David Carless

The University of Hong Kong | HKU · Faculty of Education

This paper proposes a model of learning-oriented assessment to inform assessment theory and practice. The model focuses on three interrelated processes: the assessment tasks which students undertake; students' development of self-evaluative capacities; and student engagement with feedback. These three strands are explored through the analysis of as...

Feedback is central to the development of student learning, but within the constraints of modularized learning in higher education it is increasingly difficult to handle effectively. This article makes a case for sustainable feedback as a contribution to the reconceptualization of feedback processes. The data derive from the Student Assessment and...

This paper puts forward the case that one of the factors constraining principled learning-oriented assessment practices is lack of trust. It examines a number of assessment dimensions in which trust or distrust plays a role. These issues are illustrated via a discussion of two different iterations of the same module taught in a teacher education in...

A significant and somewhat under-exploited aspect of feedback literacy research lies in students’ feedback-seeking behaviors. This research charts progress in oral feedback seeking by means of a three-year longitudinal inquiry focused on the feedback literacy development of an undergraduate co-author. The study is framed through sociocultural learn...

Feedback processes are crucial in doctoral supervision but require adaptation to meet the changing nature of the doctorate, and increasing impetus to publish during the candidature. This study builds on concepts of authentic feedback and feedback literacy to chart possibilities for the development of feedback socialization in doctoral education. Se...

Feedback seeking in the organisational field has attracted sustained attention but seems relatively under-exploited in higher education. This scoping review aims to synthesize empirical research on feedback seeking in undergraduate education to develop a comprehensive understanding of students’ feedback seeking strategies and motivations, and relat...

This paper discusses teacher capacities for implementing learning-focused feedback processes within the social contexts of feedback regimes. Data are derived from longitudinal interviews carried out with six recipients of an award for good feedback practice; supplemented by documentary analysis of feedback artefacts; and an interview with the key i...

Research on student and teacher feedback literacies is currently a flourishing sub-field of higher education, as scholars seek to address the durable and dissatisfying dilemmas that feedback processes represent. To date, however, higher education scholarship has been dominated by cognitive and humanist conceptions of feedback literacies, with the f...

Systemic challenges for feedback practice are widely discussed in the research literature. The expanding mass higher education systems, for instance, seem to inhibit regular and sustained teacher-student interactions. The concept of feedback literacy, representing students’ and teachers’ capacities to optimize the benefits of feedback opportunities...

Feedback is a powerful tool for improvement of student learning, yet complex to implement effectively. Feedback involves processes in which learners make use of performance-related inputs to enhance their work or learning strategies. New paradigm feedback practices place learners at the centre of feedback processes and emphasize student generation...

Feedback literacy is an important graduate attribute that supports students’ future work capacities. This study aimed to develop a framework through which discipline-specific feedback literacies, as a set of socially situated skills, can be developed within core curricula. The framework is developed through a content analysis of National Qualificat...

The analysis of exemplars of different quality is a potentially powerful tool in enabling students to understand assessment expectations and appreciate academic standards. Through a systematic review methodology, this paper synthesises exemplar-based research designs, exemplar implementation and the educational effects of exemplars. The review of 4...

Both student feedback literacy and self-assessment are crucial for developing self-regulated and lifelong learning in higher education. The relationship between these two concepts is important but as yet understudied. Using self-assessment to develop students' feedback literacy has been mentioned in relevant literature, but how feedback literacy ca...

Without teacher and student feedback literacy, it is difficult for feedback processes to fulfil their potential. Feedback literacy development within the arts or humanities is, however, under-researched. The current study fills this gap by illustrating how educators in the performative creative arts designed signature feedback practices to facilita...

In education systems across the world, teachers are under increasing quality assurance scrutiny in relation to the provision of feedback comments to students. This is particularly pertinent in higher education, where accountability arising from student dissatisfaction with feedback causes concern for institutions. Through semi-structured interviews...

Participatory approaches are receiving renewed attention in the ‘students as partners’ (SaP) and ‘feedback’ discourse communities, respectively. SaP scholars tend to focus on pedagogy (pedagogical partnerships) and curriculum (co-creation). Assessment and feedback, as connective and relational practices that bridge these two domains, receive less e...

Feedback processes are situated within the norms and practices of disciplinary learning activities. Through a sociocultural lens, this study seeks to understand disciplinary feedback possibilities and challenges through a study of four different disciplines at a research-intensive English medium university. Two soft applied and two hard applied dis...

