Scoping Review of Student Assessment in PreK-12 Schools

17) Purpose of this Project Broadly, our objective for this project is to use the literature to help us reframe, for the Saskatchewan context, the massive body of knowledge describing the ways in which school actors understand the processes of assessment at both the individual and collective levels and how those perspectives influence the ways in which they engage in improvement through assessment. [...] However, as we undertook the review, we were surprised to find that there has been limited empirical research in this field over the last decade or so (one of the criteria for inclusion we set for the scoping review) examining the efficacy of “modern” approaches to assessment and reporting that we know exist and for which we have advocated in the field; instead, much of the peer- reviewed literatu. [...] (SSTA Research Centre) Initial forays At about the same time, anxious to develop a clear picture of the status of student achievement and a sense of the range of large-scale assessment activities in the province from which those achievement statistics were drawn, Trustees commissioned a study of (i) the existing large-scale achievement data for Saskatchewan’s students and (ii) the literature assoc. [...] Additionally, given that the measurement criteria for the assessments were designed to be representative of the continuum of skill development in the subject being assessed; all students sampled for each cycle of the SAIP – regardless of age and/or grade – completed the same test instrument “to study the change in student knowledge and skills due to the additional years of instruction” (CMEC, 1997. [...] The purpose of this research project was to use the literature to help us reframe, for the Saskatchewan context, the massive body of knowledge describing the ways in which school actors understand the processes of assessment at both the individual and collective levels and how those perspectives influence the ways in which they engage in assessment- and measurement-related activities.