Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines how educational measurement concepts, both theoretical and practical, function in classroom assessment of student learning, and explores how the classroom assessment context informs and enriches educational measurement science and practice. It describes how classroom performance assessments, embedded in students’ language and learning context, may provide more valid assessments of learning, especially for culturally diverse learners. The book suggests that measures of learning typically ignore the social-emotional context of learning, and that emotional and social factors need to be included in a comprehensive conceptualization of classroom assessment. It argues that grades communicate a multidimensional assessment of school learning and also describes the ‘Gathering Evidence to Support Noticing, Interpretation, and Use’ project, where external developers produced a technology-based feedback system. Sources of error inherent in theoretical descriptions of reliability/precision offer much guidance to teachers to know how to appropriately determine accuracy.