Academics nowadays are increasingly expected to implement high-quality teaching, what is frequently referred to as 'excellent teaching'. Understandings of academics' conceptions of excellent teaching are, however, limited, despite extensive research on different aspects of quality teaching. To address this gap, there is a need to expand the somewha...

For feedback processes to be effective, they need to involve students actively in generating, processing and responding to feedback information. Teacher transmission approaches are unlikely to provide a good investment of time and resources because they fail to draw sufficiently on student agency. In this conceptual article, it is argued that stude...

Exemplars are samples which illustrate dimensions of quality and enable students to understand assessment expectations. The theoretical basis for using exemplars lies principally in social constructivist approaches to assessment and the notion of tacit knowledge. Through a constructivist grounded theory methodology, this paper theorises how twelve...

Feedback processes are difficult to manage, and the accumulated frustrations of teachers and students inhibit the learning potential of feedback. In this conceptual paper, challenges to the development of effective feedback processes are reviewed and a new framework for teacher feedback literacy is proposed. The framework comprises three dimensions...

How can learners be supported to engage productively in the kinds of feedback practices they may encounter after they graduate? This article introduces a novel concept of authentic feedback to denote processes which resemble the feedback practices of the discipline, profession or workplace. Drawing on the notion of authentic assessment, a framework...

Recent feedback literature suggests that the development of student feedback literacy has potential to address problems in current feedback practice. Students’ feedback literacy involves developing the capacity to make the most of feedback opportunities by active involvement in feedback processes. How the development of student feedback literacy ca...

How students react to and use feedback is an important element of their higher education experience. Within the constraints of mass higher education, effective feedback processes are, however, difficult to manage. The aim of this longitudinal qualitative inquiry is to investigate through repeated interviews and related documentary analysis how four...

The main focus of this chapter is to analyse implications for short-term and long-term impacts of feedback by drawing on a qualitative longitudinal inquiry into four learners’ experiences of feedback during a five-year undergraduate programme. The student experience of feedback is conceptualized by a 3P model comprising presage, process and product...

A key challenge for feedback practice involves promoting student uptake through the closing of feedback loops. This paper investigates feedback loops by using the concepts of single and double-loop learning to interrogate student responses to feedback. Single-loop learning tackles an identified problem or task, whereas double-loop learning addition...

Student feedback literacy denotes the understandings, capacities and dispositions needed to make sense of information and use it to enhance work or learning strategies. In this conceptual paper, student responses to feedback are reviewed and a number of barriers to student uptake of feedback are discussed. Four inter-related features are proposed a...

Peer feedback carries a number of potential benefits to students, yet how they learn in the process remains under-researched. Building on ideas of feedback as dialogue, this study aims to unpack the respective perceptions of the provider and the receiver of peer feedback in relation to the benefits and challenges of dialogue about academic writing....

Exemplars or samples of student work are potentially powerful in enabling students to develop a deeper understanding of what good work looks like. A key aim of exposing students to exemplars is to help them appreciate the nature of quality which they can subsequently apply to their own work. The essence of constructive use of exemplars is that stud...

This chapter is based on 90 individual semi-structured interviews asking students about their experiences of assessment for learning in five disciplines: architecture, business, geology, history and law. Four features of assessment valued by students are discussed: assessment mirroring real-life uses of the discipline, flexibility and choice, devel...

A definition of assessment for learning (AfL) is provided. From a synthesis of relevant literature, I outline four main AfL strategies: productive assessment task design, effective feedback processes, the development of student understanding of quality and activities where students make judgments. I explore the notion of scaling up in relation to s...

A critical issue in higher education is the effective implementation of assessment with the core purpose of promoting productive student learning. This edited collection provides a state-of-the-art discussion of recent, cutting-edge work into assessment for learning in higher education. It introduces a new theme of scaling up, which will be welcome...

Student beliefs about assessment and technology play an important role in deploying technology-enabled assessments. Using eportfolios to develop and assess the achievement of curricular outcomes is a global trend, yet little research has investigated student technology and assessment perceptions around eportfolios. This paper examines the interacti...

Feedback is an important but challenging aspect of higher education pedagogy. In addition to providing quality feedback, teachers are expected to develop students’ skills and awareness for effective feedback processes. This case study addresses both processes and products of a Chinese university English teacher’s feedback enabling practice by invol...

