This article covers the concept, purpose, functions, procedures, evolution, recent trends, professionalism and ethics of teachers, and challenges of educational assessment, and explains how it contributes to promoting learning and improving teaching.

What is educational assessment?

The interest in assessment has never been greater, and almost every field of endeavor utilizes assessment in some way. Evaluation is arguably one of the most universal behaviors in human life. As we are constantly judging the value or quality of everything in our lives, evaluation is an important topic to be discussed and explored alongside human life. Various forms of assessment have been practiced in education for a long time. Teachers spend a significant part of their time on assessment-related activities. Students are no different. Students spend an enormous amount of time preparing for assessments, and the results of these assessments have a decisive impact on their lives.
The concept of educational assessment has been defined in different ways by different scholars. The goal-oriented definition defines educational assessment as the process of determining the extent to which educational goals are actually met through curriculum and instructional activities. However, this definition has the limitation that it emphasizes only one goal, which may overlook the evaluation of the part that is not set as a goal, and does not include the part that evaluates whether the goal itself was set validly. The decision-centered definition defines educational evaluation as the activity or process of gathering information to make decisions about education. While this definition focuses on separating the roles of evaluators and decision makers, it is limited in that it does not account for situations where it is difficult to distinguish between information gathering and decision making in practice. The value-judgment-centered definition defines educational evaluation as the process and product of judging the merit, quality, and value of something related to education. This definition focuses on the professional judgment of the evaluator and emphasizes the act of making a final judgment. Taken together, the three positions suggest that educational evaluation is the process of systematically investigating and utilizing the values and merits of curricula and outcomes for the purpose of making decisions about educational processes or outcomes.
Educational evaluators help to make rational decisions about various educational issues in the teaching and learning process. In the teaching and learning process, educational evaluation provides information for teachers to plan appropriate lessons, improve the content and methods of instruction, and determine the effectiveness of instruction. They also facilitate learning by providing students with information about what they have learned and to what extent. Without assessment, teaching and learning probably wouldn’t happen. Without assessment in the teaching and learning process, teachers would not be able to plan appropriate lessons, know if they are on track, or know if their lessons are effective. Without assessment, many students would probably not pay attention at all.

The purpose and function of assessment

Depending on how you define what you mean by assessment, the purpose of assessment will vary, and different purposes will have different functions. This is because where there is a purpose, there is an action to fulfill it, and the action is often referred to as a function. The functions of assessment are too numerous to enumerate, but to summarize them briefly, we can categorize them as formative to develop, revise, and explore alternatives; summative to select, qualify, and hold accountable; and strategic to promote, draw attention to, and motivate.
Formative functions are those that are conducted for the purpose of developing new curricula or teaching strategies, or to collect information necessary to explore and decide how to modify, supplement, or improve the curricula, programs, teaching methods, school facilities, and school operations currently in use. Assessments used to fulfill these roles are called formative assessments.
Formative assessments are conducted to facilitate learning and improve instruction by providing feedback to students and teachers by checking and verifying from time to time whether the objectives of the lesson are being met as the lesson is being taught. The feedback provided to students provides reinforcement for successful learning and identifies specific learning errors for unsuccessful learning. Specifically, formative assessment helps to individualize the pace of learning, increase motivation, and diagnose and remediate learning difficulties. The feedback provided to teachers provides them with information to improve their teaching methods or classroom procedures, ultimately maximizing learning. In order for formative assessment to fulfill its intended function, it should be administered as frequently as possible, the results should be fed back to students immediately, and the results should not count toward the final grade.
The summative function refers to the function of assessment conducted for the purpose of evaluating the final performance of education after confirming that the educational conditions such as educational programs, teaching methods, educational facilities, educational environment, educational policies, etc. are in an optimal state through formative assessment, or for the purpose of qualification, selection, or accountability of the parties who planned and implemented the education. And the evaluation conducted to fulfill these roles is called summative evaluation.
Summative evaluation is a judgmental activity conducted at the end of a series of activities or programs for the purpose of making a final determination of their effectiveness and appropriateness. A test given to determine the effectiveness of a class at the end of a period of instruction is an example of summative evaluation. End-of-semester or end-of-year exams, which are commonly conducted in frontline schools, are a typical example of summative assessment.
The functions of summative assessments are to assess grades, grant certification or licensure in a particular field, provide a basis for predicting future performance, provide a basis for comparing the performance of groups of students, and determine whether a lesson is truly effective.
Unlike formative assessments, summative assessments are very important because they provide a holistic view of learning outcomes over a relatively long period of time. Furthermore, the results of summative assessments are often used as the basis for decisions that have a significant impact on individuals, such as entrance exams and qualifications. For this reason, tests or exams that are intended to be used for summative assessment must be carefully designed and administered.
Formative assessment is sometimes referred to as the prospective function of educational assessment because it is usually conducted before or during the implementation of an educational action in order to gather information that is needed to identify deficiencies in the development of a program and to modify or supplement the program. Summative functions are called retrospective because, unlike formative functions, they are the function of an assessment at the end of an instructional action or activity.
The prospective and retrospective functions of evaluation are not distinguished by the content and form of the evaluation, but are determined by the purpose and timing of the evaluation. If an evaluation is conducted to find and correct problems in the process of implementing a new operating plan, it is a prospective evaluation; conversely, if an evaluation is conducted to evaluate the performance or impact of a new operating plan after it has been implemented, it is a retrospective evaluation.
The strategic function is short for the psychological, social, and political function of assessment. The strategic function is simply the function of an evaluation that is conducted to attract students’ attention and motivate them to learn, or to inform the community and parents about changes in the direction and focus of schooling, or to publicize events or activities that the school is planning.

