Abstract
How teachers perceive and assess students has a key impact on the success of student learning. Teachers' assessments of students can take many forms - grades awarded, explicit perceptions of school success, or more detailed perceptions of school characteristics that may promote the chance of successful mastery of demands.
If teacher assessment is consistent across these forms, it can provide better feedback, motivation and accountability for their own learning. However, consistency is also important across time.
If assessment varies significantly over time, it may be less comprehensible to pupils. In addition, it may (or may not) be indicative of unclear criteria used by teachers in assessment.
The study presented here focused on the consistency of teachers' assessment of specific pupils across forms of assessment and across time. At two-year intervals, teachers were asked to comment explicitly on the school performance of individual children (whether they were successful or not), to complete an assessment scale containing 32 school characteristics in six domains, and finally to provide data on the progress received by pupils and estimated for them in subsequent years.
The research sample consisted of 7 classes with a total of 171 pupils who were repeatedly assessed by their teachers. Analyses showed that there was relative agreement in the forms of teacher assessment across the measures.
Teachers assessed pupils in a rather positive way. However, assessments of 32 characteristics showed more variability and were thus more informative than grades and school performance assessments.
Across the measures, the assessments showed significant deterioration. For Year 4 pupils, teachers were more critical in their assessments, and again, the comprehensive assessment of school characteristics was more varied than the assessment via grades and via explicit assessment of school achievement.