The analysis of exemplars is a potentially powerful way of acquainting students with academic standards and supporting their capacities to make informed academic judgements. This paper investigates the role of dialogue in supporting students to develop their appreciation of the nature of quality work. The research derives from a project involving n...

Feedback can be an important catalyst for improvement. Helpful comments which enable students to see issues from fresh perspectives are central in supporting the ongoing development of work in progress. In mass higher education, there is a variety of evidence from different contexts that students and teachers have misgivings about the ways in which...

This paper is focused on an innovation which involved students being assessed on short written responses to an issue to be addressed in the following classroom session. The innovation was evaluated through a student survey, individual and focus-group interviews with participants, and the analysis of a critical friend. Positive findings included pro...

Discussion of exemplars of student work is a productive means of explaining tacit knowledge and guiding students into the requirements of academic writing. Through two cycles of action research in a post-secondary institution in Hong Kong, this study examines how exemplars can be used to enhance student understanding of quality and to promote posit...

Competitive examinations originated in China during the Han dynasty, and have a powerful residual influence on how assessment is approached in contemporary Confucian-heritage contexts. In this chapter we review key issues in the relationship between assessment and productive student learning in examination-oriented settings. We use examples from re...

Whilst there are studies exploring students' perspectives of assessment, relatively little is known about how Chinese high school students' respond to assessment. Students' perspectives are particularly important because the power of assessment directly impacts on their motivation and attitudes towards schooling. This article explores students' vie...

This article explores some of the main barriers to the enhancement of feedback processes and proposes a framework for using dialogic feedback to foster productive student learning in the discipline. The framework suggests a feedback triangle focused on the content of feedback (cognitive dimension), the interpersonal negotiation of feedback (social-...

This final chapter builds on issues which have been discussed implicitly or explicitly within the volume. I address five themes: research methodology; contextual adaptations; TBLT in Chinese contexts; assessment; and teacher education. I conclude by speculating on some possible future directions for TBLT and some avenues for further research.

The study of innovation in language education began to generate particular interest only from the 1980s onwards, with important early contributions including Kennedy (1988) from a UK perspective and Henrichsen (1989) from a US one. Keywords: intercultural communication; language teaching; evaluation

Students have a wide experience of being tested, but their perceptions of assessment are comparatively under-explored. This paper illuminates the perspectives on assessment of a sample of lower primary school students in Hong Kong. It uses focus group interviews and draw-a-picture technique to elicit their views. The main findings are that assessme...

This article reviews the prospects for classroom assessment in schools in Hong Kong with respect to both policy and implementation perspectives. Classroom assessment in primary schools is discussed in relation to the target-oriented curriculum and more recent emphases on learning to learn and assessment for learning. Developments in secondary schoo...

Research evidence indicates that formative assessment is one of the most effective ways of enhancing student learning. it is, however, difficult to implement successfully, principally because what is tested through summative assessment has such a powerful influence on teacher and student actions. This book scrutinizes the relationship between testi...

Communicative and task-based teaching hold central places in contemporary language pedagogy, yet their feasibility as pedagogic innovations in Chinese contexts remains open to question. Examinations are generally perceived as a particular factor militating against the implementation of communicative approaches. This study uses four case studies of...

The literature suggests that peer assessment contributes to the development of student learning and promotes ownership of assessment processes. These claims emerge from research conducted primarily in Western contexts. This exploratory paper reports on the perspectives that a class of Hong Kong primary school students and their teachers have on the...

Whilst there is a body of research evidence on task-based language teaching (TBLT) with adults, less is known about its suitability for implementation in secondary schools, particularly in Asian contexts. This study uses interview data from a purposive sample of 12 secondary school teachers and 10 teacher educators based in the Hong Kong context, a...

This paper analyses the extent of communicative activities in a Year Four primary school class in Guangdong, where a national task-based innovation has been mandated. The framework guiding the study uses a continuum of communi-cativeness of activities, developed by Littlewood. The research methods comprised 12 classroom observations and 17 intervie...

Task-based teaching has a high profile within contemporary ELT, yet there are few analyses of the appropriateness of task-based approaches for school contexts. This paper aims to analyse the suitability of task-based teaching for Hong Kong secondary schools; and to derive some suggestions for the development of a version of task-based approaches fe...

