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Self-Assessment

Self-assessment activities help students to be a realistic judge of their own performance and to improve their work. 

Why Use Self-Assessment? 

• Promotes the skills of reflective practice and self-monitoring. 
• Promotes academic integrity through student self-reporting of learning progress. 
• Develops self-directed learning. 
• Increases student motivation. 
• Helps students develop a range of personal, transferrable skills. 

Considerations for Using Self-Assessment 

• The difference between self-assessment and self-grading will need clarification. 
• The process of effective self-assessment will require instruction and sufficient time for students to learn. 
• Students are used to a system where they have little or no input in how they are assessed and are often unaware of assessment criteria. 
• Students will want to know how much self-assessed assignments will count toward their final grade in the course. 
• Incorporating self-assessment can motivate students to engage with the material more deeply. 
• Self-assessment assignments can take more time. 
• Research shows that students can be more stringent in their self-assessment than the instructor. 

Getting Started with Self-Assessment 

• Identify which assignments and criteria are to be assessed. 
• Articulate expectations and clear criteria for the task. This can be accomplished with a  rubric . You may also ask students to complete a checklist before turning in an assignment. 
• Motivate students by framing the assignment as an opportunity to reflect objectively on their work, determine how this work aligns with the assignment criteria, and determine ways for improvement. 
• Provide an opportunity for students to agree upon and take ownership of the assessment criteria. 
• Draw attention to the inner dialogue that people engage in as they produce a piece of work. You can model this by talking out loud as you solve a problem, or by explaining the types of decisions you had to think about and make as you moved along through a project. 
• Consider using an “exam wrapper” or “assignment wrapper.” These short worksheets ask students to reflect on their performance on the exam or assignment, how they studied or prepared, and what they might do differently in the future. Examples of exam and homework wrappers can be found through Carnegie Mellon University’s Eberly Center. 

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Your complete guide to self-assessments (with examples)

Bettering yourself — and your organization — starts with a look inward.

Especially in today’s labor market, employers are looking for ways to optimize employee performance. Some companies have pressed pause on hiring while others have forfeited to layoffs .

No matter where your organization falls on the hiring spectrum, employers everywhere can agree: it’s time to make sure employees are tapping into their full potential. The success of your organization depends on it.  

At some point in everyone’s career, they'll likely have to participate in a performance evaluation.

In this post, we’ll talk about the benefits of self-assessments for both employers and employees. We’ll also give you some self-assessment examples to start using today. Plus, you’ll learn some best practices to help conduct effective and impactful self-assessments at your organization.

What is a self-assessment?

Typically, a performance evaluation, otherwise known as a self-assessment or performance review , begins with a series of notes from your employer or employers on how you have conducted yourself at work. They typically end with a self-assessment, where you share how much progress you believe you have made during a certain amount of time on the job.

8 benefits of self-evaluations for managers and employees

There are a number of reasons why self-assessments are a useful tool for both managers and employees. 

On its face, self-assessments can seem like a performance management tool to keep employees on track. But it isn’t just a tool to keep employees on track to meet organizational goals. It helps employees grow, develop, and ultimately reach their full potential. 

Here are some of the benefits self-evaluations offer employees and employers:

For managers 

For managers or employers, self-assessments can be a useful tool that comes with a range of benefits. Here are four benefits of self-evaluations for managers. 

• Improved performance. But research tells us that self-assessments have a positive impact on personal and professional growth. In fact, one study found that implementing self-assessments drastically improved performance and self-directed learning skills. 
• Increased employee engagement. Managers have an incredible influence over the employee experience. A Gallup study found that managers can account for up to 70% of the variance in employee engagement . A self-assessment can be the entry point to open, clear, and transparent communication between manager and employee. When employees know what’s expected of them and what they need to work on, it can increase employee engagement .  
• Improved decision-making skills . Managers, you have to deeply know your employees’ strengths and areas of opportunity. When you’re managing a team, it’s critical to know when (and where) certain employees need to jump into a priority. Especially in a fast-changing world of work , the decisions that managers are making are increasing. But with help from a self-assessment by your employees, you have a window into where your employees can flex their skills. For example, let’s say a new data analysis project pops up. You need someone on your team to step up and lead the project. You also need another person to help crunch the numbers — and put together a narrative that the data tells. Because of your employees’ self-assessments, you can quickly identify and make decisions on who should lead what. 
• Better goal-setting. Self-assessments also help managers get a better understanding of what an employee's goals are at work. Having a good grasp on what employees want from their work and what they feel are their strengths and weaknesses can help managers lead better. A self-assessment is a handy tool for managers to use in order to highlight workers’ achievements, set future goals , check in on employee weaknesses, and assess how they can help employees improve those skills. 

For employees 

Just as managers benefit from self-assessments, so do employees. We’ve outlined four ways self-assessments help benefit the employee. 

• Increased self-awareness. A self-assessment can act as a mirror or reflection point. At BetterUp, we use a Whole Person Model to help our Members accurately gain self-awareness and self-reflect. According to our Whole Person Model, we see a 172% increase in self-awareness for those who start out low as a result of coaching. But what does coaching have to do with self-assessments? It can help bring awareness to an employee's strengths — and areas of opportunity. 
• Better learning and development goals. A self-assessment can help pinpoint different target growth areas. Designed to help prompt your employees to examine their skills, a self-assessment can be the tool you need to help identify a learning goal.
• Improved self-confidence . A self-assessment, though it can sound intimidating, isn’t just for identifying what’s not working. For many employees, it’s also a reassurance of what’s working well, especially when your manager agrees. A self-assessment can help your employees realize strengths they might not have identified before. It can also show growth areas where they might’ve struggled before.
• Opens up opportunities for further professional development. To go hand-in-hand with learning and development, self-assessments can help determine where employees should invest in professional development . For example, let’s say your employee takes a self-assessment and realizes they’re falling short on project management skills. Because of the assessment, you can offer project management workshops to help their professional development.  

38 self-assessment example questions for managers to use

Here are 38 examples of questions that managers can ask their employees during a self-assessment. 

Self-evaluation questions on achievements

• What areas do you think you could improve in?
• What could you have done better at work over the past year?
• What would you say your strengths are?
• How do you think you have contributed the most to the company?
• What has been your favorite project in the last year?
• Do you think you did a good job fulfilling your responsibilities over the last year?

Self-assessment questions on goals 

• What goals did you set for yourself this year? Month? Quarter?
• How many of those goals did you achieve?
• Were you happy with the results of meeting those goals you set for yourself?
• What are your future goals for next year? Quarter? Month? What can I do to help you better meet those goals?

Self-evaluation questions on advancement and professional growth 

• Have you taken part in any professional development programs the company offers?
• Are there any leadership positions you would like to have in the future?
• Is there any specific training that you feel you could use to help be more prepared to pursue a leadership role?
• Are there any skills that you could develop outside of work that would help with your work performance?
• Do you feel that there are any particular skills or talents of yours that you are not using?

Self-assessment questions on creativity 

• Do you feel that you think “outside the box” when it comes to finding solutions to work-related problems?
• What are some examples of when you thought “ outside of the box ” in order to solve a work problem? What could your manager do to make it easier for you to use creative problem-solving skills ?
• Do you feel that your position allows you to use your creative problem-solving skills to the fullest?

Self-evaluation questions on communication skills 

• Do you think that you communicate effectively with your manager and colleagues?
• What do you think makes a good communicator?
• How do you start difficult conversations with co-workers or managers? 
• How often do you ask for help on an assignment? Or ask questions to help clarify something about a project?

Self-assessment questions on time management

• Do you think that you use your time wisely while at work?
• When was a time when you thought you managed your time well?
• How could you improve your time management skills in the future?
• Can you describe an example of when you could have used your time better?

Self-evaluation questions on values and behaviors

• Do you think that you have worked in a way that aligns with our core values?
• What could you do to improve how you embody some of the company’s core values ?
• What do you value most about your work?
• When do you feel the most valued by the company?
• What are the qualities you have that make a valuable employee?
• List five things you do that positively impact your productivity .

Self-assessment questions on weaknesses

• Can you identify any weaknesses that you might have that could be hampering your productivity?
• Do you feel comfortable asking for help if you run into a problem with work?
• How could you work toward improving your work-related opportunities?
• Is there anything that leadership could do in order to help you address these opportunities?

Self-assessment example responses for employees

While coming up with questions for a performance review can be tough for managers. Crafting responses to a self-assessment that portrays an employee in their best light is even tougher.

Looking at a few examples of self-assessment questions and responses can be helpful when preparing for your own review. If you are particularly nervous about your self-assessment, practice by writing out some responses to the listed example questions. Use the example response as a jumping-off point for your own practice responses. 

Here are some example responses to the self-evaluation questions listed above.

Self-evaluation responses on achievements

• “I try to lead by example and feel that I put in my best effort every day. I am always the first person to arrive at work and always the last to leave.”
• “I have extremely high standards for my work and have gone above and beyond my job description. I routinely set goals for myself and work late nights and over the weekend to complete assignments.” 
• “Earlier this year, I decided I wanted to improve my public speaking skills and volunteered to give a company-wide presentation on a recently completed project. I’m proud of myself for taking that fear head-on, and the presentation was well received.” 

Self-assessment responses on goals

• “I would like to be able to keep working on my leadership skills. In order to do this, I plan to double down on my commitment to keep pitching project ideas at meetings and taking the lead on group work. I am proud to say that I have grown as a leader over the past year and would love to continue to do so.” 
• “One of the goals I set for myself this year was to become more organized. I have struggled a bit to learn how to better manage my time or delegate tasks but I am actively trying to learn from my mistakes .”

Self-evaluation responses on advancement and growth

• “When I applied for my current position, I did so with the long-term goal of eventually obtaining a managerial role. I can see myself overseeing a team at the company given my interests, ability to delegate tasks, organization, and expert time management skills. I also really enjoy pushing my colleagues to do their best and explore new ways of tackling a project.” 
• “ Now that I have worked at the company for a year, I have learned enough that I feel confident taking the creative lead on a project in the near future.”

Self-assessment responses about creativity

• “Since starting with the company, I have often used creative problem-solving skills on assignments or used lateral thinking to find solutions to work-related problems.”
• “I have been commended several times over the past quarter for my original ideas during pitch sessions, ability to think outside of the box, and come up with creative solutions to problems.”
• “During my team’s weekly meeting, I am typically the first person to jump in with an idea for our next project.” 
• “I often try to help my colleagues figure out solutions to problems when they are stuck.” 

Self-evaluation responses about communication skills

• “I routinely ask questions to clarify expectations for assignments.”
• “I am often the first one to speak up with a question or concern in a meeting.”
• “I always speak respectfully when having hard conversations with managers and co-workers.”
• “I know how to respectfully receive feedback on my performance from managers and co-workers.”
• “I frequently talk to fellow team members about things that are going well or not so well on a project.”
• “If I can not meet a deadline, I always give notice to my manager as early as possible with an explanation as to why I am behind.” 

Self-assessment responses about time management skills

• “In the past year, I have made all of my deadlines and frequently submit my work ahead of time.”
• “My ability to be organized has saved co-workers hours of time on collaborations.”
• “My co-workers will sometimes come to me for advice on how to improve their time management skills. I am always happy to give recommendations to co-workers in the hopes of making our company run more efficiently.” 

Self-evaluation responses about values and behaviors 

• “I believe that the best relationships between employees and employers are built on transparency.”
• “ I value kindness in the workplace and make sure to be as welcoming and helpful to everyone I interact with.”
• “I believe that every obstacle can be overcome with open and respectful communication.”
• “I value my co-workers and strive to be as thoughtful about their well-being as I am my own.”
• “I believe that a positive attitude is the best tool in the workplace and always look at setbacks as opportunities.” 

Self-assessment responses on weaknesses

• “I am a high achiever and often struggle with telling a manager no to an extra work assignment even if I have a lot on my plate already. Unfortunately, this can impact my productivity as completing multiple tasks in a timely fashion can be a tough balancing act. As a result, I will sometimes miss a deadline or ask for a deadline to be changed. I have been learning how to let my manager know if I have too many tasks to take on a new assignment. I’m happy to say I have made some progress and will continue to work on improving.” 
• “I sometimes find it hard to ask for help completing a task when doing so could help me finish an assignment more efficiently. Because of this, I can inadvertently waste time on an assignment that could have been completed quickly with the help of a manager or co-worker. I am trying to be better at anticipating when I will need help for a project and asking for it early.” 

