Literacy Assessment: A Collection of Articles from the Australian Literacy Educators' Association

Editor:
Heather Fehring

In the last 10 years, the world has witnessed a massive change to the nature of what it means to be literate. Educators of English must ask themselves challenging questions, such as how can we effectively assess students’ literacies, and how can we ensure that the assessment process empowers individuals? Although there are many stakeholders to consider as educators perform and report on literacy assessments—students, parents, colleagues, and government, to name a few—teachers must make informed, consistent judgments regarding students’ literacy achievement.

This volume presents articles published by the Australian Literacy Educators’ Association (ALEA) between 1992 and 2002. Editor Heather Fehring has chosen 19 articles that present diverse viewpoints related to literacy assessment and reporting practices. The articles, which encompass a range of grade levels from elementary school to high school, explore literacy assessment from a theoretical perspective, report on applicable research studies, discuss the implications of standards and benchmarking, and demonstrate practical classroom implementation of assessment and reporting techniques.

Literacy Assessment provides a rich resource of perspectives on the topic of literacy assessment, but more important, it stresses the importance of teacher judgment in relation to literacy assessment and reporting. This collection will give you the knowledge to make informed judgments about the literacy assessments and reporting practices in your own classroom.

Heather Fehring is Associate Professor in Literacy Assessment at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia.