Liberating the learner through self-assessment

An international agenda to raise educational ‘standards’ and increase the accountability of schools has the unintended consequence of increased uniformity around pedagogical practices, and of introducing assessment practices that influence the way students experience learning. This paper explores how the self-assessment experiences of primary and secondary school students in relation to their learning reflects their perceived respective institutional demands to account for their learning. Students’ dilemmas and experiences of school-based assessment include the use of pre-defined criteria for assessment tasks focusing the learner’s attention to ‘getting to the identified outcome and in the right way’. When school assessment systems do not reflect students’ socially and culturally valued learning, this reduces conversations around learning to that of outcomes. In contrast, by supporting learners to self-assess in increasingly sophisticated ways, teachers encourage students to think about their learning across contexts, and liberate them from thinking only about institutional assessment demands.