Best practices when writing your self-assessment 

1. be honest.

When writing a review of your work performance, be honest with yourself. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and a self-assessment is meant to highlight those on-the-job strengths. They also allow employees to come up with solutions on how to improve in their weaker areas. Make sure to be honest in mentioning times that you fell short at work from something small like turning up a few minutes late to a meeting to something more consequential like missing an important deadline. 

2. Be confident

You should be proud of the work you do and there is nothing wrong with expressing that pride in a self-assessment. While being honest about work mistakes is crucial in a self-assessment, you should also mention the times that you went the extra mile or really shined. 

3. Be committed to improving 

A self-assessment is all about figuring out what you need to do to become better at your work, and there is always room for self-improvement . Make sure to express in your self-assessment how you want to keep growing. Expressing an interest in discovering new ways to improve on good work habits and strengths, as well as shortcomings, will make you appear to be an employee that will grow with the company. 

4. Be professional 

You should never make things personal in a self-assessment. That means no insulting your manager or boss for poor leadership skills or blaming a colleague for a less than stellar result on a collaborative project.  It also means taking responsibility for your own shortcomings in the workplace. Being professional also means taking the performance review and the self-assessment seriously. Make sure to take the time to write a worthwhile review that isn’t rushed or forced and is instead filled with insights and solutions. 

5. Take your time 

A self-assessment that is rushed won’t help anyone. Make time for self-reflection beforehand, and take your time when sitting down to write your self-assessment and put some thought into it. This is one of the few chances that you will have in the workplace to advocate for yourself and remind your employer why you are great at your job. This is also a great opportunity to let management know that you are struggling with something and to see if there are any professional development programs that your company offers to help you address these weaknesses.

6. Be specific 

During your self-assessment, use specific examples as much as possible. For example, if you are taking the time to write about how you consistently do the bulk of the work needed to complete group projects, make sure to list three or four examples. Don’t be afraid to say that you were the one that stayed up all night to make sure that a deadline was met. Or that you were the one that pushed your colleagues to make the project better. 

Something that can help you do this more easily is to track your accomplishments throughout the year. Keep a journal or a small notebook at your desk or on your person where you can jot down notes about the things you think you have done well every day or every week. Having a weekly or monthly list of your accomplishments will make it much easier to remind a manager or employer how valuable you are to the company. 

7. Use numbers 

Data can help convince an employer that your work has been beneficial to the company. When writing a self-assessment, back up claims about your achievements with numbers. If you write in your self-assessment that you are great at figuring out ways to shorten the amount of time your team spends on projects, make sure to reference how much time you have been able to cut. Including concrete numbers in your self-assessment will allow your manager or employer to develop a metric to measure your achievements.  

How to prepare for an employee self-assessment

Preparing ahead of time for giving or writing a self-assessment is central to having a constructive performance review. Managers should know what goals they would like employees to have completed and review themselves with some areas of weakness that employees can improve before talking about a self-assessment. 

If you are having trouble figuring out how to craft a self-assessment to give to employees there are a number of free self-evaluation templates online, like this one .

By using a template, you can streamline the self-assessment process and make less work for yourself in the future if you need to modify any questions on the evaluation. When sitting down to have a person-to-person discussion about employee performance, remember to give constructive feedback .

Tap into the potential of your workforce 

As a result, it’s important to make sure you’re maximizing the potential of your workforce. Self-assessments are the starting point to figuring out what potential lies within your employees (and your organization). 

Whether you’re looking at your own performance or your employees’ performance, BetterUp can help. An employee self-evaluation can be the ticket to building better teamwork , job performance, and work ethic. 

Get started with virtual coaching to help provide personalized support for your employees. The result? A mentally fit workforce that's better prepared for what the future holds.

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Madeline Miles

Madeline is a writer, communicator, and storyteller who is passionate about using words to help drive positive change. She holds a bachelor's in English Creative Writing and Communication Studies and lives in Denver, Colorado. In her spare time, she's usually somewhere outside (preferably in the mountains) — and enjoys poetry and fiction.

What is a DiSC assessment and how can it help your team?

Teamwork skills self-appraisal comments: 40 example phrases, 50+ self-care practices to take better care of yourself, learn how to stop self-pity with these tips, how to stop being self-conscious: strategies to feel more confident, 24 employee engagement survey questions (and how to use them), the hidden benefits of self-compassion, when you are the obstacle: how to overcome self-sabotage, why self-management is key to success and how to improve yours, similar articles, 360-degree feedback: definition, benefits, and examples, your guide to individual development plans (with examples), bringing your whole self to work — should you, the ultimate guide to hiring for behavioral competency (with examples), 18 questions to ask in a performance self-evaluation, use a personal swot analysis to discover your strengths and weaknesses, self-concept: what is it, and can it change, 25 performance review questions (and how to use them), stay connected with betterup, get our newsletter, event invites, plus product insights and research..

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• Student Self-assessment

Self-assessments encourage students to reflect on their growing skills and knowledge, learning goals and processes, products of their learning, and progress in the course. Student self-assessment can take many forms, from low-stakes check-ins on their understanding of the day’s lecture content to self-assessment and self-evaluation of their performance on major projects. Student self-assessment is also an important practice in courses that use alternative grading approaches . While the foci and mechanisms of self-assessment vary widely, at their core the purpose of all self-assessment is to “generate feedback that promotes learning and improvements in performance” (Andrade, 2019). Fostering students’ self-assessment skills can also help them develop an array of transferable lifelong learning skills, including:

• Metacognition: Thinking about one’s own thinking. Metacognitive skills allow learners to “monitor, plan, and control their mental processing and accurately judge how well they’ve learned something” (McGuire & McGuire 2015).
• Critical thinking: Carefully reasoning about the evidence and strength of evidence presented in support of a claim or argument.
• Reflective thinking: Examining or questioning one’s own assumptions, positionality, basis of your beliefs, growth, etc.
• Self-regulated learning: Setting goals, checking in on one’s own progress, reflecting on what learning or study strategies are working well or not so well, being intentional about where/when/how one studies, etc.

Students' skills to self-assess can vary, especially if they have not encountered many opportunities for structured self-assessment. Therefore, it is important to provide structure, guidance, and support to help them develop these skills over time.

• Create a supportive learning environment so that students feel comfortable sharing their self-assessment experiences ( Create a Supportive Course Climate ).
• Foster a growth-mindset in students by using strategies that show students that abilities can be grown through hard work, effective strategies, and help from others when needed ( Fostering Growth Mindset ; Identifying teaching behaviors that foster growth mindset classroom cultures ).
• Set clear, specific, measurable, and achievable learning outcomes so that students know what is expected of them and can better assess their progress ( Creating and Using Learning Outcomes ).
• Explain the concept of self-assessment and some of the benefits (above).
• Provide students with specific prompts and/or rubrics to guide self-assessment ( assessing student learning with Rubrics ).
• Provide clear instructions (see an example under Rubrics below).
• Encourage students to make adjustments to their learning strategies (e.g., retrieval, spacing, interleaving, elaboration, generation, reflection, calibration; Make It Stick , pp. 200-225) and/or set new goals based on their identified areas for improvement.

Self-Assessment Techniques

Expand the boxes below to learn more about techniques you can use to engage students in self-assessment and decide which would work best for your context.

To foster self-assessment as part of students’ regular learning practice you can embed prompts directly into your formative and summative assignments and assessments. 

• What do you think is a fair grade for the work you have handed in, and why do you think so?
• What did you do best in this task?
• What did you do least well in this task?
• What did you find was the hardest part of completing this task?
• What was the most important thing you learned in doing this task?
• If you had more time to complete the task, what (if anything) would you change, and why?

Providing students the opportunity to regularly engage in writing that allows them to reflect on their learning experiences, habits, and practices can help students retain learning, identify challenges, and strengthen their metacognitive skills. Reflective writing may take the form of short writing prompts related to assignments (see Embedded self-assessment prompts above and Classroom Assessment Techniques ) or writing more broadly about recent learning experiences (e.g., What? So What? Now What? Journals ). Reflective writing is a skill that takes practice and is most effective when done regularly throughout the course ( Using Reflective Writing to Deepen Student Learning ).

Rubrics are an important tool to help students self-assess their work, especially for self-assessment that includes multiple prompts about the same piece of work. If you’re providing a rubric to guide self-assessment, it is important to also provide instructions on how to use the rubric.

Students are using a rubric (e.g., grading rubric for written assignments (docx) ) to self-assess a draft essay before turning it in or making revisions. As part of that process, you want them to assess their use of textual evidence to support their claim. Here are example instructions you could provide (adapted from Beard, 2021):

To self-assess your use of textual evidence to support your claim, please follow these steps:

• In your draft, highlight your claim sentence and where you used textual evidence to support your claim
• Based on the textual evidence you used, circle your current level of skill on the provided rubric
• Use the information on the provided rubric to list one action you can take to make your textual evidence stronger

Self-assessment surveys can be helpful if you are asking students to self-assess their skills, knowledge, attitudes, and/or effectiveness of study methods they used. These may take the form of 2-3 free-response questions or a questionnaire where students rate their agreement with a series of statements (e.g., I am skilled at creating formulas in Excel”, “I can define ‘promissory coup’”, “I feel confident in my study skills”). A Background Knowledge Probe administered at the very beginning of the course (or when starting a new unit) can help you better understand what students already know (or don’t know) about the class subject. Self-assessment surveys administered over time can help you and students assess their progress toward meeting defined learning outcomes (and provide you with feedback on the effectiveness of your teaching methods). Student Assessment of their Learning Gains is a free tool that you can use to create and administer self-assessment surveys for your course.

Wrappers are tools that learners use after completing and receiving feedback on an exam or assignment ( exam and assignment wrappers , post-test analysis ) or even after listening to a lecture ( lecture wrappers ). Instead of focusing on content, wrappers focus on the process of learning and are designed to provide students with a chance to reflect on their learning strategies and plan new strategies before the next assignment or assessment. The Eberly Center at Carnegie Mellon includes multiple examples of exam, homework, and paper wrappers for several disciplines.

References:

Andrade, H. L. (2019). A critical review of research on student self-assessment . Frontiers in Education , 4, Article 87. 

Beard, E. (2021, April 27). The importance of student self-assessment . Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA).

Brown, P. C., Roediger III, H. L., & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

McGuire, S. Y., & McGuire, S. (2015). Teach students how to learn: Strategies you can incorporate into any course to improve student metacognition, study skills, and motivation . New York, NY: Routledge. 

McMillan, J. H., & Hearn, J. (2008). Student Self-Assessment: The Key to Stronger Student Motivation and Higher Achievement . Educational Horizons , 87 (1), 40–49.

Race, P. (2001). A briefing on self, peer and group assessment (pdf) . LTSN Generic Centre, Assessment Series No. 9. 

RCampus. (2023, June 7). Student self-assessments: Importance, benefits, and implementation . 

Teaching (n.d.). Student Self-Assessment . University of New South Wales Sydney.

Further Reading & Resources: 

Bjork, R. (n.d.). Applying cognitive psychology to enhance educational practice . UCLA Bjork Learning and Forgetting Lab.

Center for Teaching and Learning (n.d.). Classroom Assessment Techniques . University of Colorado Boulder.

Center for Teaching and Learning (n.d.). Formative Assessments . University of Colorado Boulder.

Center for Teaching and Learning (n.d.). Student Peer Assessment . University of Colorado Boulder.

Center for Teaching and Learning (n.d.). Summative Assessments . University of Colorado Boulder

Center for Teaching and Learning (n.d.). Summative Assessments: Types . University of Colorado Boulder

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How to Write an Effective Self-Assessment

• Marlo Lyons

Don’t assume that your manager is aware of all you’ve accomplished. Here’s how to artfully highlight what you’ve done this year.

Writing a self-assessment can feel like an afterthought, but it’s a critical part of your overall performance review. Managers with many direct reports likely won’t have visibility into or remember all of your notable accomplishments from the year, and they don’t have time to read a long recap. The author offers five steps for drafting a self-assessment that covers your most impactful accomplishments and demonstrates self-awareness through a lens of improvement and development: 1) Focus on the entire year; 2) consider company and functional goals; 3) look for alignment with those goals; 4) seek feedback from colleagues; and 5) draft a concise list of accomplishments.