Procedures for Educational Assessment

There are various discussions about the basic procedures of educational evaluation, but they can be broadly divided into the following: identifying the purpose of evaluation, selecting evaluation areas and contents, selecting and developing evaluation methods, planning and preparing for evaluation, collecting and implementing evaluation data, analyzing and interpreting evaluation results, reporting and utilizing evaluation results, and meta-evaluation.
The first thing to do in educational evaluation is to identify the purpose of the evaluation. If you are assessing students, you need to identify the purpose of the assessment – the “why” of the assessment. Identifying the purpose of the assessment will influence all subsequent steps. There are two main types of assessment purposes: formative and summative. Formative purposes are focused on improving, revising, and supplementing instruction. Summative purposes are focused on collecting information for accountability, grading, selection, etc.
The next step is the selection of assessment items and content, which considers the “what” to assess based on the determined purpose of the assessment. This determines whether you want to assess a student’s cognitive, definitional, or psychomotor skills. For example, if you want to assess creative thinking, you may end up measuring simple memorization of knowledge, or if you want to check prosocial attitudes, you may end up measuring knowledge possession. Therefore, to make the assessment correct and valid, it is necessary to specify what you want to assess by clarifying what you want to assess.
After selecting the assessment domain and content, select an assessment method or develop a new assessment method. In other words, once it is clear what to assess, the next step is to decide how to assess it. Each assessment method has its own strengths and weaknesses, so you need to choose the best one for your learning objectives. Assessment tools can be pre-existing or you can develop your own. If you use an existing tool, you should carefully examine its reliability and validity. If you develop your own, you should consider the purpose of the assessment, the assessment areas and content, and the assessment method.
Once you have selected an assessment method, you need to develop a plan to implement the assessment. The plan should include the objectives of the assessment, the number of assessments, the timing of the assessments, the location of the assessments, the number of people needed to administer the assessments, the scoring system, other equipment, and other conditions and circumstances necessary to administer the assessments. The assessment plan should be thoroughly developed before the assessment is administered. You should also check and verify that all preparations are in place before conducting the assessment.
During the implementation phase of the assessment, it is important to create a situation that allows the assessees to fully and honestly express their behavior as it is. Simply handing out questionnaires and answer sheets, keeping to the start and end times, and preventing cheating is only one aspect of the assessment. Even if you have prepared carefully through an assessment plan, you may find that you need to modify or create a new plan when you are about to conduct the assessment. Therefore, you must check for gaps and take necessary actions before collecting data.
After the assessment is over and the data is collected, you need to organize the results of the learners’ responses, or evidence of their behavior. At this stage, you need to analyze the results of the assessment and record them to form the basis of your evaluation. The data collected should be analyzed according to the purpose and content of the assessment. Data analysis is divided into quantitative and qualitative analysis. The analysis method varies depending on the nature of the data collected. In order to draw meaningful results from the collected data, it is most important to apply the appropriate analysis method to the data.
Once you have analyzed the data, you need to interpret the evaluation results. The interpretation of the results should be more holistic and take into account the characteristics and circumstances of the individuals being assessed. Because assessment in schools is part of the educational process, the interpretation of assessment results should provide information that helps the educational process.
After analyzing and interpreting the evaluation results, summarize and organize them and report them to interested parties. The form of the report depends on whether the purpose of the assessment is set by an external party or by the teacher. In the case of external evaluation, there is a certain format, but there is no format for teacher self-evaluation.
The use of assessment results is categorized into three types: use for assessment purposes, use for educational purposes, and use as self-assessment materials. When using assessment results, they should be used according to the purpose of the assessment. For example, the results of a note-taking test for formative assessment should not be included in the end-of-semester grade, but should be used to motivate students to learn or check students’ understanding; the results of an in-school lesson study to improve teachers’ teaching should be used as a resource for teachers to improve their teaching expertise, not to evaluate their job status.
School-based evaluation begins with the identification of the purpose of the evaluation and ends with the utilization of the results. However, teachers need to evaluate the success of each step, which is called meta-evaluation. Meta-evaluation is an evaluation of the entire evaluation, including the evaluation plan, implementation process, and evaluation results, with the purpose of checking or checking the quality of the evaluation to improve the quality of the evaluation and enhance the usefulness of the evaluation results.

