathered except for the respective schools of teachers and school leaders. The school label is critically important when we develop specific strategies for each school to build their assessment culture. School-level analysis is needed to ensure that the strategies to be developed and implemented adhere to the context of individual schools and addresses the needs and aspirations of the school community. All audio-recorded interviews will be transcribed. Raw data will not be shared with other researchers outside the NEC team. The de-identified data will be stored for 5 years at [Institution] data repository after the publication of the research findings.

Data Analysis

In analysing the interview data, we will follow the six steps outlined by Braun and Clarke (2022). First, data familiarisation. We will read the interview transcripts several times to understand the data. Second, code generation. Two authors will independently generate codes and collate data relevant to each code. They will compare their codes and discuss any differences and disagreements. The discussion will be moderated by the third author, who will decide if the two authors do not agree. Third, theme identification. Based on the codes, we will search for potential themes and categorise the codes based on the themes. Fourth, reviewing of themes. We will review the themes, focusing on similarities and disagreements. Any disagreements will be discussed, and in cases where the disagreements cannot be resolved, another research team member will be invited to help decide. Fifth, theme finalisation. We will finalise the names of the themes. The ongoing analysis will refine each theme’s specifics and the overall narrative. Each theme will be clearly defined. Finally, report writing. Interview extracts will be carefully selected and embedded in the narrative to provide compelling evidence.

Building the Theory of Change

After the situational analysis has been conducted, we will work closely with school leaders and teachers at each school to co-develop their own theory of change (ToC). The explanatory power of ToC will describe and illustrate what and how the desired assessment culture is expected to develop (Reinholz & Andrews, 2020). Through the ToC, we will establish a means-ends hierarchy, linking program assumptions, intentions, and objectives via the activities designed to achieve the objectives and the desired outcomes.

Rigour

We will ensure the trustworthiness of research using the four dimensions, credibility, dependability, confirmability, and transferability, outlined by Lincoln and Guba (1985). We will ensure the credibility of this research, or the interval validity of the findings to reflect the most accurate representation of the reality (Bryman, 2016) of building a strong assessment culture in schools. We can ensure the credibility of our research through prolonged engagement (the project runs from 2022–2026), rapport building (we built a strong partnership with schools), iterative questioning (the interviewers are skilful), data triangulation (multiple sources of data), member checking (focus group transcripts will be sent to the participants to review), and inclusive coding (two researchers will engage in iterative coding). In addition, we will ensure the dependability of our research and the stability of the data over time under different conditions by describing our inclusion criteria for participants. Our co-design with school leaders and teachers ensures that all involved in the process agree to the interpretation of the data and use of the findings. Moreover, we will adhere to the conformability or objectivity of the research. As researchers, we will engage in a reflexive practice to ensure that our beliefs, views, perceptions, knowledge, and skills about assessment will not influence the research process to reach bias-free results. Lastly, we will ensure the transferability of our research to other contexts by providing a rich description of the study context, assumptions, and processes.

Ethical Approval

This study has been approved by the University of New South Wales Sydney Ethics Committee (HC200713) and the New South Wales State Education Research Applications Process. We will adhere to the conditions and regulations set by both ethics committees.

Dissemination and Outcomes

Results of this study will be communicated in a wider educational community, including but not limited to policy briefs for schools, reputable national and international conferences to engage in a broader educational discourse, quality publication outlets including journals and book chapters, and a final report for the funding agency.

ORCID iD

Dennis Alonzo https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8900-497X

Statements and Declarations

Footnotes

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the NSW Government, Department of Education, through the Collaboration and Innovation Fund and Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program (HEPPP).

Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Appendix

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