It’s performance review season for many companies, which means it’s time to reflect on the year and draft a self-assessment of your accomplishments. Writing an impactful self-assessment will set the tone for your manager’s evaluation of your work, which can affect your compensation (e.g., merit increase, bonus, etc.).

• Marlo Lyons is a career, executive, and team coach, as well as the award-winning author of Wanted – A New Career: The Definitive Playbook for Transitioning to a New Career or Finding Your Dream Job . You can reach her at marlolyonscoaching.com .

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Self-Assessment

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To help students claim authority over the choices they make in their writing, students should also be made responsible for assessing their writing, for articulating the rationales behind their writing choices, and for responding independently to the feedback of others.

One of the best ways to help students assess their writing is to require cover memos to their readers on work-in-progress and on final papers. You can build this requirement into your assignment sheets. Below, find some sample language to work with.

For a cover memo on a draft

When you hand in your draft to me, please include a cover memo that explains your experience writing the early version of this assignment: what went smoothly for you? what was more difficult? Please also help me understand some of the major decisions you made; e.g., why you settled on this research question, selected the sources you did, or appealed to feeling in conclusion. Also let me know what you feel happy about with your draft and where you need the most help.

For a cover memo on a final paper

After you have finished your revision, write me a cover memo of 250 words or so. Here you reflect on your rhetoric: the decisions you made as you composed your essay.

Your memo can be informal, but still clear and well-organized.  It will be more persuasive if it points me to details in your draft, peer feedback, and revision and if it touches on some of the following:

• Your use of discipline-specific strategies [these should be named specifically and align with the assignment goals]
• ·Your use of evidence and reasoning;
• Your awareness of the paper’s rhetorical situation;
• How peer review, conferencing, or a writing center appointment affected your revision decisions;
• Your overall experience in writing the essay; how does it compare and contrast with your work in previous writing classes? With how you previously approached writing?

You may end your memo by setting a goal for your next paper or by giving me some direction. What do you want me to notice in your revision?  What do you still need help with?

As you can see cover memos are also helpful to readers, suggesting how they might prioritize their feedback and why. But they are most valuable to student writers because reflection in writing makes visible their thinking and learning and increases the likelihood of transfer of writing knowledge to new communication contexts.

Helping Students Thrive by Using Self-Assessment

As a teacher, when you design a lesson or unit, you design it with the hope that everything will go according to plan, your students will learn the content, and they’ll be ready to move on to the next concept. If you’ve been a teacher for more than a day or two, however, you know that this often isn’t the case.

Some students will pick up the information and quickly get bored while others will be lost and quickly fall behind. And sometimes, the lesson will fall flat and none of your students will understand much of anything.

Other times, a lesson will work really well with one group of students, but it will flop with another. This is all just par for the course with teaching, and you never know what you’re going to get on any given day.

Thankfully, there is a way you can make your lessons better, more achievable, and more appropriate for all students. The solution is to teach them how to use self-assessment.

Self-assessment is one of those “teach a man to fish” concepts–once students understand how to self-assess, they’ll be more equipped to learn in all aspects of their life. At the very basic level, self assessment is simple: students need to think:

• What was I supposed to learn?
• Did I learn it?
• What questions do I still have?

This formative assessment helps students and teachers understand where they’re at in their learning. The more students learn to do this at your direction and the more techniques they have to self-assess, the more likely they are to inherently do it on their own.

What does self-assessment look like?

Self-assessment can take many forms, and it can be very quick and informal, or it might be more structured and important. In essence though, self assessment looks like students pausing to examine what they do and don’t know. However, if you simply say, “OK, class, time to self-assess,” you’ll likely be met with blank stares.

The more you’re able to walk students through strategies for self-assessment, the more they’ll understand the purpose, process, and value of thinking about their learning. For the best results to reach the most students, aim to incorporate different types of self-assessment, just as you aim to incorporate different ways of teaching into your lessons.

Why self-assessment works

One of the reasons self-assessment is so effective is because it helps students stay within their zone of proximal development when they’re learning. In this zone, students are being challenged, which means they’re learning, but they’re not being pushed too hard into frustration.

The reason this is so helpful is because teachers can see anywhere from 15-150+ students every day, so it’s hard for a teacher to know where every single student is at in his or her learning. Without stopping for self-assessment, it’s easy for a teacher to move on before students are ready or to belabor a concept students mastered days ago.

When students are able to self-assess, they take control of their learning and realize when they need to ask more questions or spend more time working on a concept. Self-assessment that is relayed back to the teacher, either formally or informally, helps the teacher get a better idea of where students are at with their learning.

Another benefit of self-assessment is that students tend to take more ownership and find more value in their learning, according to a study out of Duquesne University. According to the study, formative assessments like self-assessment “give students the means, motive, and opportunity to take control of their own learning.” When teachers give students those opportunities, they empower their students and help turn them into active, rather than passive learners.

Self-assessment also helps students practice learning independently, which is a key skill for life, and especially for students who are pursuing higher education.

How to execute self assessment

To truly make this part of your classroom, you’ll need to explain to students what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and you’ll need to hold them accountable for their self assessment. The following steps can help you successfully set up self-assessment in your classroom.

Step 1: Explain what self-assessment is and why it’s important

Sometimes teachers have a tendency to surprise students with what’s coming next or to not explain the reasoning behind a teaching strategy or decision. While this is often done out of a desire for control and power as the leader of the classroom, it doesn’t do much to help students and their learning.

If students don’t understand why they’re doing what they’re doing, they usually won’t do it at all, or will just to the bare minimum to go through the motions and get the grade. If students don’t understand the purpose of a learning strategy, they often see it as busy work. Most students are very used to being assessed only by their teachers, so they may not understand why they’re suddenly being asked to take stock of their own learning.

Make sure you take the time to explain why you’re implementing this new learning strategy and how it is going to directly benefit them. That explanation is going to vary based on the age of your students and other factors, but you can give students some variation of the explanation of why self-assessment works above.

Step 2: Always show a model

As you scroll down, you’ll see that we give you some examples of ways to use self assessment; each time you try one of these new techniques, be sure to create an exemplar model for your students. If you want this to work, students need to know what the goal that they’re working toward looks like.

Depending on the type of self-assessment you’re working with, a simple model might be enough, or students might need to practice with the work of others. A low stakes way to start this out is with examples from past students. Pull out an old project from years past and have students assess the project as if it were their own.

Once students learn how to be respectful and constructive with this peer assessment, they can practice with the peers in their class. Including this step often makes it easier for students to assess their own work. It can be hard to look back at your own work or thought process, especially if not much time has passed since you did the work.

Step 3: Teach students different strategies of self-assessment

We all learn best by doing, so rather than just giving students a list of self-assessment strategies, take your time walking through different strategies together. Also remember that the strategy that works best for Jimmy might not work well for Susan, so the more you can diversify self-assessment for your students, the more students you’re going to be able to reach.

Try starting with just one type of self assessment, give students time to master that type, then add another type. As time goes on, you can offer students choice in the type of self-assessment they want to use.

Step 4: Practice

Before you ask students to actively assess their own work, let them practice with some low stakes examples. It’s hard for many people to critique themselves and to recognize they have room for improvement, yet it’s essential.

Give students some examples of work from past students (names always removed) and walk through “self” assessment with those examples together as a class.

Step 5: Create a way to hold students accountable

Self-assessment shouldn’t always be tied to a grade, but students will catch on quickly if you’re not somehow holding them accountable. There are many ways to do this, for example:

• Conference with each student throughout the process
• Make self-assessment part of the final grade for a project or unit
• Create a self-assessment reward chart

The important thing to remember with holding students accountable for their self-assessment is that you should be holding them accountable for doing the self-assessment, but not for what they do or don’t know, nor for the changes they make based on their self-assessment.

Step 6: Don’t stop

Sometimes we have a tendency to try a strategy once or twice and then let it slide as the school year goes on, but as students learn that they’re no longer being held accountable, they will stop. You can’t ever assume a student will keep using a strategy unless you give them explicit instructions and hold them accountable.

Remember that as with anything, students will get better at self-assessment the more they practice it. The more you explicitly assign self-assessment, the more it will become a normal part of the learning process.

Examples of self assessment

Remember that it’s good to use a variety of self-assessment strategies so all students have a chance to find a style that works best for them. Any time you introduce a new strategy or assign self-assessment, be very clear about what students should do and how they should do it.

The strategies we suggest are broken down by age, but always use your best judgment regarding which strategies will be best for your students.

KWL chart: Before starting a lesson or unit, have students write or say what they already know (K) and what they want to know (W) about the topic. After the lesson or unit, they write or say what they learned (L). This can easily evolve into larger discussions and assignments.

Goals: At the end of each lesson, day, week, etc. students write one learning goal they would like to achieve. This can be very open-ended, or it could be very focused, asking students to reflect on one specific subject or topic. You can expand on this by having students return to their goal to see if they met it, encouraging them to ask for help if they haven’t met their goal.

Red, yellow, green: Give each student three circles: one red, one yellow, and one green. Throughout the school day, students place their red circle on their desk if they’re lost or confused, yellow if they’re struggling a little bit, and green if they understand, and they’re good to go. You can also stop to have students check their understanding by asking them to hold up a color. Some students feel shy about admitting they’re confused, so this strategy can also work really well if you have students place their heads down before holding up their circle.

Objective check: In the morning, give students a list of objectives you will cover in school today. Have each student write down an objective they would really like to learn today. At the end of the day, students return to the objective and determine whether they learned it or not.

Tricky spots: Work with students to identify where they struggle (for example, “I have trouble with word problems in math,” or “I have trouble spelling new words”). When starting a new lesson or unit, have each student identify one tricky spot they want to focus on. Be sure to check in with students often on their tricky spot to make sure they are making progress and not getting frustrated.

Highlighting: Have students go back to a writing assignment, worksheet, or project and highlight the section that they think was their best work. As an extension, have them explain why this was their best work. This is an excellent strategy to use with students who struggle or lack confidence in their work.

Self reflection: After a speech or presentation, have students write down three things they did well and one thing they can improve on. Extend this by returning to these during the next speech or presentation; you could even make them part of the rubric for the next assignment.

Exit tickets: Before students can leave the room, they must fill out an exit ticket and hand it to the teacher. You might ask them to write one thing they learned today and one thing they want to learn tomorrow, for example.

Think, pair, share: Pose a reflective question or prompt to students, for example you might tell them to think about or even write down the most important thing they learned in class today. Next, have them pair with a partner or small group to discuss their answer to the question or prompt, and finally, have students report back to the whole class.

Grades 9-12

Rubrics: Before completing a project, give students the rubric you will use to grade their effort. Have students complete a draft of the project and assess themselves using the rubric. After they do this, you might conference with them, give them feedback, or have them complete a reflective assignment. Then, have students complete a second draft that they will turn in for their grade (or to continue to work and improve upon).

Writing conferences: After students write an outline or first draft of an essay, hold an individual conference with each student. Before you provide your input, have students identify the strengths and weaknesses of their work. Use their self assessment as the guide of what you discuss during the conference. You might even find that students are more critical of themselves than you would have been.

Empty rubrics: At the beginning of a project, leave a space on the rubric empty. Help each student fill in the empty spot with something they need to work on, whether it’s something that they’re already good at and want to get even better or it’s something they struggle with and want to get better at.

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• Professional learning

Teach. Learn. Grow.

Teach. learn. grow. the education blog.

The importance of student self-assessment

Want to know a secret? I didn’t mean to become a secondary ELA teacher. One of the reasons why an ELA endorsement wasn’t originally at the top of my list was this persistent worry: How does one keep up with marking and grading all those ELA assignments? I do love a good challenge, though, so despite my concerns, I jumped into the adventure, and I am so glad that I did.

Over time, I faced that ELA assignment volume fear. Through support from mentors, observations of experts, and practice in professional development settings, I learned how to embed student self-assessment into learning processes so that my workload concerns were alleviated. More importantly, my students were able to build metacognition and self-efficacy skills .

I don’t want to give the impression that learning how to embed self-assessment processes was smooth or linear, or that the process is complete for me. There was trial and error, zigs and zags, and I am still learning how to improve my practice. I hope that sharing the things I’ve learned along the way can bring relief and support you in your work.