Development of Educational Assessment

The history of educational assessment has existed alongside human history, and it has been differentiated and developed as a specialized field of study while being influenced by historical and political events. The origins of evaluation can be traced back to the East, with a formalized system in China dating back more than 2,000 years, and to the West, with Socrates’ oral method of dialogues. However, these evaluations were not scientific and systematic because they were based on subjective forces such as religious and political beliefs.
It was Tyler in the U.S. who established a scientific system of educational evaluation as a subject of scientific research. In addition to Tyler’s first use of the term educational evaluation, historical events such as the end of World War II and the launch of the Soviet Union’s unmanned satellite Sputnik can be seen to have changed the basic direction of educational evaluation.
Based on these historical events, we can categorize the history of educational assessment into seven periods. The first period is the reform movement from 1792 to the end of the 19th century, when quantitative methods appeared, which is considered the first beginning of assessment. The second is the early 20th century, from Fredrick Taylor’s scientific management movement through World War I to 1930, when large-scale studies of school and teacher effectiveness were conducted for schools and school boards, and testing became commonplace in education and industry. The third period is the Tyler period, from 1930, when Ralph W. Tyler first coined the term educational evaluation, to 1945, the end of World War II, with the implementation of R. Tyler’s eight-year study and the ramifications of its findings. The fourth period is from 1946 to 1957, after the end of World War II, a period of political and economic stability, with no external events or social purpose for research. The fifth period is from 1958 to 1972, when the Soviet satellite Sputnik was launched, and education entered a new phase of transition, prompting new directions in assessment and the emergence of various assessment models. The sixth period, from 1973 to 1983, is the period of professionalization, when the field of evaluation was subdivided and specified, the professionalism of evaluation experts increased, and subdivided and specialized evaluation journals, associations, and evaluation agencies began to be created. Finally, the seventh period, from 1983 to the present, when the education reform movement occurred, is the period of expansion and integration, when educational evaluation as a field of study has been firmly established and active exchanges are taking place through evaluation networks centered on conferences and associations around the world.

