The Development of Students' Assessment Literacies as They Transition to University: An Exploratory Case Study

Abstract

Changes in academic demands, expectations, and ways of demonstrating knowledge through assessments are among the challenges faced by students transitioning to university. There is transition research in the Canadian context, but little documenting students' experiences with assessment, or how they develop their assessment literacies (e.g., understanding assessment in the course context and how assessment information is used to monitor and improve learning). This research examined how first-year university students' experiences with, knowledge of, and expectations about assessment impacted the development of their assessment literacies as they transitioned to university. The exploratory case study was theoretically framed by social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1977a(Bandura, , 1986 and reflexivity (e.g., Ryan, 2015;Schön, 1983Schön, , 1987. Three data sources were collected from ten first-year student participants: course assessment documents that triangulated students' responses from two semi-structured interviews and students' assessment journal entries. These data were coded using Saldaña's (2016) structural, emotion, and values coding. Course assessment documents were compared and considered in order to understand how students receive, make sense of, and use feedback.Hattie and Timperley (2007) pointed out that feedback that is controlling, negative, or uninformative can negatively impact motivation and self-regulation by reducing students' autonomy and self-efficacy. Black and Wiliam (1998a) believed in the importance of open and clear communication between teachers and students to aid in the understanding and uptake of formative feedback and feed-forward: "…dialogue between pupils and a teacher should be thoughtful, reflective, focused to evoke and explore understanding, and conducted so that all pupils have an opportunity to think and to express their ideas" (p. 86).Hyland and Hyland ( 2001) noted the important interpersonal aspects involved in the communication of feedback and there is a growing trend in the feedback literature that emphasizes students' role in the feedback process, making it a cycle of communication and action between teachers and students as opposed to a one-way, single communication of information that starts with teachers and ends with students (e.g., Boud & Molloy, 2013;Molloy & Boud, 2014). This shift in focus to the role of students and indeed, including students, was also seen above in relation to student-centred learning and building students' autonomy. However, this shift seems to have occurred in theory only in many instances since the majority of exchanges in assessment and feedback occur between teachers and students, with a significant power imbalance and often one-way, single communications (e.g., Boud & Molloy, 2013;Molloy & Boud, 2014). In the context of feedback on written work, Hyland and Hyland (2001) observed that feedback not only communicates teacher reactions to and advice on student work, but it also communicates a teacher's stance and beliefs about writing.