Self-Assessment in Elementary School with a Tablet-Computer-Based Tool: A Chance for Fairer Educational Assessment?

Student self-assessment (SSA) is beneficial for students’ learning and achievement through processes of self-regulation. Furthermore, SSA is a valuable feedback for the teachers on students’ perceptions of their competencies. SSA can complete teachers’ view on and judgment about the students’ competencies and it can help teachers to adapt teaching and learning activities to better meet the needs of the students. Knowing that teachers’ assessments can be biased regarding students’ ethnic or immigration background, students’ SAs might be an important complementary source of information that increases fairness in educational assessment. Despite its proven benefits, the implementation of self-assessment (SA) in elementary school classrooms is limited, most probably due to the skepticism towards learners’ SA accuracy at all ages, but even more so when students are younger.
The objective of the present dissertation was to capture students’ SAs of key academic competencies with an innovative tool—a tablet-computer-based SA-tool—, and to make it visible to teachers by giving them feedback on their students’ SAs. The dissertation is based on three empirical studies. In the first study, we investigated, whether third- and fourth-graders have the ability to assess key academic competencies (mathematics, German reading comprehension) with acceptable accuracy, when provided with an innovative tablet-computer-based tool that was designed respecting the requirements that facilitate SA for that age group. The second study concentrated on the domain of mathematics. We investigated how mathematics self-efficacy, the construct measured with the tool, relates to other competence beliefs such as mathematics self-concept and general academic self-concept and covariates (standardized tests in mathematics, reading comprehension, listening, comprehension; general academic and mathematics interest; general academic and mathematics anxiety; and gender). In the third study, we investigated whether feedbacks on students’ SAs and achievement test results (from Luxembourg school monitoring) are valuable information for teachers that they would triangulate with their own assessments. We hypothesized that the information captured via SSA and achievement test would trigger critical reflection in teachers, and offer them feedback on the appropriateness of their assessments (unbiased versus biased treatment) and thus make educational assessment fairer. The findings of the three studies contribute to answer the questions of how SA can be implemented in the classroom (Grades 3 and 4) in a way that it becomes meaningful to students and teachers, and whether SSA in the classroom is a chance for fairer educational assessment.
Based on the results of Studies 1 and 2, we conclude that with an appropriate SA-tool, displaying self-efficacy items on task level on tablet-computer, third- and fourth-graders were able to assess key academic competencies with acceptable accuracy and thus to give valuable information to the teachers. Based on the results of Study 3, we conclude that teachers were able to triangulate the information from students’ SAs with their own assessments and with external achievement test results. Indeed, SSA in the classroom can be a chance for fairer educational assessment.