Educational Assessment in Korea

Looking at how educational assessment has changed and developed in Korea, it can be categorized into six periods centered on changes in the methods and systems of educational assessment. The first period is when the earliest forms of educational assessment occurred in Korea, before the 1900s, when the traditional past system was practiced. The second period is from 1900, when modern schools began to develop, to 1945, when the Japanese occupation ended, and relative assessment was introduced, where grades were assigned for each subject taught in modern schools and grades were calculated accordingly. The third period, from the immediate post-independence period to the early 1970s, saw the introduction of optional questions and standardized tests in schools. The fourth period was from the mid to late 1970s, when absolute assessments were introduced for each subject. The fifth period was from the 1980s to the mid-1990s, when relative and absolute assessments began to be mixed, and the sixth and final period was from the late 1990s to the present, when performance assessments were introduced and established.
Korea’s educational assessment was able to develop relatively quickly by adopting and utilizing the concepts and methods of assessment developed in the West, especially the United States, over the half-century since the country’s liberation. However, the unilateral introduction of American-style educational assessment led to the perception that testing is assessment and that educational assessment is only about grading students.
In order to further develop the theory and practice of educational assessment in Korea, it is important to introduce and appropriately utilize advanced foreign theories, but we must continue to research and strive to develop and apply our own theories that are suitable for our culture and conditions.
In addition, not only should we overcome the existing relative evaluation system and aim for an absolute evaluation system that is educationally desirable, but we should also strive to establish a qualitative evaluation system such as performance evaluation to improve teaching and learning activities and provide guidance, advice, and counseling to individual students. In addition, in the knowledge and information age, we should actively utilize information and communication technology to improve the efficiency of educational evaluation work, and teachers should voluntarily make research and efforts along with active support, including the expansion of various educational and training opportunities to increase their expertise in educational evaluation.

Recent Trends in Educational Assessment

When looking at the latest trends in educational assessment that should be of primary concern to schools, the first is the changing perspective on student assessment. The traditional view is assessment for learning, where the object of assessment is the outcome of learning. Assessment for learning emphasizes outcome-based assessment rather than the process of learning and emphasizes memorization and the measurement of fragmented knowledge or facts. However, a more recent concept is assessment that supports learning. By emphasizing assessments that foster problem-solving and creativity, and that respect learners’ diverse individual differences, the idea is that assessments ultimately help students learn by enabling them to understand and think better.
Second, there is the emergence of norm-referenced assessments. The rise of norm-referenced assessments can be seen as a result of criticism of traditional norm-referenced assessments, among other things. In norm-referenced assessments, the ultimate criterion is how students compare to each other, the target population of the assessment. Therefore, scores in norm-referenced assessments are always comparative or sequential scores. All it tells us is the relative position of how well or poorly one student did compared to another. In contrast, in criterion-referenced assessments, the criterion for the assessment is a specific performance level that students are expected to reach. Typically, this standard is set in advance through educational discussions, and all assessments are centered on how well students have reached this standard of educational achievement. Therefore, scores on criterion-referenced assessments are described as a measure of students’ achievement against a specific standard of achievement.
Third, assessment methods are changing and diversifying. The changes in assessment methods are coming from different perspectives. First, there is a shift from quantitative to qualitative assessment, as well as a shift in emphasis from indirect to direct assessment, from structured to unstructured assessment, from artificial to natural assessment, from teacher-centered to student-participatory assessment, and from fragmented to integrated task assessment.
Fourth, there is an increase in disclosure and transparency of assessments. Under the school information disclosure system, disclosure of academic achievement is mandatory among the disclosure contents. When assessment results are made public, desirable changes in education can emerge. And when school assessment results are disclosed to the media or community, school members can make efforts to improve themselves, and students and parents can make school choices based on these results. In general, the reasons for not releasing evaluation results are socio-political and can lead to conflict between the parties involved in the evaluation. However, refusing to disclose results can call into question the validity and fairness of the assessment. However, disclosing the results of an evaluation can also increase the credibility of the evaluation, as the fairness and accountability of the evaluation itself can be verified. As such, assessment results affect the development of individuals, institutions, and even societies and nations.

