A Study On Classroom Assessment That Enhance Teacher Learning:Based On The Practical Investigation On Hong Kong Lessons

Assessment should benefit instruction, with the ultimate goal of promoting learning and improving teaching. Students' learning progress can be reflected at different stages of a lesson. If teachers want to know students' progress so as to adjust teaching strategies aiming to foster learning, they need to review students' learning from different perspectives by means of progressive assessment, that is, to cater for students' needs when planning the object of learning for the lesson; to try to figure out their ways of teaching to benefit students' learning in the teaching process; to benefit teaching and learning when summarizing experience in overall reflection. This research discussed the meaning of learning, teaching and assessment from different academic ideologies as well as overseas and local studies. Results shows that progressive assessment can really promote learning, however, most of the studies lack a systematic way of practice. Through investigating mainstream assessments reflected from schools in Hong Kong at present and criticizing the development of mainstream learning theories as well as the application of experience, this study adopted the philosophy of phenomenography to trace the origin of the nature of knowledge, and analyze the relationship between teaching and learning from the learning phenomenon by using a learning theory, namely the "Variation Theory", which was developed from phenomenography. This study agreed that the "Variation Theory", as a solid foundation for teaching and learning, is worth being used to conduct empirical research on teaching practice from the perspective of assessment. This study also discussed how assessment generated positive impact on instruction through the practice mode of Learning study and the "Variation Theory" as the theoretical framework. When making assessment, the four levels that were applied for reviewing the learning progress were addressed:1) assess students' different views on the object of learning as the teaching focus to explore the starting point of learning and students' learning difficulties;2) assess the influence of the interaction of various factors in the classroom on teaching and learning, paying attention on the details of the interaction among teachers and students to try to figure out the strategies for teaching and adjusting teaching to benefit learning;3) assess students' learning process and outcome as well as focus on students' learning experience in order to help teachers improve instruction;4) to benefit another round of teaching and learning when summarizing experience in overall reflection。In view of these arguments, this paper suggested that the key to the implementation of assessment for ensuring quality teaching and learning depends on whether teachers can make appropriate assessment in classroom practice and reflect on their own teaching in order to understand students' needs. Enhancing teachers' teaching ability should begin from classroom practice. Assessment can be used as a means to reflect on teachers' own teaching so that they can review their own strengths and weaknesses systematically and, in the long run, improving their professional teaching skills. Finally, this paper concluded that raising teachers' awareness on classroom assessment is the most pragmatic and effective training for teachers' professional development. Only teachers who keep on making assessment to reflect on their own teaching in classroom can build a solid foundation for the long-term development of education, which in turns resulting in the strengthening of the education circle.