The topic of student self-assessment is huge, so for the purposes of this blog post, I will focus on three things that I’ve learned along the way. If you want to know more about the components and benefits of self-assessment, check out this short Dylan Wiliam video . I also encourage you to read Heidi Andrade’s “A critical review of research on student self-assessment.” She asks and answers several key questions about self-assessment including, “What is self-assessment?” and “Why self-assess?” She also digs into how it relates to feedback.

1. Reflect on your role

When I first started teaching, I was prepared to operate as a learner-manager instead of a learner-empowerer. As a learner-manager ELA teacher, I would give directions for an essay, set a due date, collect essays, take hours to mark and grade the essays, and then hand back the papers. Inevitably I would be frustrated when students ignored my marks or tossed out the paper, only to ask how to raise their grade at the end of the quarter. Ugh! Wasn’t this precisely why I hadn’t planned on being an ELA teacher?

Authentic, meaningful, and effective student self-assessment requires participants to be honest and vulnerable.

Slowly I came to understand how important it was for me to make the shift from thinking of myself as a learner-manager (an “I say it. You do it” approach) to thinking of myself as a learner-empowerer (a “How do I partner with my students to build knowledge, skills, and self-efficacy throughout the learning journey?” approach). (For more about learner-manager versus learner-empowerer as well as information about the connections to equity and a trauma-informed practice, see my post “6 ways to help heal toxic stress, trauma, and inequity in your virtual or in-person classroom” .)

Once I committed to being a learner-empowerer, my actions followed suit. I engineered learning goal paths that made students active agents in the learning processes. For example, I built in small, quick opportunities to practice self-assessing along the way so that by the time we arrived at an end point, students’ work was solid and they could reflect on the goal or explain a grade. More on that in the next tip.

2. Use reliable strategies, processes, and tools

Here are four “moves”—examples of specific actions I learned to embed in learning processes—that I think can help you as you consider the role of self-assessment in your classroom.

Nurture a community of learning

Authentic, meaningful, and effective student self-assessment requires participants to be honest and vulnerable. I had to deliberately foster a safe, respectful, and inclusive learning environment. In my blog post “5 little things that are really big” I explain specific ways to partner with students to make this happen. My colleague Cara Holt outlines 10 useful community-building strategies in her blog post, and another colleague, Vicki McCoy, explores self-assessment and metacognition in “How formative assessment boosts metacognition—and learning.”

Reallocate time and energy

Early in my teaching career, I was hesitant to fully dive into processes for successful student self-assessment. It felt like the learning experiences in a lesson or unit would take longer if I did because of the need to make room for the exercises that make self-assessment fruitful, such as clarifying goals, using examples, and engaging in peer feedback. I had to trust that reworking how I used teaching and learning time would pay off in the end, and it did.

By making time in the lesson or unit for the short, frequent exercises that make self-assessment successful, I spent less time tracking down unfinished work and nagging students about revisions. I also ultimately saved time grading. Once my students and I got the hang of self-assessment processes, students could reflect on the learning goals and articulate their grade rationale—and they were usually right on! No more frustration of unread markups and ignored grades.

Use examples of work

Self-assessment is even more fruitful when students can process examples of work that illustrate the learning goals and success criteria. In other words, for meaningful self-assessment, we had to work to make sure there was a solid foundation of understanding about examples and how to use the examples as a guide. After creating that solid understanding of success through examples, my students and I could take next steps with effective self, peer, and teacher feedback, which ultimately led to successful self-assessment.

I learned to start with strong examples so that students were sure to have a sound reference for what the end result should look like. Sometimes I could access these examples from the provided curriculum materials or from previous students; sometimes I made the examples myself, especially if the learning goals or path to the learning goals were specific to my students’ motivations and interests.

If my students were working on a learning goal (such as building argumentation claims and counterclaims) expressed in a multi-step product (such as a multiple paragraph argument), we would process a whole example. We would also examine specific pieces (e.g., paragraphs or even sentences). The students and I would look for the success criteria together using processes that aligned to the learning goal(s). For instance, if we were working on argumentation learning goals, we would use an argument rubric to guide our processing of the example, usually a few parts of the rubric at a time. This practice set forth the words and procedures for effective teacher, self, and peer feedback grounded in concrete illustrations of the learning goals and success criteria. With the provided examples, we could practice a feedback strategy such as Stars (strengths) and Stairs (next steps): Using the language of the rubric, what is a strength of this argumentation example? Using the language of the rubric, what is a next step for this argumentation example? Students had plenty of practice with the strategy first for processing examples, then for practicing feedback, and finally as a frame for self-assessment: Using the language of the rubric, what is a strength of your argumentation? Using the language of the rubric, what is a next step for your argumentation?

Figuring out the self-assessment strategies, processes, and tools that work best in partnership with your students is an ongoing expedition that requires time, patience, and a sense of humor.

Once a solid understanding of the end result and its pieces are established through sound examples, it can be fun to process silly non-examples with students. For example, one of my favorite silly non-examples to use when practicing reading and writing for information is a YouTube video of a dad following his children’s written instructions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich . You can even ask students to help you make those silly non-examples, which is another way for students to both become active partners in learning and internalize what does and does not illustrate the learning goal(s) and success criteria. Making time for processing examples and non-examples equips students with a clear picture of the end result and the frames for self-assessment success.

Include self-assessment prompts during the journey and at the end

For far too long, I would tell students to self-assess and hope that they followed through. Eventually I made it a habit to embed self-assessment prompts, space, and time directly on formative (practice) and summative materials.

When relevant, I would simply embed a one-sentence self-assessment frame (e.g., On a scale of 1–5, my claim sentence is currently a ___ because ___.) Other times it was better to prompt more than a one-sentence self-assessment (e.g., To self-assess your use of textual evidence to support your claim, please follow these steps: 1. In your draft, highlight where you used textual evidence to support your claim. 2. Based on the textual evidence that you used, circle your current level of skill on the provided rubric. 3. Use the information on the provided rubric to list one action you take to make your textual evidence even stronger.) The students and I would use their self-assessment answers to plan next steps, which sometimes looked like adjusting the lesson plan for the next day for more practice or making mixed groups for the next formative exercise.

For the summative task(s), I got into the habit of making sure to include student self-assessment as the last part of the experience. For instance, if there was a written or spoken product, after the conclusion sentence students would also self-assess using a provided frame. If the summative was a set of prompts or questions, the last prompt or question would be self-assessment.

3. Embrace the process

Figuring out the self-assessment strategies, processes, and tools that work best in partnership with your students is an ongoing expedition that requires time, patience, and a sense of humor. You’ll take steps forward, steps sideways, and steps back. It can get messy, but that’s normal. Authentic, human-centered learning is messy!

I encourage you to try one new thing at a time, celebrate quick wins, think of “failures” as learning opportunities, and lean on your students for their help. Be reassured that applying self-assessment practices is one of the most valuable parts of the learning process. For more on the value of student self-assessment, see the discussion section in “Examining the impact of self-assessment with the use of rubrics on primary school students’ performance.”

Suggested next steps

I encourage you to continue the journey of including students as active agents in the learning process. Growing in or expanding upon the practices listed here can help you continue that journey. In case you find them helpful, here are a few discussion questions that can guide your thinking about student self-assessment. Tackle them on your own or with a colleague.

Questions for teachers

• What’s one student self-assessment strategy that you already use?
• What’s one student self-assessment strategy that you would like to try?
• What support do you need to try a new self-assessment strategy?
• What will inspire you to keep up the hard work of embedding student self-assessment in the learning journey?

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Principles of assessment for learning

• 2 Working in groups
• 3 Self and peer assessment
• 4 Sharing objectives and criteria
• 5 Questioning
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• 7 Using tests

Self and peer assessment

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Discover how you can use self and peer assessment to actively involve students in their learning, including teaching tips and examples to use in your classroom

Source: © Shutterstock

Self and peer assessment gives students a structure to reflect on their work, what they have learned and how to improve.

What is self and peer assessment?

Self-assessment enables students to take ownership of their learning by judging the extent of their knowledge and understanding. It provides a structure for them to reflect on their work, what they have learned and how to improve.

Peer-assessment, where they act as critical friends and support each other, can help students to develop self-assessment skills.

In order to make any judgements, students must have grasped the learning and the standards of work expected of them.

Why use these techniques?

Through self and peer assessment, students take more responsibility for their own learning. It helps the individual to:

• assess their own progress objectively
• crystallise learning objectives
• recognise their understanding
• think about what they did not understand
• grow in confidence
• take their own learning forwards.

Within the class, it fosters respect and collaboration.

Peer criticism can be more effective than that from the teacher because:

• The normal shared language will be used.
• It acts as a stimulus to complete work and to raise standards.
• Some students are more receptive to comments from their peers.
• Group feedback can command more attention than that of an individual.

It frees up the teacher to concentrate on what is not known, rather than what is.

How do I set up self or peer assessment?

When preparing for an activity involving self or peer assessment, it is vital to:

• Create an atmosphere of mutual trust.
• Decide how the students will discover the learning objectives. Criteria for success must be transparent.
• Select a technique suitable to the topic (see ’Example activities’ below for some ideas). Give explicit instructions.
• Encourage students to listen to others, to ask questions on points that they do not understand and to contribute ideas and opinions (see ’Discussion and feedback’ below).

Example activities

Examples of what the students might do include:

• Research and present within a small group, which then judges each talk.
• Make a judgement about an answer and suggest improvements.
• Use the criteria to give feedback about their peer’s work.
• Research answers in order to give feedback about their peer’s work.
• Comment on anonymous work.
• Indicate how confident they are about a topic or task (both before and after an activity).
• Write questions to match a learning outcome and then answer questions written by others.
• In groups, generate questions for homework, then select the best through class discussion.
• Analyse a marking scheme and apply it to their own or others’ work.
• Develop the learning outcomes for a given area of work for themselves.

Discussion and feedback

• Have a strategy to tackle the weaknesses that are identified. For example, if it is a small number of students, draw them together for further work whilst giving the rest of the class an extension activity.
• Allow plenty of time for students to take action following feedback from peers or you. This may be repeating an experiment, carrying out further research or rewriting their notes. You may have to provide input for this.
• Use plenaries and feedback, to pause and take stock, during and towards the end of the session.
• Check that, if needed, students have made correct records.

Hints and tips for promoting effective self and peer assessment

Alternative plenary.

In this variation, a small group of students leads the discussion, instead of the teacher. When preparing and running the activity, it is important to:

• Let students know that they will sometimes lead a plenary themselves.
• Remind the class of the learning objectives.
• Use judicious questions to review the learning achieved.
• Summarise as a basis for working out the next steps.
• Ensure that the class agrees with any summary (may be by group discussion).
• Ensure that there is opportunity for students to make additional points.
• Give supportive, tactful feedback to the leaders.

‘Traffic lights’ or ‘Thumbs up’

Using this technique, students show an instant evaluation of their knowledge and understanding. From this, both teacher and student can recognise problems.

• thumbs up – confident
• thumbs sideways – some uncertainty
• thumbs down – little confidence.

Using green, amber and red ‘traffic light’ cards, instead of thumbs, makes students give a definite response and provides the teacher with a good visual indicator. These cards can also be used for students to show their choice between alternatives, for example, ‘Do you think the answer is 1, 2 or 3?’

Cards or thumbs can be used at any time during a session.

Prompt questions

You can use questions to help students move forward.

Appropriate questions would be based on:

• What do you think you could improve?
• Why do you want to improve that?
• What was the hardest part?
• What help do you need?

Learning diary

To ensure that the self or peer assessment activity is meaningful, and not a bureaucratic exercise, it can be helpful to make recording an integral part of activities. The diary could be linked to plenaries and written in class notes. Headings or questions might include:

• What was exciting in chemistry this week.
• The most important thing I learned this week.
• What I did well. What I need to do more work on.
• Which targets I’ve met.

The questions do not need to be the same each week.

Is there anything else teachers should think about?

When preparing and running a self or peer assessment activity, consider:

• Introducing the technique gradually so that skills are developed.
• Different methods for introducing students to the learning objectives/outcomes.
• Setting up a supportive atmosphere, so that students are comfortable about admitting to problems.
• Giving students sufficient time to work out the problems.
• Making the encouragement of self-reflection intrinsic to teaching.

