Student Conceptions of Assessment: Regulatory Responses to Our Practices

 

Purpose:

Universities  assess and evaluate students concerning competence in essential  disciplinary knowledge and skills. Those assessments impact learners’  attitudes, beliefs, and emotions. Negative impacts may be overcome if  students regulate their responses to assessment and feedback.

Design/Approach/Methods:

This  article systematically locates research studies that cite three key  early papers around student conceptions of assessment (SCoA). A  narrative synthesis is based on 22 papers.

Findings:

In  addition to the SCoA, 11 different research inventories reveal a  variety of regulatory responses that are enhanced when assessments are  deliberately formative, fair, and trustworthy. There is broad interest  in this phenomenon but little consistency in methods, and even the SCoA  has little consistency in factor structure across jurisdictions. Only  one study provided an objective behavioral measure to validate  self-reports, which are the dominant form of research.

Originality/Value:

This  review gives readers insights into how assessment influences student  thinking and how student cognition can regulate success.