The Future of Educational Assessment: Self-assessment, Grit and ChatGPT?

Self-assessment, one of the key components of classroom assessment and formative assessment, has been defined as the judgement of students about their own learning (Boud & Falchikov, 1989). In the first article in this regular issue, Yang et al. (2023) report on a research study examining the mediating role of academic self-concept in relation to perseverance of effort and self-assessment. 180 students from 58 secondary schools in China’s Guangxi Province were selected to participate in the study, age 12–18 years old. Importantly, these students were recruited through tutoring centres of the 58 schools, and hence, the sample cannot be generalised to the 58 schools. On the other hand, the sample does reflect many schools, which all recruit students with mixed abilities and are such comparable. Tutoring in China is a major activity in after-school activity, and the students tutored are both high and low achievers. Measures of Academic Self-Concept (ASC) and Grit-Perseverance of Effort (Grit-PE) translated and adapted to Chinese, were administrated to students (Datu & Zhang, 2021). The aim of the study was to further integrate three research lines: grit (Duckworth, 2016), academic self-concept (Marsh, 1990; Shavelson et al., 1976) and self-assessment (SA) (Boud, 1992). As predicted by the authors, analysis demonstrated that academic self-concept mediated the relationship between Grit-PE and SA. The authors further point to the importance of conducting replication studies using existing scales in different contexts, and they also call for more rigorous research with more advanced methods than used in the past. Finally, the authors discuss the positive links between academic self-concept and self-assessment, suggesting academic self-concept plays a more salient role in both SA and academic achievement than grit. Future studies are needed in this space, and experimental studies would be much welcomed. In the second article in this regular issue, Yan and King (2023) report from a study examining the social contagion of schoolteachers’ formative assessment practices and self-efficacy. Social contagion has been documented across various domains. However, this phenomenon has not been explored in relation to formative assessment in schools. A sample of 296 teachers from 12 Hong Kong primary and secondary schools participated in this study. All participants completed the same questionnaire twice, one year apart. The longitudinal results showed that formative assessment practices and selfefficacy were socially contagious. When teachers had colleagues who engaged in formative assessment practices and had high self-efficacy, they were more likely to engage in formative assessment and become more efficacious themselves. Also, school-level formative assessment self-efficacy predicted individual-level formative assessment practices demonstrating the importance of collective efficacy. The findings can inform the provision of school support and the design of teacher professional development programmes for promoting formative assessment in schools. ASSESSMENT IN EDUCATION: PRINCIPLES, POLICY & PRACTICE 2023, VOL. 30, NO. 2, 99–103 https://doi.org/10.1080/0969594X.2023.2212192