Common issues to watch out for

• It takes time, patience and commitment to develop self and peer assessment. For preference, there should be a strong learning culture and an environment of mutual trust throughout the school.
• Students will need group skills.
• There must be an opportunity for the expected learning and standards to be made clear.
• Teachers need to listen unobtrusively to avert the propagation of misunderstandings (careful group selection also helps).
• A few students will only respond to work in class as exercises to be completed and not internalised.

How can I tell if self or peer assessment is successful?

When you devise your checklist to evaluate the session, consider how you will measure:

• How well the students understood the objectives.
• Whether the student groupings worked as you wished.
• If the students improved their self-assessment skills.
• How meaningful the peer assessment was.
• The students’ response to the technique.
• The support for different abilities.
• Whether the lesson correlated with the objectives.
• Improvement in work standards.

Additional information

This information was originally part of the  Assessment for Learning  website, published in 2008.

Working in groups

Sharing objectives and criteria

Questioning

Using feedback

Using tests

• Working independently
• Active learning
• Peer assessment

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Systematic review article, a critical review of research on student self-assessment.

• Educational Psychology and Methodology, University at Albany, Albany, NY, United States

This article is a review of research on student self-assessment conducted largely between 2013 and 2018. The purpose of the review is to provide an updated overview of theory and research. The treatment of theory involves articulating a refined definition and operationalization of self-assessment. The review of 76 empirical studies offers a critical perspective on what has been investigated, including the relationship between self-assessment and achievement, consistency of self-assessment and others' assessments, student perceptions of self-assessment, and the association between self-assessment and self-regulated learning. An argument is made for less research on consistency and summative self-assessment, and more on the cognitive and affective mechanisms of formative self-assessment.

This review of research on student self-assessment expands on a review published as a chapter in the Cambridge Handbook of Instructional Feedback ( Andrade, 2018 , reprinted with permission). The timespan for the original review was January 2013 to October 2016. A lot of research has been done on the subject since then, including at least two meta-analyses; hence this expanded review, in which I provide an updated overview of theory and research. The treatment of theory presented here involves articulating a refined definition and operationalization of self-assessment through a lens of feedback. My review of the growing body of empirical research offers a critical perspective, in the interest of provoking new investigations into neglected areas.

Defining and Operationalizing Student Self-Assessment

Without exception, reviews of self-assessment ( Sargeant, 2008 ; Brown and Harris, 2013 ; Panadero et al., 2016a ) call for clearer definitions: What is self-assessment, and what is not? This question is surprisingly difficult to answer, as the term self-assessment has been used to describe a diverse range of activities, such as assigning a happy or sad face to a story just told, estimating the number of correct answers on a math test, graphing scores for dart throwing, indicating understanding (or the lack thereof) of a science concept, using a rubric to identify strengths and weaknesses in one's persuasive essay, writing reflective journal entries, and so on. Each of those activities involves some kind of assessment of one's own functioning, but they are so different that distinctions among types of self-assessment are needed. I will draw those distinctions in terms of the purposes of self-assessment which, in turn, determine its features: a classic form-fits-function analysis.

What is Self-Assessment?

Brown and Harris (2013) defined self-assessment in the K-16 context as a “descriptive and evaluative act carried out by the student concerning his or her own work and academic abilities” (p. 368). Panadero et al. (2016a) defined it 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” (p. 804). Referring to physicians, Epstein et al. (2008) defined “concurrent self-assessment” as “ongoing moment-to-moment self-monitoring” (p. 5). Self-monitoring “refers to the ability to notice our own actions, curiosity to examine the effects of those actions, and willingness to use those observations to improve behavior and thinking in the future” (p. 5). Taken together, these definitions include self-assessment of one's abilities, processes , and products —everything but the kitchen sink. This very broad conception might seem unwieldy, but it works because each object of assessment—competence, process, and product—is subject to the influence of feedback from oneself.

What is missing from each of these definitions, however, is the purpose of the act of self-assessment. Their authors might rightly point out that the purpose is implied, but a formal definition requires us to make it plain: Why do we ask students to self-assess? I have long held that self-assessment is feedback ( Andrade, 2010 ), and that the purpose of feedback is to inform adjustments to processes and products that deepen learning and enhance performance; hence the purpose of self-assessment is to generate feedback that promotes learning and improvements in performance. This learning-oriented purpose of self-assessment implies that it should be formative: if there is no opportunity for adjustment and correction, self-assessment is almost pointless.

Why Self-Assess?

Clarity about the purpose of self-assessment allows us to interpret what otherwise appear to be discordant findings from research, which has produced mixed results in terms of both the accuracy of students' self-assessments and their influence on learning and/or performance. I believe the source of the discord can be traced to the different ways in which self-assessment is carried out, such as whether it is summative and formative. This issue will be taken up again in the review of current research that follows this overview. For now, consider a study of the accuracy and validity of summative self-assessment in teacher education conducted by Tejeiro et al. (2012) , which showed that students' self-assigned marks tended to be higher than marks given by professors. All 122 students in the study assigned themselves a grade at the end of their course, but half of the students were told that their self-assigned grade would count toward 5% of their final grade. In both groups, students' self-assessments were higher than grades given by professors, especially for students with “poorer results” (p. 791) and those for whom self-assessment counted toward the final grade. In the group that was told their self-assessments would count toward their final grade, no relationship was found between the professor's and the students' assessments. Tejeiro et al. concluded that, although students' and professor's assessments tend to be highly similar when self-assessment did not count toward final grades, overestimations increased dramatically when students' self-assessments did count. Interviews of students who self-assigned highly discrepant grades revealed (as you might guess) that they were motivated by the desire to obtain the highest possible grades.

Studies like Tejeiro et al's. (2012) are interesting in terms of the information they provide about the relationship between consistency and honesty, but the purpose of the self-assessment, beyond addressing interesting research questions, is unclear. There is no feedback purpose. This is also true for another example of a study of summative self-assessment of competence, during which elementary-school children took the Test of Narrative Language and then were asked to self-evaluate “how you did in making up stories today” by pointing to one of five pictures, from a “very happy face” (rating of five) to a “very sad face” (rating of one) ( Kaderavek et al., 2004 . p. 37). The usual results were reported: Older children and good narrators were more accurate than younger children and poor narrators, and males tended to more frequently overestimate their ability.

Typical of clinical studies of accuracy in self-evaluation, this study rests on a definition and operationalization of self-assessment with no value in terms of instructional feedback. If those children were asked to rate their stories and then revise or, better yet, if they assessed their stories according to clear, developmentally appropriate criteria before revising, the valence of their self-assessments in terms of instructional feedback would skyrocket. I speculate that their accuracy would too. In contrast, studies of formative self-assessment suggest that when the act of self-assessing is given a learning-oriented purpose, students' self-assessments are relatively consistent with those of external evaluators, including professors ( Lopez and Kossack, 2007 ; Barney et al., 2012 ; Leach, 2012 ), teachers ( Bol et al., 2012 ; Chang et al., 2012 , 2013 ), researchers ( Panadero and Romero, 2014 ; Fitzpatrick and Schulz, 2016 ), and expert medical assessors ( Hawkins et al., 2012 ).

My commitment to keeping self-assessment formative is firm. However, Gavin Brown (personal communication, April 2011) reminded me that summative self-assessment exists and we cannot ignore it; any definition of self-assessment must acknowledge and distinguish between formative and summative forms of it. Thus, the taxonomy in Table 1 , which depicts self-assessment as serving formative and/or summative purposes, and focuses on competence, processes, and/or products.

Table 1 . A taxonomy of self-assessment.

Fortunately, a formative view of self-assessment seems to be taking hold in various educational contexts. For instance, Sargeant (2008) noted that all seven authors in a special issue of the Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions “conceptualize self-assessment within a formative, educational perspective, and see it as an activity that draws upon both external and internal data, standards, and resources to inform and make decisions about one's performance” (p. 1). Sargeant also stresses the point that self-assessment should be guided by evaluative criteria: “Multiple external sources can and should inform self-assessment, perhaps most important among them performance standards” (p. 1). Now we are talking about the how of self-assessment, which demands an operationalization of self-assessment practice. Let us examine each object of self-assessment (competence, processes, and/or products) with an eye for what is assessed and why.

What is Self-Assessed?

Monitoring and self-assessing processes are practically synonymous with self-regulated learning (SRL), or at least central components of it such as goal-setting and monitoring, or metacognition. Research on SRL has clearly shown that self-generated feedback on one's approach to learning is associated with academic gains ( Zimmerman and Schunk, 2011 ). Self-assessment of the products , such as papers and presentations, are the easiest to defend as feedback, especially when those self-assessments are grounded in explicit, relevant, evaluative criteria and followed by opportunities to relearn and/or revise ( Andrade, 2010 ).

Including the self-assessment of competence in this definition is a little trickier. I hesitated to include it because of the risk of sneaking in global assessments of one's overall ability, self-esteem, and self-concept (“I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me,” Franken, 1992 ), which do not seem relevant to a discussion of feedback in the context of learning. Research on global self-assessment, or self-perception, is popular in the medical education literature, but even there, scholars have begun to question its usefulness in terms of influencing learning and professional growth (e.g., see Sargeant et al., 2008 ). Eva and Regehr (2008) seem to agree in the following passage, which states the case in a way that makes it worthy of a long quotation:

Self-assessment is often (implicitly or otherwise) conceptualized as a personal, unguided reflection on performance for the purposes of generating an individually derived summary of one's own level of knowledge, skill, and understanding in a particular area. For example, this conceptualization would appear to be the only reasonable basis for studies that fit into what Colliver et al. (2005) has described as the “guess your grade” model of self-assessment research, the results of which form the core foundation for the recurring conclusion that self-assessment is generally poor. This unguided, internally generated construction of self-assessment stands in stark contrast to the model put forward by Boud (1999) , who argued that the phrase self-assessment should not imply an isolated or individualistic activity; it should commonly involve peers, teachers, and other sources of information. The conceptualization of self-assessment as enunciated in Boud's description would appear to involve a process by which one takes personal responsibility for looking outward, explicitly seeking feedback, and information from external sources, then using these externally generated sources of assessment data to direct performance improvements. In this construction, self-assessment is more of a pedagogical strategy than an ability to judge for oneself; it is a habit that one needs to acquire and enact rather than an ability that one needs to master (p. 15).

As in the K-16 context, self-assessment is coming to be seen as having value as much or more so in terms of pedagogy as in assessment ( Silver et al., 2008 ; Brown and Harris, 2014 ). In the end, however, I decided that self-assessing one's competence to successfully learn a particular concept or complete a particular task (which sounds a lot like self-efficacy—more on that later) might be useful feedback because it can inform decisions about how to proceed, such as the amount of time to invest in learning how to play the flute, or whether or not to seek help learning the steps of the jitterbug. An important caveat, however, is that self-assessments of competence are only useful if students have opportunities to do something about their perceived low competence—that is, it serves the purpose of formative feedback for the learner.

How to Self-Assess?

Panadero et al. (2016a) summarized five very different taxonomies of self-assessment and called for the development of a comprehensive typology that considers, among other things, its purpose, the presence or absence of criteria, and the method. In response, I propose the taxonomy depicted in Table 1 , which focuses on the what (competence, process, or product), the why (formative or summative), and the how (methods, including whether or not they include standards, e.g., criteria) of self-assessment. The collections of examples of methods in the table is inexhaustive.

I put the methods in Table 1 where I think they belong, but many of them could be placed in more than one cell. Take self-efficacy , for instance, which is essentially a self-assessment of one's competence to successfully undertake a particular task ( Bandura, 1997 ). Summative judgments of self-efficacy are certainly possible but they seem like a silly thing to do—what is the point, from a learning perspective? Formative self-efficacy judgments, on the other hand, can inform next steps in learning and skill building. There is reason to believe that monitoring and making adjustments to one's self-efficacy (e.g., by setting goals or attributing success to effort) can be productive ( Zimmerman, 2000 ), so I placed self-efficacy in the formative row.

