Classroom Assessment as the Co-regulation of Learning

Current theories of classroom assessment recognize that the agency for learning resides with the student, and that successful students use assessment as information for learning. These and other developments reflect cognitive and constructivist theories of learning, which emphasize the importance of student agency as a matter of the self-regulation of learning. Self-regulated learning processes are those by which learners set goals and then plan, execute, and adjust their learning. In educational contexts, however, self-regulatory processes often occur under the joint influence of students and other sources of regulation in the learning environment such as teachers, peers, interventions, curriculum materials, and assessment instruments. Student learning is co-regulated by multiple classroom elements acting together. Feedback from teachers and peers plays an especially important role in helping students understand the gap between where they are and where they need to be, and encourage active student participation in classroom assessment.

This research topic will provide a collection of rigorous research that frames assessment as the interactive, reciprocal co-regulation of learning by teachers, students, instructional and evaluative materials, and contexts. We are soliciting new scholarship, including original quantitative and qualitative studies, meta-analyses, and literature reviews, in order to demonstrate how classroom assessment is related to all aspects of the regulation of learning.

Research is needed to understand the key components of classroom assessment strategies that promote active student participation in increasingly complex forms of co-regulated learning. Relevant scholarship will investigate all forms of classroom assessment such as formative student self-assessment and peer feedback, diagnostic pre-assessment done by teachers, and summative tests and examinations designed for use at the classroom level. Features of the assessment context known to support self- and co-regulated learning are also of interest, including but not limited to goal setting (e.g., learning targets), the activation of prior knowledge, task interpretation, causal attributions, help-seeking behaviors, and classroom goal structures. Of special interest is research on the self- and co-regulatory processes students use as they apply assessment information from formative feedback and summative (graded) work to their future learning attempts.