Participatory Assessment: Designing a Learner-driven Test

Assessment, evaluation, and tests are contested terms in education, where different definitions have been attempted without any achieving consensus. This is possibly one of the reasons why the topic remains interesting and current for teachers whose different views and practices have given rise to innovative approaches where the judgement of learners’ performance is much fairer, equitable, and reliable. In this article, assessment is seen as a cycle where evaluations and tests are set up at a particular moment to elicit a behaviour or a performance to measure learners’ knowledge, competencies, and skills against a benchmark (Green, 2014). The assessment/test distinction is of no minor importance: the meaning of assessment is more encompassing as it highlights its dynamic nature, characterised by continuity and iteration, allowing for reflection and growth (Fulcher & Davidson, 2007). Assessment is a continuous process where the boundaries between a start and a finish stage are not always clear-cut. Therefore, it becomes necessary to acknowledge that it is impossible to separate assessment from learning since they are complementary and cumulative. Additionally, assessment involves reflection, which is a crucial element of learning, mainly when the punitive part, traditionally associated with the judgement of an assessor based on grades and scores, is removed. The purpose of this article is to argue for the benefits of a participatory approach when designing assessment tasks involving the voice of the learners. This stance follows the premises of dialogic teaching (Alexander, 2008), claiming that learning emerges from the interactions between teachers and learners where participation involves self-determination, exercised by promoting learner agency. As it happens in dialogue, learners and teachers actively engage in conversations and agree on criteria to determine performance as levels of success, with feedback used developmentally for learners to produce an action plan to improve their language performance.