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The Role of Assessment in a Learning Culture

Publisher: Educational Researcher, 29 (7)
Page Numbers: 4-14

This article is about classroom assessment used as a part of instruction to support and enhance learning. The article is organized in three parts: (1) a historical framework highlighting the key tenets of social efficiency curricula, behaviorist learning theories, and "scientific measurement"; (2) a contrasting social-constructivist conceptual framework that blends key ideas from cognitive, constructivist, and sociocultural theories; and (3) the ways that assessment practices should change to be consistent with and support social-constructivist pedagogy.