It is important to emphasize that self-efficacy is task-specific, more or less ( Bandura, 1997 ). This taxonomy does not include general, holistic evaluations of one's abilities, for example, “I am good at math.” Global assessment of competence does not provide the leverage, in terms of feedback, that is provided by task-specific assessments of competence, that is, self-efficacy. Eva and Regehr (2008) provided an illustrative example: “We suspect most people are prompted to open a dictionary as a result of encountering a word for which they are uncertain of the meaning rather than out of a broader assessment that their vocabulary could be improved” (p. 16). The exclusion of global evaluations of oneself resonates with research that clearly shows that feedback that focuses on aspects of a task (e.g., “I did not solve most of the algebra problems”) is more effective than feedback that focuses on the self (e.g., “I am bad at math”) ( Kluger and DeNisi, 1996 ; Dweck, 2006 ; Hattie and Timperley, 2007 ). Hence, global self-evaluations of ability or competence do not appear in Table 1 .

Another approach to student self-assessment that could be placed in more than one cell is traffic lights . The term traffic lights refers to asking students to use green, yellow, or red objects (or thumbs up, sideways, or down—anything will do) to indicate whether they think they have good, partial, or little understanding ( Black et al., 2003 ). It would be appropriate for traffic lights to appear in multiple places in Table 1 , depending on how they are used. Traffic lights seem to be most effective at supporting students' reflections on how well they understand a concept or have mastered a skill, which is line with their creators' original intent, so they are categorized as formative self-assessments of one's learning—which sounds like metacognition.

In fact, several of the methods included in Table 1 come from research on metacognition, including self-monitoring , such as checking one's reading comprehension, and self-testing , e.g., checking one's performance on test items. These last two methods have been excluded from some taxonomies of self-assessment (e.g., Boud and Brew, 1995 ) because they do not engage students in explicitly considering relevant standards or criteria. However, new conceptions of self-assessment are grounded in theories of the self- and co-regulation of learning ( Andrade and Brookhart, 2016 ), which includes self-monitoring of learning processes with and without explicit standards.

However, my research favors self-assessment with regard to standards ( Andrade and Boulay, 2003 ; Andrade and Du, 2007 ; Andrade et al., 2008 , 2009 , 2010 ), as does related research by Panadero and his colleagues (see below). I have involved students in self-assessment of stories, essays, or mathematical word problems according to rubrics or checklists with criteria. For example, two studies investigated the relationship between elementary or middle school students' scores on a written assignment and a process that involved them in reading a model paper, co-creating criteria, self-assessing first drafts with a rubric, and revising ( Andrade et al., 2008 , 2010 ). The self-assessment was highly scaffolded: students were asked to underline key phrases in the rubric with colored pencils (e.g., underline “clearly states an opinion” in blue), then underline or circle in their drafts the evidence of having met the standard articulated by the phrase (e.g., his or her opinion) with the same blue pencil. If students found they had not met the standard, they were asked to write themselves a reminder to make improvements when they wrote their final drafts. This process was followed for each criterion on the rubric. There were main effects on scores for every self-assessed criterion on the rubric, suggesting that guided self-assessment according to the co-created criteria helped students produce more effective writing.

Panadero and his colleagues have also done quasi-experimental and experimental research on standards-referenced self-assessment, using rubrics or lists of assessment criteria that are presented in the form of questions ( Panadero et al., 2012 , 2013 , 2014 ; Panadero and Romero, 2014 ). Panadero calls the list of assessment criteria a script because his work is grounded in research on scaffolding (e.g., Kollar et al., 2006 ): I call it a checklist because that is the term used in classroom assessment contexts. Either way, the list provides standards for the task. Here is a script for a written summary that Panadero et al. (2014) used with college students in a psychology class:

• Does my summary transmit the main idea from the text? Is it at the beginning of my summary?

• Are the important ideas also in my summary?

• Have I selected the main ideas from the text to make them explicit in my summary?

• Have I thought about my purpose for the summary? What is my goal?

Taken together, the results of the studies cited above suggest that students who engaged in self-assessment using scripts or rubrics were more self-regulated, as measured by self-report questionnaires and/or think aloud protocols, than were students in the comparison or control groups. Effect sizes were very small to moderate (η 2 = 0.06–0.42), and statistically significant. Most interesting, perhaps, is one study ( Panadero and Romero, 2014 ) that demonstrated an association between rubric-referenced self-assessment activities and all three phases of SRL; forethought, performance, and reflection.

There are surely many other methods of self-assessment to include in Table 1 , as well as interesting conversations to be had about which method goes where and why. In the meantime, I offer the taxonomy in Table 1 as a way to define and operationalize self-assessment in instructional contexts and as a framework for the following overview of current research on the subject.

An Overview of Current Research on Self-Assessment

Several recent reviews of self-assessment are available ( Brown and Harris, 2013 ; Brown et al., 2015 ; Panadero et al., 2017 ), so I will not summarize the entire body of research here. Instead, I chose to take a birds-eye view of the field, with goal of reporting on what has been sufficiently researched and what remains to be done. I used the references lists from reviews, as well as other relevant sources, as a starting point. In order to update the list of sources, I directed two new searches 1 , the first of the ERIC database, and the second of both ERIC and PsychINFO. Both searches included two search terms, “self-assessment” OR “self-evaluation.” Advanced search options had four delimiters: (1) peer-reviewed, (2) January, 2013–October, 2016 and then October 2016–March 2019, (3) English, and (4) full-text. Because the focus was on K-20 educational contexts, sources were excluded if they were about early childhood education or professional development.

The first search yielded 347 hits; the second 1,163. Research that was unrelated to instructional feedback was excluded, such as studies limited to self-estimates of performance before or after taking a test, guesses about whether a test item was answered correctly, and estimates of how many tasks could be completed in a certain amount of time. Although some of the excluded studies might be thought of as useful investigations of self-monitoring, as a group they seemed too unrelated to theories of self-generated feedback to be appropriate for this review. Seventy-six studies were selected for inclusion in Table S1 (Supplementary Material), which also contains a few studies published before 2013 that were not included in key reviews, as well as studies solicited directly from authors.

The Table S1 in the Supplementary Material contains a complete list of studies included in this review, organized by the focus or topic of the study, as well as brief descriptions of each. The “type” column Table S1 (Supplementary Material) indicates whether the study focused on formative or summative self-assessment. This distinction was often difficult to make due to a lack of information. For example, Memis and Seven (2015) frame their study in terms of formative assessment, and note that the purpose of the self-evaluation done by the sixth grade students is to “help students improve their [science] reports” (p. 39), but they do not indicate how the self-assessments were done, nor whether students were given time to revise their reports based on their judgments or supported in making revisions. A sentence or two of explanation about the process of self-assessment in the procedures sections of published studies would be most useful.

Figure 1 graphically represents the number of studies in the four most common topic categories found in the table—achievement, consistency, student perceptions, and SRL. The figure reveals that research on self-assessment is on the rise, with consistency the most popular topic. Of the 76 studies in the table in the appendix, 44 were inquiries into the consistency of students' self-assessments with other judgments (e.g., a test score or teacher's grade). Twenty-five studies investigated the relationship between self-assessment and achievement. Fifteen explored students' perceptions of self-assessment. Twelve studies focused on the association between self-assessment and self-regulated learning. One examined self-efficacy, and two qualitative studies documented the mental processes involved in self-assessment. The sum ( n = 99) of the list of research topics is more than 76 because several studies had multiple foci. In the remainder of this review I examine each topic in turn.

Figure 1 . Topics of self-assessment studies, 2013–2018.

Consistency

Table S1 (Supplementary Material) reveals that much of the recent research on self-assessment has investigated the accuracy or, more accurately, consistency, of students' self-assessments. The term consistency is more appropriate in the classroom context because the quality of students' self-assessments is often determined by comparing them with their teachers' assessments and then generating correlations. Given the evidence of the unreliability of teachers' grades ( Falchikov, 2005 ), the assumption that teachers' assessments are accurate might not be well-founded ( Leach, 2012 ; Brown et al., 2015 ). Ratings of student work done by researchers are also suspect, unless evidence of the validity and reliability of the inferences made about student work by researchers is available. Consequently, much of the research on classroom-based self-assessment should use the term consistency , which refers to the degree of alignment between students' and expert raters' evaluations, avoiding the purer, more rigorous term accuracy unless it is fitting.

In their review, Brown and Harris (2013) reported that correlations between student self-ratings and other measures tended to be weakly to strongly positive, ranging from r ≈ 0.20 to 0.80, with few studies reporting correlations >0.60. But their review included results from studies of any self-appraisal of school work, including summative self-rating/grading, predictions about the correctness of answers on test items, and formative, criteria-based self-assessments, a combination of methods that makes the correlations they reported difficult to interpret. Qualitatively different forms of self-assessment, especially summative and formative types, cannot be lumped together without obfuscating important aspects of self-assessment as feedback.

Given my concern about combining studies of summative and formative assessment, you might anticipate a call for research on consistency that distinguishes between the two. I will make no such call for three reasons. One is that we have enough research on the subject, including the 22 studies in Table S1 (Supplementary Material) that were published after Brown and Harris's review (2013 ). Drawing only on studies included in Table S1 (Supplementary Material), we can say with confidence that summative self-assessment tends to be inconsistent with external judgements ( Baxter and Norman, 2011 ; De Grez et al., 2012 ; Admiraal et al., 2015 ), with males tending to overrate and females to underrate ( Nowell and Alston, 2007 ; Marks et al., 2018 ). There are exceptions ( Alaoutinen, 2012 ; Lopez-Pastor et al., 2012 ) as well as mixed results, with students being consistent regarding some aspects of their learning but not others ( Blanch-Hartigan, 2011 ; Harding and Hbaci, 2015 ; Nguyen and Foster, 2018 ). We can also say that older, more academically competent learners tend to be more consistent ( Hacker et al., 2000 ; Lew et al., 2010 ; Alaoutinen, 2012 ; Guillory and Blankson, 2017 ; Butler, 2018 ; Nagel and Lindsey, 2018 ). There is evidence that consistency can be improved through experience ( Lopez and Kossack, 2007 ; Yilmaz, 2017 ; Nagel and Lindsey, 2018 ), the use of guidelines ( Bol et al., 2012 ), feedback ( Thawabieh, 2017 ), and standards ( Baars et al., 2014 ), perhaps in the form of rubrics ( Panadero and Romero, 2014 ). Modeling and feedback also help ( Labuhn et al., 2010 ; Miller and Geraci, 2011 ; Hawkins et al., 2012 ; Kostons et al., 2012 ).

An outcome typical of research on the consistency of summative self-assessment can be found in row 59, which summarizes the study by Tejeiro et al. (2012) discussed earlier: Students' self-assessments were higher than marks given by professors, especially for students with poorer results, and no relationship was found between the professors' and the students' assessments in the group in which self-assessment counted toward the final mark. Students are not stupid: if they know that they can influence their final grade, and that their judgment is summative rather than intended to inform revision and improvement, they will be motivated to inflate their self-evaluation. I do not believe we need more research to demonstrate that phenomenon.

The second reason I am not calling for additional research on consistency is a lot of it seems somewhat irrelevant. This might be because the interest in accuracy is rooted in clinical research on calibration, which has very different aims. Calibration accuracy is the “magnitude of consent between learners' true and self-evaluated task performance. Accurately calibrated learners' task performance equals their self-evaluated task performance” ( Wollenschläger et al., 2016 ). Calibration research often asks study participants to predict or postdict the correctness of their responses to test items. I caution about generalizing from clinical experiments to authentic classroom contexts because the dismal picture of our human potential to self-judge was painted by calibration researchers before study participants were effectively taught how to predict with accuracy, or provided with the tools they needed to be accurate, or motivated to do so. Calibration researchers know that, of course, and have conducted intervention studies that attempt to improve accuracy, with some success (e.g., Bol et al., 2012 ). Studies of formative self-assessment also suggest that consistency increases when it is taught and supported in many of the ways any other skill must be taught and supported ( Lopez and Kossack, 2007 ; Labuhn et al., 2010 ; Chang et al., 2012 , 2013 ; Hawkins et al., 2012 ; Panadero and Romero, 2014 ; Lin-Siegler et al., 2015 ; Fitzpatrick and Schulz, 2016 ).