This article draws on an interview study with teachers and teacher educators on the topic of the feasibility of task-based teaching for implementation in schools. It focuses on a single theme from the study: student use of the mother tongue. A number of dimensions are addressed: the extent of classroom interaction in English in the context under re...

This paper seeks to unpack some dimensions of formative assessment not yet fully articulated in the existing literature. It introduces the term, pre‐emptive formative assessment to denote teacher actions which attempt to clarify student understandings before misconceptions have resulted in ineffective learning outcomes and/or loss of marks in assig...

This paper focuses on the potential of the learning aspects of assessment. The term 'learning-oriented assessment' is introduced and three elements of it are elaborated: assessment tasks as learning tasks; student involvement in assessment as peer- or self-evaluators; and feedback as feedforward. I also indicate how learning-oriented assessment was...

This paper focuses on collaboration between native-speaking English teachers (NETs) and local English teachers (LETs) in Hong Kong secondary schools. It examines some of the strengths and weaknesses of NETs and LETs documented in the international literature. It reviews, in various contexts, schemes where team teaching has been carried out. Using c...

This chapter presents thirty-nine separate assessment techniques, selected following a series of reviews of the sixty-four techniques submitted for consideration. Each technique is set out in a structured way to allow easy reading, and includes procedures, student comments, and suggestions for how the technique can be used in different contexts. Ea...

This chapter draws out some of the wider implications of the framework and the practices and examines some of the progress which has been made within the theme of assessment change. It examines some inhibiting factors impeding the rejuvenation of assessment processes and suggests some strategies for tackling these challenges.

How Assessment Supports Learning: Learning-oriented Assessment in Action invites teachers in higher education to rethink the purposes of assessment and to revise their assessment practices in the interests of improved student learning. It combines practice, theory, research and extensive examples of assessment techniques to support academics in thi...

This paper discusses an innovative programme of collaborative EFL teaching in Hong Kong primary schools, involving team-teaching shared between imported native-speaking English teachers and their local counterparts. First it analyses the way in which the scheme has evolved from previous experiences. The paper then draws on an open-ended questionnai...

Team teaching between native English speaking teachers and local L2 English teachers has become an increasingly common phenomenon in schooling in the East Asia region. The relevant literature reports some positive impacts of team teaching and also highlights some of the challenges or conflicts which arise. The aim of this paper is to focus on repor...

This paper focuses on reconfiguring assessment processes so that they support a learning function, in addition to the more traditional measurement function. In the first half of the paper we discuss a framework for 'learning-oriented assessment' derived from a project carried out in Hong Kong. We conceptualize learning-oriented assessment as contai...

This paper focuses on peer feedback in relation to assessment processes. It examines the rationale for peer feedback, emphasizing its potential for enhanced student learning. We draw on relevant literature to argue that the dominance of peer assessment processes using grades can undermine the potential of peer feedback for improving student learnin...

Taylor and Francis Ltd CSHE_A_157196.sgm 10.1080/03075070600572132 Studies in Higher Education 0307-5079 (print)/1470-174X (online) Original Article 2006 Society for Research into Higher Education 31 2 000000April 2006 DavidCarless Faculty of EducationUniversity of Hong KongPokfulamHong Kongdcarless@hkucc.hku.hk Feedback is central to the developme...

This assessment technique focuses on facilitating prompt verbal dialogue and feedback related to a completed assignment. The form of the discussion is a mini-viva or tutorial where students and tutor engage in a reflective discussion of a completed assignment before a mark is awarded.

Students analyse the assessment criteria for their assignment by carrying out a short in-class activity in which they summarize the key points in the criteria. Building on this activity, students are required to submit (as part of their assignment), their own self-assessment checklist. This process both makes the criteria more meaningful to student...

This technique seeks to engage students actively through an authentic task, namely the design of a web site for educational purposes. Through this project, students are involved in peer learning, collaborative decision-making and problem-solving. The role of the lecturer is to provide relevant input, act as a 'cognitive coach' or mentor and provide...

This paper analyses aspects of a Hong Kong school curriculum reform, which recommends amongst other things, a greater focus on assessment for learning. It outlines the principles of the reform as it pertains to assessment and discusses how structural changes are being employed to lend support to changes in the assessment culture in Hong Kong. The p...

Although task-based teaching is frequently practiced in contemporary English language teaching, it is underresearched in state school settings. This article contributes to filling this gap in the literature by using qualitative case study data to explore how a task-based innovation was implemented in three primary school classrooms in Hong Kong. An...