Teacher professionalism and ethics

As the concept of classroom assessment has been emphasized, the issue of enhancing the assessment expertise of teachers in the field has become an important issue. Teacher assessment expertise refers to the ability to collect, interpret, and utilize assessment information about student learning and achievement. In other words, it refers to the core knowledge, skills, and attitudes that teachers must understand and utilize to properly assess students, including the selection, development, implementation, and use of results.
In Korea, the standards for assessment expertise are categorized into content standards and performance standards. The content standards are categorized into knowledge of curriculum, knowledge of teaching and learning, knowledge of educational assessment, and knowledge of curriculum content. The performance criteria included selection of assessment methods, development of assessment tools, conducting, grading, and assigning grades, interpreting, analyzing, utilizing, and communicating assessment results, and ethics in assessment.
In the process of teaching and evaluating students, teachers have a lot of information and data about them. Some of this information and data should be kept to themselves, while others should be shared with other teachers. In particular, teachers need assessment expertise with sound values and thinking systems to fulfill their role as student evaluators. This area of teacher expertise in student assessment is the ethics of assessment.
The specific expertise required in this area is an ethic of respect for students’ dignity that should be embedded in all assessment activities, a legal ethic of minimum standards, an awareness of fairness, and an ethic of self-reflection that allows for reflection on one’s own assessment activities. Assessors need to observe ethics and civility in all activities, including the preparation, contracting, planning, implementation, reporting, and utilization of assessments. They should treat all stakeholders involved in the evaluation process with dignity and respect, recognize their diverse needs, and use appropriate tools and systematic designs to fulfill their professional and scientific responsibilities while trying to avoid negative effects or side effects as much as possible.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that the main function of educational assessment in the past was almost exclusively to categorize and grade students according to their abilities. It was almost as if students were being tested in order to record their grades on a report card or record book.
I believe that this phenomenon is due to the fact that educational assessment has not fulfilled its pretext of judging educational value, but has remained at the level of measurement or testing. Measurement is intended to be a quantitative technique that does not make value judgments about the phenomenon of any event or property. Therefore, it does not require any meaning or behavior beyond that. Evaluation, however, as both the Chinese and English meanings imply, involves a judgment of value, and it inevitably entails some prescription and action based on that judgment.
If the results of an educational assessment cannot be linked back to educational activities in some way, it is not a true educational assessment. The results of educational evaluation are not only meant as praise or warnings to students to work harder, but also as calls for action and measures from the teacher himself. You may need to give extra instruction or assign homework, or if that’s not possible, you may need to ask parents for extra help. If all that is needed is to know the deficiency, then the assessment is of no value.
The results of educational assessments should not only provide corrective information to students, but also be relevant to teachers so that they can identify and correct their teaching practices. If the assessment of your students shows that the majority of them are struggling in a particular area, you should reflect on your teaching. This is because students’ misunderstanding may mean that I am explaining things incorrectly, and their lack of understanding may mean that my explanations are inadequate. In this sense, educational assessment is a constant act of self-reflection and reflection.

Problems with educational assessment

Of all the terms used in our schools today, few are as misunderstood and misinterpreted as the word assessment. It’s hard to deny that assessment is often associated with ritualized testing, and tests are often thought of as paper-and-pencil exams with a certain number of multiple-choice questions, and consequently, for students, it’s a series of number games that don’t even get down to basic statistics, such as the scores and marks that appear on report cards, and for teachers, it’s called grading. As a result, many people view assessment as a necessary evil, or even as something that’s done to give students report cards or to keep track of them in their life records. Furthermore, assessment is often misunderstood by parents as a factor that leads them to have a false view of education and to focus on the education of their children that produces good grades and achievement, or, in extreme cases, as a source of evil that makes it difficult for school sites to operate the curriculum properly or to provide human education.
Of course, there are reasons for this misunderstanding of educational assessment that stem from external factors other than educational assessment, such as our education system that imposes selection and categorization, and a misguided social climate that views assessment as a means of advancing status, but there are also external problems that stem from deficiencies in the system and methodology of assessment in schools. In the end, these factors tend to lead us to have misunderstandings and beliefs about assessment, which in turn affect the actual practice of assessment, further exacerbating the depth of the problems caused by assessment.
To break this vicious cycle, it is important to develop the technical theories and methods of educational assessment, but it is first necessary to correct our misconceptions and beliefs about educational assessment.