Theoretical Framework for Educational Assessment: A Synoptic Review

Abstract

At this age of accountability, it is acknowledged that assessment is a powerful lever that can either boost or undermine students learning. Hitherto, much of the regular institutional and instructional practices show that assessments remain inhibitory or void rather than constructive as these lack the assessment formative aspect. This denotes that assessment is either not well understood or not done in a principled educational framework across all educational levels. This is due to some inherited dysfunction of the past, which calls for the urgency of a moratorium. The current article attempts to enhance the EFL practitioners’ educational assessment practice as a form of expanding awareness. It attempts to establish a founded theoretical framework for the main concerns that might have been troubling novice and professional EFL practitioners with regard to understanding the working mechanisms of such a perplexing task that has long been delegated to them. Particular aspects of the current review target the definitions of the concept of assessment, the value, functions and purposes of assessment, levels where assessment occur, assessment research literature synopsis, and classroom assessment research (CAR). CAR presents detailed knowledge about the potency of assessment, research on classroom assessment practices, research on alternative assessment, research on formative assessment, and finally quality control criteria for effective classroom assessment. The article culminate in the pedagogical potency of formative assessment and some of its classroom procedural applications inspired from research into formative assessment and how that might contribute to the enhancement of pedagogic practice.

Keywords: educational assessment – accountability – alternative assessment – formative assessment – assessment practice