From Examination Halls to Asynchronous Modules: Teaching Assessment Across Two Systems

For much of my career, assessment meant examinations. In Ghana, where I worked in schools, the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) dictated the rhythm of the academic year. My work with Cambridge Assessment International Education drew me further into that world through the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) and General Certificate of Education (GCE) Advanced Level examinations. I spent hours with detailed marking schemes and standardization procedures, learning how much care it takes to mark thousands of scripts so that every candidate is judged by the same standard. I learned to respect the examination discipline. That work gave me a lasting respect for large-scale examination systems. Whatever their limitations, they take on the hard questions of fairness, validity, reliability, and consistency.

My understanding of assessment has grown since then, largely because my work has changed. I now teach an introductory course on assessment and foundations of education to teacher candidates in an asynchronous format, and here assessment plays a different role. It is less about measuring what students have learned once instruction ends and more about gathering evidence along the way: what they understand, where they are struggling, and how I can adjust my teaching to support them. Moving between the standardized world of external examinations and the formative, classroom-centered world of teacher preparation has reshaped how I think about assessment. It has changed what I most want my future teachers to take away from my course. Assessment is not simply a matter of assigning grades or measuring achievement. It sits at the heart of teaching and learning.

What Assessment Systems Taught Me

I do not share this experience as a repudiation of where I come from. Those examination systems taught me that assessment is a public contract. The people who design assessments carry real responsibility, especially when the outcome of such assessments affects entry to university or employment. I also learned the importance of precise criteria, of moderation among markers, and of asking whether an assessment measures what it claims to measure. These lessons stay with me today in my teaching.

The assessment systems showed me what can go wrong when assessment focuses too narrowly on outcomes. When a single examination carries high stakes, teaching tends to shrink around it as classroom time becomes focused on preparing students for tests. Classroom time becomes rehearsals for tests, and students come to believe that learning is the same thing as how well they perform on a one-day test. Under this kind of pressure, teachers may start to see assessment as something they do to students, rather than something they do with them to understand their progress and support their learning.

What I Had to Relearn

When I transitioned to teacher education in the United States, I had to relearn a distinction I already knew conceptually but had not experienced it in practice: the difference between assessment of learning and assessment for learning. Black and Wiliam (1998) argued that formative assessment, the continuing gathering of information to adapt teaching and provide feedback, can lead to large gains in accomplishment. Shepard (2000) made a related case arguing that assessment should be embedded in a culture of learning where students and teachers use evidence together to propel learning ahead rather than a separate event that sorts students at the end.

For me, this transition was less about losing rigor than about finding a different place. In an examination hall, rigor lives in the consistency of marking. In the classroom, rigor is found in the questions a teacher asks, the evidence a teacher sees, and the feedback a teacher delivers when there is still time for students to act on it.

When the Course Is Itself an Assessment Design

Teaching assessment and foundations to teacher candidates asynchronously has brought the concept of assessment into sharper focus. In an asynchronous course, I cannot read a room during an assessment task. I cannot see the uncertainty on a student’s face or change an explanation in the moment. Instead, much of what I learn about my students comes from the assignment I design and the work they submit. Thus, the course itself becomes an assessment system, one that students experience as they learn to design assessments for others. This fact has become one of my best instructional resources. I strive to develop discussion activities that require pre-service teachers to reason about a specific scenario, not simply recite a concept, because a question that can be addressed by summarizing a reading tells me little about understanding. My written feedback becomes a central part of my teaching voice because in an asynchronous course it is sometimes the only time a student gets to hear from me directly about their own thoughts. I also invite students to examine assessment decisions built into the course: why an assignment is designed the way it is, what evidence of learning it provides, and what it leaves unseen. When teacher candidates reflect on the assessment they experience as learners, the concepts become concrete and personally meaningful.

Assessment Through a Transnational Lens

My journey between educational systems has also influenced what I want future teachers to know about the students they will serve. In my doctoral study, I have leaned on Brah’s (1996) concept of homing desire to think about how people who move across borders bring their educational histories with them, seeking belonging yet making new locations home. In United States classrooms, there is a growing number of students whose previous education has been formed by examination cultures significantly different from those they are now facing. A student who is waiting for the specific test of what will be tested or is not experienced with self-assessment and peer feedback, is not necessarily disengaged. The learner may be operating from well-established expectations about what assessment is for.

I want teachers I prepare to see such events from an asset lens. The work of Moll et al. (1992) on funds of knowledge reminds us that students come with rich resources from their homes and communities. A teacher who knows the source of a student’s assumptions can clarify the intent of formative assessment, establish trust slowly, and help the student see feedback as a form of support rather than as a form of judgment.

What I Hope Future Teachers Take With Them

I hope my students go away with a few commitments when they leave my class. I hope they regard assessment as a way of listening to learners, not just ranking them up. I hope they stick to the discipline of assessment systems that need clear criteria, fairness, and sufficient evidence and reject the restriction of teaching that high-stakes tests might bring. And I hope students come to realize that each assessment they create is a statement about their values and about who they anticipate will succeed.

I entered teacher education with teachings from exam rooms. I have come to believe that the best preparation I can provide prospective teachers is not a choice between those teachings and newer ones, but the ability to hold both, and to ask of every assessment they make, “what will this help my students learn?”