Explicit standard of quality
Ρητό πρότυπο ποιότητας
A description of what a good version looks like, written before you start, in words another person could check you against. Without one, a plan can report that you are behind schedule but never that the work is going the wrong way.
How to spot it
Read your plan and look for one line that could be shown to be wrong. If every line is an hour and a topic, what you are holding is a schedule.
The research behind the term
The term is not our invention. It comes from published research, and what follows is what that research found — our own synthesis of the published abstract, not a translation of the original.
Sadler, D. R. (1989). Formative Assessment and the Design of Instructional Systems — doi:10.1007/bf00117714
What it found
- Formative assessment is examined in terms of its function in developing the student's own ability to judge the quality of their work.
- The aim is the transition from feedback given by the teacher to self-assessment by the student.
- For this to happen, quality standards must be made explicit and conveyed to the student — it is not enough for the assessor to hold them.
- The theory applies to any case where the quality of a response is judged by multiple criteria simultaneously.
How it found it
A theoretical work that analyses the nature and function of formative assessment and derives from it design requirements for instructional systems.
What it means for metacognition
You cannot correct what you cannot judge: self-assessment presupposes that you have internalised the standard of quality, not merely that you have heard the correction.
Practised in
The term does not stay a definition. It appears inside missions where the pattern happens in real time and you have to recognise it as it happens to you.
Fifteen Minutes Before You Start
Sources
Every claim on this page maps to published research. The citations link to the original source.
- Sadler, D. R. (1989). Formative Assessment and the Design of Instructional Systems — doi:10.1007/bf00117714