Even clinical psychological studies that go beyond calibration to examine the associations between monitoring accuracy and subsequent study behaviors do not transfer well to classroom assessment research. After repeatedly encountering claims that, for example, low self-assessment accuracy leads to poor task-selection accuracy and “suboptimal learning outcomes” ( Raaijmakers et al., 2019 , p. 1), I dug into the cited studies and discovered two limitations. The first is that the tasks in which study participants engage are quite inauthentic. A typical task involves studying “word pairs (e.g., railroad—mother), followed by a delayed judgment of learning (JOL) in which the students predicted the chances of remembering the pair… After making a JOL, the entire pair was presented for restudy for 4 s [ sic ], and after all pairs had been restudied, a criterion test of paired-associate recall occurred” ( Dunlosky and Rawson, 2012 , p. 272). Although memory for word pairs might be important in some classroom contexts, it is not safe to assume that results from studies like that one can predict students' behaviors after criterion-referenced self-assessment of their comprehension of complex texts, lengthy compositions, or solutions to multi-step mathematical problems.

The second limitation of studies like the typical one described above is more serious: Participants in research like that are not permitted to regulate their own studying, which is experimentally manipulated by a computer program. This came as a surprise, since many of the claims were about students' poor study choices but they were rarely allowed to make actual choices. For example, Dunlosky and Rawson (2012) permitted participants to “use monitoring to effectively control learning” by programming the computer so that “a participant would need to have judged his or her recall of a definition entirely correct on three different trials, and once they judged it entirely correct on the third trial, that particular key term definition was dropped [by the computer program] from further practice” (p. 272). The authors note that this study design is an improvement on designs that did not require all participants to use the same regulation algorithm, but it does not reflect the kinds of decisions that learners make in class or while doing homework. In fact, a large body of research shows that students can make wise choices when they self-pace the study of to-be-learned materials and then allocate study time to each item ( Bjork et al., 2013 , p. 425):

In a typical experiment, the students first study all the items at an experimenter-paced rate (e.g., study 60 paired associates for 3 s each), which familiarizes the students with the items; after this familiarity phase, the students then either choose which items they want to restudy (e.g., all items are presented in an array, and the students select which ones to restudy) and/or pace their restudy of each item. Several dependent measures have been widely used, such as how long each item is studied, whether an item is selected for restudy, and in what order items are selected for restudy. The literature on these aspects of self-regulated study is massive (for a comprehensive overview, see both Dunlosky and Ariel, 2011 and Son and Metcalfe, 2000 ), but the evidence is largely consistent with a few basic conclusions. First, if students have a chance to practice retrieval prior to restudying items, they almost exclusively choose to restudy unrecalled items and drop the previously recalled items from restudy ( Metcalfe and Kornell, 2005 ). Second, when pacing their study of individual items that have been selected for restudy, students typically spend more time studying items that are more, rather than less, difficult to learn. Such a strategy is consistent with a discrepancy-reduction model of self-paced study (which states that people continue to study an item until they reach mastery), although some key revisions to this model are needed to account for all the data. For instance, students may not continue to study until they reach some static criterion of mastery, but instead, they may continue to study until they perceive that they are no longer making progress.

I propose that this research, which suggests that students' unscaffolded, unmeasured, informal self-assessments tend to lead to appropriate task selection, is better aligned with research on classroom-based self-assessment. Nonetheless, even this comparison is inadequate because the study participants were not taught to compare their performance to the criteria for mastery, as is often done in classroom-based self-assessment.

The third and final reason I do not believe we need additional research on consistency is that I think it is a distraction from the true purposes of self-assessment. Many if not most of the articles about the accuracy of self-assessment are grounded in the assumption that accuracy is necessary for self-assessment to be useful, particularly in terms of subsequent studying and revision behaviors. Although it seems obvious that accurate evaluations of their performance positively influence students' study strategy selection, which should produce improvements in achievement, I have not seen relevant research that tests those conjectures. Some claim that inaccurate estimates of learning lead to the selection of inappropriate learning tasks ( Kostons et al., 2012 ) but they cite research that does not support their claim. For example, Kostons et al. cite studies that focus on the effectiveness of SRL interventions but do not address the accuracy of participants' estimates of learning, nor the relationship of those estimates to the selection of next steps. Other studies produce findings that support my skepticism. Take, for instance, two relevant studies of calibration. One suggested that performance and judgments of performance had little influence on subsequent test preparation behavior ( Hacker et al., 2000 ), and the other showed that study participants followed their predictions of performance to the same degree, regardless of monitoring accuracy ( van Loon et al., 2014 ).

Eva and Regehr (2008) believe that:

Research questions that take the form of “How well do various practitioners self-assess?” “How can we improve self-assessment?” or “How can we measure self-assessment skill?” should be considered defunct and removed from the research agenda [because] there have been hundreds of studies into these questions and the answers are “Poorly,” “You can't,” and “Don't bother” (p. 18).

I almost agree. A study that could change my mind about the importance of accuracy of self-assessment would be an investigation that goes beyond attempting to improve accuracy just for the sake of accuracy by instead examining the relearning/revision behaviors of accurate and inaccurate self-assessors: Do students whose self-assessments match the valid and reliable judgments of expert raters (hence my use of the term accuracy ) make better decisions about what they need to do to deepen their learning and improve their work? Here, I admit, is a call for research related to consistency: I would love to see a high-quality investigation of the relationship between accuracy in formative self-assessment, and students' subsequent study and revision behaviors, and their learning. For example, a study that closely examines the revisions to writing made by accurate and inaccurate self-assessors, and the resulting outcomes in terms of the quality of their writing, would be most welcome.

Table S1 (Supplementary Material) indicates that by 2018 researchers began publishing studies that more directly address the hypothesized link between self-assessment and subsequent learning behaviors, as well as important questions about the processes learners engage in while self-assessing ( Yan and Brown, 2017 ). One, a study by Nugteren et al. (2018 row 19 in Table S1 (Supplementary Material)), asked “How do inaccurate [summative] self-assessments influence task selections?” (p. 368) and employed a clever exploratory research design. The results suggested that most of the 15 students in their sample over-estimated their performance and made inaccurate learning-task selections. Nugteren et al. recommended helping students make more accurate self-assessments, but I think the more interesting finding is related to why students made task selections that were too difficult or too easy, given their prior performance: They based most task selections on interest in the content of particular items (not the overarching content to be learned), and infrequently considered task difficulty and support level. For instance, while working on the genetics tasks, students reported selecting tasks because they were fun or interesting, not because they addressed self-identified weaknesses in their understanding of genetics. Nugteren et al. proposed that students would benefit from instruction on task selection. I second that proposal: Rather than directing our efforts on accuracy in the service of improving subsequent task selection, let us simply teach students to use the information at hand to select next best steps, among other things.

Butler (2018 , row 76 in Table S1 (Supplementary Material)) has conducted at least two studies of learners' processes of responding to self-assessment items and how they arrived at their judgments. Comparing generic, decontextualized items to task-specific, contextualized items (which she calls after-task items ), she drew two unsurprising conclusions: the task-specific items “generally showed higher correlations with task performance,” and older students “appeared to be more conservative in their judgment compared with their younger counterparts” (p. 249). The contribution of the study is the detailed information it provides about how students generated their judgments. For example, Butler's qualitative data analyses revealed that when asked to self-assess in terms of vague or non-specific items, the children often “contextualized the descriptions based on their own experiences, goals, and expectations,” (p. 257) focused on the task at hand, and situated items in the specific task context. Perhaps as a result, the correlation between after-task self-assessment and task performance was generally higher than for generic self-assessment.

Butler (2018) notes that her study enriches our empirical understanding of the processes by which children respond to self-assessment. This is a very promising direction for the field. Similar studies of processing during formative self-assessment of a variety of task types in a classroom context would likely produce significant advances in our understanding of how and why self-assessment influences learning and performance.

Student Perceptions

Fifteen of the studies listed in Table S1 (Supplementary Material) focused on students' perceptions of self-assessment. The studies of children suggest that they tend to have unsophisticated understandings of its purposes ( Harris and Brown, 2013 ; Bourke, 2016 ) that might lead to shallow implementation of related processes. In contrast, results from the studies conducted in higher education settings suggested that college and university students understood the function of self-assessment ( Ratminingsih et al., 2018 ) and generally found it to be useful for guiding evaluation and revision ( Micán and Medina, 2017 ), understanding how to take responsibility for learning ( Lopez and Kossack, 2007 ; Bourke, 2014 ; Ndoye, 2017 ), prompting them to think more critically and deeply ( van Helvoort, 2012 ; Siow, 2015 ), applying newfound skills ( Murakami et al., 2012 ), and fostering self-regulated learning by guiding them to set goals, plan, self-monitor and reflect ( Wang, 2017 ).

Not surprisingly, positive perceptions of self-assessment were typically developed by students who actively engaged the formative type by, for example, developing their own criteria for an effective self-assessment response ( Bourke, 2014 ), or using a rubric or checklist to guide their assessments and then revising their work ( Huang and Gui, 2015 ; Wang, 2017 ). Earlier research suggested that children's attitudes toward self-assessment can become negative if it is summative ( Ross et al., 1998 ). However, even summative self-assessment was reported by adult learners to be useful in helping them become more critical of their own and others' writing throughout the course and in subsequent courses ( van Helvoort, 2012 ).

Achievement

Twenty-five of the studies in Table S1 (Supplementary Material) investigated the relation between self-assessment and achievement, including two meta-analyses. Twenty of the 25 clearly employed the formative type. Without exception, those 20 studies, plus the two meta-analyses ( Graham et al., 2015 ; Sanchez et al., 2017 ) demonstrated a positive association between self-assessment and learning. The meta-analysis conducted by Graham and his colleagues, which included 10 studies, yielded an average weighted effect size of 0.62 on writing quality. The Sanchez et al. meta-analysis revealed that, although 12 of the 44 effect sizes were negative, on average, “students who engaged in self-grading performed better ( g = 0.34) on subsequent tests than did students who did not” (p. 1,049).

All but two of the non-meta-analytic studies of achievement in Table S1 (Supplementary Material) were quasi-experimental or experimental, providing relatively rigorous evidence that their treatment groups outperformed their comparison or control groups in terms of everything from writing to dart-throwing, map-making, speaking English, and exams in a wide variety of disciplines. One experiment on summative self-assessment ( Miller and Geraci, 2011 ), in contrast, resulted in no improvements in exam scores, while the other one did ( Raaijmakers et al., 2017 ).

It would be easy to overgeneralize and claim that the question about the effect of self-assessment on learning has been answered, but there are unanswered questions about the key components of effective self-assessment, especially social-emotional components related to power and trust ( Andrade and Brown, 2016 ). The trends are pretty clear, however: it appears that formative forms of self-assessment can promote knowledge and skill development. This is not surprising, given that it involves many of the processes known to support learning, including practice, feedback, revision, and especially the intellectually demanding work of making complex, criteria-referenced judgments ( Panadero et al., 2014 ). Boud (1995a , b) predicted this trend when he noted that many self-assessment processes undermine learning by rushing to judgment, thereby failing to engage students with the standards or criteria for their work.

Self-Regulated Learning

The association between self-assessment and learning has also been explained in terms of self-regulation ( Andrade, 2010 ; Panadero and Alonso-Tapia, 2013 ; Andrade and Brookhart, 2016 , 2019 ; Panadero et al., 2016b ). Self-regulated learning (SRL) occurs when learners set goals and then monitor and manage their thoughts, feelings, and actions to reach those goals. SRL is moderately to highly correlated with achievement ( Zimmerman and Schunk, 2011 ). Research suggests that formative assessment is a potential influence on SRL ( Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick, 2006 ). The 12 studies in Table S1 (Supplementary Material) that focus on SRL demonstrate the recent increase in interest in the relationship between self-assessment and SRL.

Conceptual and practical overlaps between the two fields are abundant. In fact, Brown and Harris (2014) recommend that student self-assessment no longer be treated as an assessment, but as an essential competence for self-regulation. Butler and Winne (1995) introduced the role of self-generated feedback in self-regulation years ago:

[For] all self-regulated activities, feedback is an inherent catalyst. As learners monitor their engagement with tasks, internal feedback is generated by the monitoring process. That feedback describes the nature of outcomes and the qualities of the cognitive processes that led to those states (p. 245).

The outcomes and processes referred to by Butler and Winne are many of the same products and processes I referred to earlier in the definition of self-assessment and in Table 1 .

