The Grading Podcast 123 - Discovering Your Teacher Assessment Identity
In this episode, Sharona and Boz dive into a concept new to many educators — Teacher Assessment Identity — and explore how teachers’ beliefs, experiences, and professional contexts shape the way they design, interpret, and use assessments.
Sharona introduces the idea after hearing about new research connecting assessment practices to teacher identity, and then leads Boz through a live, on-air reflective interview designed to help him uncover his own “assessment identity.” Together, they model how teachers can ask deep reflective questions about the why behind their assessment choices — revealing that grading and assessment reform are inseparable parts of the same professional journey.
What follows is part self-assessment, part coaching session, and part exploration of how personal, disciplinary, and institutional identities influence assessment ethics, feedback, and student learning.
Links
Please note - any books linked here are likely Amazon Associates links. Clicking on them and purchasing through them helps support the show. Thanks for your support!
- How does assessment shape student identities? An integrative review
- Assess That Podcast - Episode 20
- Evidence of teacher assessment work and its relationship to their assessment identity
- Challenging Assumptions: AI and Teacher Assessment Identity Formation
- Beyond the gradebook: embracing the potentials of teacher assessment identity (TAI) in (re)shaping English language professors’ professional development and success in higher education
- Teacher assessment literacy in practice: A reconceptualization
- Reconceptualising the role of teachers as assessors: teacher assessment identity
Resources
The Center for Grading Reform - seeking to advance education in the United States by supporting effective grading reform at all levels through conferences, educational workshops, professional development, research and scholarship, influencing public policy, and community building.
The Grading Conference - an annual, online conference exploring Alternative Grading in Higher Education & K-12.
Some great resources to educate yourself about Alternative Grading:
Recommended Books on Alternative Grading:
- Grading for Growth, by Robert Talbert and David Clark
- Specifications Grading, by Linda Nilsen
- Undoing the Grade, by Jesse Stommel
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All content of this podcast and website are solely the opinions of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily represent the views of California State University Los Angeles or the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Music
Country Rock performed by Lite Saturation, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.