Classroom-based Assessment in the School Foreign Language Classroom

Book excerpt: Black and Wiliam's (1998) influential article Inside the Black Box prompted an increasing interest in assessment processes within the classroom. However, to date most of this research has been done in general and science education. This book reports on a detailed ethnographic study of Indonesian as a Foreign Language classrooms at two consecutive levels of schooling in Australia. Using the broadest possible definition of classroom-based assessment (CBA) and a grounded approach to analysis, data were used to develop a comprehensive framework for analysing CBA. This framework was then used to describe and compare assessment practices in the respective classrooms. The results demonstrate, inter alia, that how assessment was conducted was as important as what was assessed in these classrooms.