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6 references
Andrade argues that instructional rubrics can support teaching and learning, not merely score finished work. A useful rubric identifies important criteria and describes gradations of quality in language students can understand.
When learners examine examples, help articulate criteria, and apply a rubric to their own drafts, expectations become visible and feedback becomes more actionable. The article illustrates a self-assessment process in which students mark evidence in their writing against each criterion and use what they notice to revise. Rubrics therefore promote thinking when they direct attention to quality, support dialogue about standards, and become tools students use during production. Andrade cautions implicitly against treating a rubric as a checklist or grading device alone.
For teachers, the practical sequence is to co-construct or explain criteria, study models, practise applying the rubric, and give students time to revise.
This qualitative study investigates how undergraduates experienced criteria-referenced self-assessment after sustained classroom use. Fourteen students participated in gender-separated focus groups.
Students generally reported positive attitudes once they understood the teacher's expectations and had practised applying explicit criteria. They described using self-assessment to check work, guide revision, improve quality and grades, strengthen motivation, and support learning. Some also noticed tension between their own standards and those communicated by teachers. The research found no clear gender differences in the responses.
Andrade and Du interpret self-assessment as more than assigning oneself a mark: it involves internalising criteria, monitoring work, and regulating subsequent action. For educators, the study suggests that self-assessment becomes credible when criteria are transparent, learners receive repeated guided practice, and the process leads directly to opportunities for revision rather than functioning as an isolated scoring exercise.
Banihashem and colleagues systematically review 93 studies published from 2011 to 2023 to examine how learning analytics supports formative assessment.
Their coding framework combines three actors—teachers, peers, and learners as self-assessors—with three questions: where learning is going, where it is now, and how to move forward. The review finds that analytics can clarify goals, diagnose current understanding, and support feedback or instructional action, but coverage across the framework is uneven. A central concern is alignment: dashboards or predictions are useful only when their outputs connect to a defensible model of formative assessment and can be interpreted and acted upon.
For educators and designers, the study recommends building analytics around learning intentions, evidence elicitation, feedback processes, and concrete decisions rather than treating data visualisation as formative assessment by itself.
Black and Wiliam review research on classroom formative assessment and find consistent evidence that strengthening feedback processes can improve learning. Assessment becomes formative when evidence about understanding is used to adapt teaching and learning, not simply when a task is labelled informal or frequent.
The review examines teacher questioning, feedback, self-assessment, peer processes, mastery learning, and the effects of grades and comparison. Productive feedback helps learners recognise a goal, compare their current state with it, and take action to close the gap. Students' beliefs, motivation, and active role are therefore central. The authors also stress that implementation demands substantial changes in classroom practice.
For educators, the review supports eliciting thinking, interpreting evidence, giving information that guides next steps, and involving students in criteria and self-regulation rather than relying on marks or praise alone.
Boud and Soler revisit sustainable assessment: assessment designed not only to support current coursework but also to develop learners' capacity to meet future learning demands.
Reviewing how the idea evolved over fifteen years, they connect it with formative assessment, self-regulation, feedback, and students' ability to make informed judgements about the quality of their own work. Sustainable practice cannot depend indefinitely on teachers supplying corrective information; learners need opportunities to interpret standards, compare work with criteria, seek and use feedback, and calibrate their decisions. The authors argue that these capacities must be built across a programme rather than attached to isolated tasks.
For educators, the article recommends examining how assessment design contributes to long-term learning, creating repeated opportunities for evaluative judgement, and aligning present requirements with the kinds of decisions students will later make independently.
Brookhart explains rubrics as coherent sets of criteria accompanied by descriptions of performance quality.
Effective criteria represent the learning students should demonstrate, not incidental features of the task, while performance-level descriptions show a meaningful continuum rather than vague labels or point counts. The book distinguishes analytic from holistic rubrics and general from task-specific rubrics, showing how each serves different instructional and grading purposes. It addresses constructing, revising, and using rubrics with students for feedback, self-assessment, goal setting, and grading. Poor rubrics can fragment quality or reward compliance; well-designed ones focus attention on important learning.
For educators, the guidance recommends beginning with the intended learning, selecting observable criteria, describing genuine differences in quality, testing the rubric against student work, and involving learners so the tool supports judgement and improvement instead of merely calculating scores.
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