Exploring Students’ Perceptions of Self‐Assessment: Usefulness and Factors Influencing Implementation

October 25, 2024

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Self-Assessment

Self-assessment is a student-directed process, and students’ perceptions of it are crucial to its implementation and overall effectiveness. While there is a growing body of empirical research examining how students perceive self-assessment, no systematic review on this topic currently exists. Therefore, this review aims to synthesize findings on two key aspects of students’ perceptions of self-assessment: its usefulness and the factors influencing its implementation.

The Definition of Self-Assessment

The authors used past research to define self-assessment as “a wide variety of mechanisms and techniques through which students describe (i.e., assess) and possibly assign merit or worth to (i.e., evaluate) the qualities of their own learning processes and products.”  Self-assessment can happen as an explicit activity (like a self-assessment exercise created by the teacher) or implicitly (spontaneous self-questioning during the learning). This study focuses on explicit self-assessment.

While varied across contexts, research has found that self-assessment has been shown to have medium to large effects on academic performance. While findings are inconsistent, evidence suggests that most students who possessed positive beliefs about self-assessment acclaimed that it helped them gain independence, take responsibility for learning, grow in confidence, work in a structured manner, and be analytical and critical during learning. It has been found that attitude, subjective norms, self-efficacy, and perceived controllability were significant predictors of self-assessment intention and practice. Instructional factors such as the scaffolding of self-assessment practices are widely considered helpful. Class climate (such as the support of peers) is a factor that has been shown to encourage the implementation of self-assessment.

Student View on Self-Assessment

The authors conducted a literature review that consisted of 44 total studies found in the ERIC and PsycINFO databases. Four inclusion criteria were used in the screening and selection of studies, including (1) the study examined students’ perceptions of self-assessment; (2) it presented empirical results; (3) it was published in a peer-reviewed journal; and (4) it was written in English. The authors had four research questions. 

1. What are the characteristics of studies on students’ perceptions of self-assessment?

• Findings: The studies were conducted in a total of 22 countries. The most frequently used methods for collecting data were surveys, interviews, and focus groups. 

2. How do students perceive the usefulness of self-assessment?

• Findings: A consistent finding in many studies is that students report that self-assessment helps them understand their abilities/performance, identify their weaknesses or missing pieces in their learning, and inform the direction of the subsequent learning. Some studies indicate that students harbor suspicions or negative perceptions regarding self-assessment, especially when it is not accompanied by external feedback. The authors felt some of the findings were inconclusive. Studies showed a variety of opinions from students ranging from positive perceptions, neutral, to negative perceptions. 

3. What factors affect students’ perceived usefulness of self-assessment?

• Findings: Factors were split into two categories: individual factors and self-assessment design factors. Individual factors included gender, age, and educational level. Age was the most notable factor where 10th-12th graders found self-assessment more useful than 6th-9th graders and 4th-year university students had more positive perceptions of self-assessment than 1st and 2nd-year university students. Self-assessment was found to be less useful to primary-aged students. Design factors including the use of external teacher feedback and self-assessment tools were seen as useful and favorable by students. The authors noted that age (older students) seemed to view self-assessment more favorably and that external feedback from the teacher was a crucial factor for students perceiving self-assessment as effective. 

4. What factors affect students’ implementation of self-assessment?

• Findings: Factors were categorized into two different groups: individual and instructional factors. Individual factors included: perceived usefulness, affective attitude, self-efficacy, important others, and psychological safety. Instructional factors included: practice and training, external feedback, use of instruments, and environmental support.The authors emphasized that establishing a psychologically safe environment is crucial for students to engage in self-assessment. They also noted that students require practice, instruction, and scaffolding to effectively complete self-assessment activities, ensuring that these activities are genuinely useful.

A key takeaway for the authors was that given the importance of self-assessment for student learning in K-12 contexts, and the fact that students’ perceptions about assessment influence their learning behaviors and the effects of assessment more studies are needed to explore K-12 students’ perceptions of self-assessment and how to embed it into K-12 curriculum.

Notable Quotes: 

“Practice and training can indirectly impact self-assessment implementation by altering students’ attitudes towards or self efficacy of self assessment.”

“Self-assessment with external feedback, mainly from teachers, was perceived to be more valuable by students”

“There are inconclusive findings regarding students’ perceptions of the usefulness of self-assessment in facilitating their learning”

Personal Takeaway: 

The two takeaways I found from this paper were that explicit instruction and modeling of self-assessment practices along with teacher feedback are critical in order for students to benefit from self-assessment activities. It was also interesting that younger students generally did not find self-assessment as useful as older students. It would be interesting to see more research about self-assessment in the elementary grades.—Matt Browne

Yan, Z., Panadero, E., Wang, X., & Zhan, Y. (2023). A systematic review on students’ perceptions of self-assessment: usefulness and factors influencing implementation. Educational Psychology Review, 35(3), 81.