In general, research and practice related to self-assessment has tended to focus on judging the products of student learning, while scholarship on self-regulated learning encompasses both processes and products. The very practical focus of much of the research on self-assessment means it might be playing catch-up, in terms of theory development, with the SRL literature, which is grounded in experimental paradigms from cognitive psychology ( de Bruin and van Gog, 2012 ), while self-assessment research is ahead in terms of implementation (E. Panadero, personal communication, October 21, 2016). One major exception is the work done on Self-regulated Strategy Development ( Glaser and Brunstein, 2007 ; Harris et al., 2008 ), which has successfully integrated SRL research with classroom practices, including self-assessment, to teach writing to students with special needs.

Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006) have been explicit about the potential for self-assessment practices to support self-regulated learning:

To develop systematically the learner's capacity for self-regulation, teachers need to create more structured opportunities for self-monitoring and the judging of progression to goals. Self-assessment tasks are an effective way of achieving this, as are activities that encourage reflection on learning progress (p. 207).

The studies of SRL in Table S1 (Supplementary Material) provide encouraging findings regarding the potential role of self-assessment in promoting achievement, self-regulated learning in general, and metacognition and study strategies related to task selection in particular. The studies also represent a solution to the “methodological and theoretical challenges involved in bringing metacognitive research to the real world, using meaningful learning materials” ( Koriat, 2012 , p. 296).

Future Directions for Research

I agree with ( Yan and Brown, 2017 ) statement that “from a pedagogical perspective, the benefits of self-assessment may come from active engagement in the learning process, rather than by being “veridical” or coinciding with reality, because students' reflection and metacognitive monitoring lead to improved learning” (p. 1,248). Future research should focus less on accuracy/consistency/veridicality, and more on the precise mechanisms of self-assessment ( Butler, 2018 ).

An important aspect of research on self-assessment that is not explicitly represented in Table S1 (Supplementary Material) is practice, or pedagogy: Under what conditions does self-assessment work best, and how are those conditions influenced by context? Fortunately, the studies listed in the table, as well as others (see especially Andrade and Valtcheva, 2009 ; Nielsen, 2014 ; Panadero et al., 2016a ), point toward an answer. But we still have questions about how best to scaffold effective formative self-assessment. One area of inquiry is about the characteristics of the task being assessed, and the standards or criteria used by learners during self-assessment.

Influence of Types of Tasks and Standards or Criteria

Type of task or competency assessed seems to matter (e.g., Dolosic, 2018 , Nguyen and Foster, 2018 ), as do the criteria ( Yilmaz, 2017 ), but we do not yet have a comprehensive understanding of how or why. There is some evidence that it is important that the criteria used to self-assess are concrete, task-specific ( Butler, 2018 ), and graduated. For example, Fastre et al. (2010) revealed an association between self-assessment according to task-specific criteria and task performance: In a quasi-experimental study of 39 novice vocational education students studying stoma care, they compared concrete, task-specific criteria (“performance-based criteria”) such as “Introduces herself to the patient” and “Consults the care file for details concerning the stoma” to vaguer, “competence-based criteria” such as “Shows interest, listens actively, shows empathy to the patient” and “Is discrete with sensitive topics.” The performance-based criteria group outperformed the competence-based group on tests of task performance, presumably because “performance-based criteria make it easier to distinguish levels of performance, enabling a step-by-step process of performance improvement” (p. 530).

This finding echoes the results of a study of self-regulated learning by Kitsantas and Zimmerman (2006) , who argued that “fine-grained standards can have two key benefits: They can enable learners to be more sensitive to small changes in skill and make more appropriate adaptations in learning strategies” (p. 203). In their study, 70 college students were taught how to throw darts at a target. The purpose of the study was to examine the role of graphing of self-recorded outcomes and self-evaluative standards in learning a motor skill. Students who were provided with graduated self-evaluative standards surpassed “those who were provided with absolute standards or no standards (control) in both motor skill and in motivational beliefs (i.e., self-efficacy, attributions, and self-satisfaction)” (p. 201). Kitsantas and Zimmerman hypothesized that setting high absolute standards would limit a learner's sensitivity to small improvements in functioning. This hypothesis was supported by the finding that students who set absolute standards reported significantly less awareness of learning progress (and hit the bull's-eye less often) than students who set graduated standards. “The correlation between the self-evaluation and dart-throwing outcomes measures was extraordinarily high ( r = 0.94)” (p. 210). Classroom-based research on specific, graduated self-assessment criteria would be informative.

Cognitive and Affective Mechanisms of Self-Assessment

There are many additional questions about pedagogy, such as the hoped-for investigation mentioned above of the relationship between accuracy in formative self-assessment, students' subsequent study behaviors, and their learning. There is also a need for research on how to help teachers give students a central role in their learning by creating space for self-assessment (e.g., see Hawe and Parr, 2014 ), and the complex power dynamics involved in doing so ( Tan, 2004 , 2009 ; Taras, 2008 ; Leach, 2012 ). However, there is an even more pressing need for investigations into the internal mechanisms experienced by students engaged in assessing their own learning. Angela Lui and I call this the next black box ( Lui, 2017 ).

Black and Wiliam (1998) used the term black box to emphasize the fact that what happened in most classrooms was largely unknown: all we knew was that some inputs (e.g., teachers, resources, standards, and requirements) were fed into the box, and that certain outputs (e.g., more knowledgeable and competent students, acceptable levels of achievement) would follow. But what, they asked, is happening inside, and what new inputs will produce better outputs? Black and Wiliam's review spawned a great deal of research on formative assessment, some but not all of which suggests a positive relationship with academic achievement ( Bennett, 2011 ; Kingston and Nash, 2011 ). To better understand why and how the use of formative assessment in general and self-assessment in particular is associated with improvements in academic achievement in some instances but not others, we need research that looks into the next black box: the cognitive and affective mechanisms of students who are engaged in assessment processes ( Lui, 2017 ).

The role of internal mechanisms has been discussed in theory but not yet fully tested. Crooks (1988) argued that the impact of assessment is influenced by students' interpretation of the tasks and results, and Butler and Winne (1995) theorized that both cognitive and affective processes play a role in determining how feedback is internalized and used to self-regulate learning. Other theoretical frameworks about the internal processes of receiving and responding to feedback have been developed (e.g., Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick, 2006 ; Draper, 2009 ; Andrade, 2013 ; Lipnevich et al., 2016 ). Yet, Shute (2008) noted in her review of the literature on formative feedback that “despite the plethora of research on the topic, the specific mechanisms relating feedback to learning are still mostly murky, with very few (if any) general conclusions” (p. 156). This area is ripe for research.

Self-assessment is the act of monitoring one's processes and products in order to make adjustments that deepen learning and enhance performance. Although it can be summative, the evidence presented in this review strongly suggests that self-assessment is most beneficial, in terms of both achievement and self-regulated learning, when it is used formatively and supported by training.

What is not yet clear is why and how self-assessment works. Those of you who like to investigate phenomena that are maddeningly difficult to measure will rejoice to hear that the cognitive and affective mechanisms of self-assessment are the next black box. Studies of the ways in which learners think and feel, the interactions between their thoughts and feelings and their context, and the implications for pedagogy will make major contributions to our field.

Author Contributions

The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2019.00087/full#supplementary-material

1. ^ I am grateful to my graduate assistants, Joanna Weaver and Taja Young, for conducting the searches.

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Keywords: self-assessment, self-evaluation, self-grading, formative assessment, classroom assessment, self-regulated learning (SRL)

Citation: Andrade HL (2019) A Critical Review of Research on Student Self-Assessment. Front. Educ. 4:87. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2019.00087

Received: 27 April 2019; Accepted: 02 August 2019; Published: 27 August 2019.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2019 Andrade. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Heidi L. Andrade, handrade@albany.edu

This article is part of the Research Topic

Advances in Classroom Assessment Theory and Practice

Self-Assessment Through Rubrics

Assessment versus evaluation, rubrics as student self-assessment tools, setting clear expectations, conducting self-assessment, self-assessment works.

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Self-assessment … just eases your mind about doing your papers and stuff; it doesn't make you so anxious, and you can actually work ahead a little bit.

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Assessment Rubrics

A rubric is commonly defined as a tool that articulates the expectations for an assignment by listing criteria, and for each criteria, describing levels of quality (Andrade, 2000; Arter & Chappuis, 2007; Stiggins, 2001). Criteria are used in determining the level at which student work meets expectations. Markers of quality give students a clear idea about what must be done to demonstrate a certain level of mastery, understanding, or proficiency (i.e., "Exceeds Expectations" does xyz, "Meets Expectations" does only xy or yz, "Developing" does only x or y or z). Rubrics can be used for any assignment in a course, or for any way in which students are asked to demonstrate what they've learned. They can also be used to facilitate self and peer-reviews of student work.

Rubrics aren't just for summative evaluation. They can be used as a teaching tool as well. When used as part of a formative assessment, they can help students understand both the holistic nature and/or specific analytics of learning expected, the level of learning expected, and then make decisions about their current level of learning to inform revision and improvement (Reddy & Andrade, 2010). 

Why use rubrics?

Rubrics help instructors:

Provide students with feedback that is clear, directed and focused on ways to improve learning.

Demystify assignment expectations so students can focus on the work instead of guessing "what the instructor wants."

Reduce time spent on grading and develop consistency in how you evaluate student learning across students and throughout a class.

Rubrics help students:

Focus their efforts on completing assignments in line with clearly set expectations.

Self and Peer-reflect on their learning, making informed changes to achieve the desired learning level.

Developing a Rubric

During the process of developing a rubric, instructors might:

Select an assignment for your course - ideally one you identify as time intensive to grade, or students report as having unclear expectations.

Decide what you want students to demonstrate about their learning through that assignment. These are your criteria.

Identify the markers of quality on which you feel comfortable evaluating students’ level of learning - often along with a numerical scale (i.e., "Accomplished," "Emerging," "Beginning" for a developmental approach).

Give students the rubric ahead of time. Advise them to use it in guiding their completion of the assignment.

It can be overwhelming to create a rubric for every assignment in a class at once, so start by creating one rubric for one assignment. See how it goes and develop more from there! Also, do not reinvent the wheel. Rubric templates and examples exist all over the Internet, or consider asking colleagues if they have developed rubrics for similar assignments. 

Sample Rubrics

Examples of holistic and analytic rubrics : see Tables 2 & 3 in “Rubrics: Tools for Making Learning Goals and Evaluation Criteria Explicit for Both Teachers and Learners” (Allen & Tanner, 2006)

Examples across assessment types : see “Creating and Using Rubrics,” Carnegie Mellon Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and & Educational Innovation

“VALUE Rubrics” : see the Association of American Colleges and Universities set of free, downloadable rubrics, with foci including creative thinking, problem solving, and information literacy. 

Andrade, H. 2000. Using rubrics to promote thinking and learning. Educational Leadership 57, no. 5: 13–18. Arter, J., and J. Chappuis. 2007. Creating and recognizing quality rubrics. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Merrill Prentice Hall. Stiggins, R.J. 2001. Student-involved classroom assessment. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Reddy, Y., & Andrade, H. (2010). A review of rubric use in higher education. Assessment & Evaluation In Higher Education, 35(4), 435-448.

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Assignment Self Assessment

Assignments provide students with opportunities to apply what they are learning in class and impart useful information to instructors on how to improve their teaching practices. Creating effective and meaningful assignments takes careful planning and skill. Students complain about assignments for a variety of reasons such as when they struggle with course material and feel threatened by being graded, when they are not clear about the criteria used to judge their performance, when they do not understand the assignment’s sense of purpose and view it as busy work, or when there are too many assignments in the class and they struggle to keep up. Below we provide a checklist informed by best practices in the literature on how to design effective assignments. See where you may improve.

Download the fillable PDF here

Balan, P., & Manickam, G. (2013, August). Promoting holistic education through design of meaningful and effective assignments in sustainable engineering. In Proceedings of 2013 IEEE international conference on Teaching, Assessment and Learning for Engineering (TALE) (pp. 382-385). IEEE.

Barre, E. (2016, July 15). How much should we assign? Estimating out of class workload. Rice University Center for Teaching Excellence. Retrieved September 20, 2022, from https://cte.rice.edu/blogarchive/2016/07/11/workload

Brooks, C. F., & Young, S. L. (2011). Are Choice-Making Opportunities Needed in the Classroom? Using Self-Determination Theory to Consider Student Motivation and Learner Empowerment. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 23(1), 48-59.

Columbia University. (n.d.). Designing Assignments for Learning. Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning. Retrieved September 20, 2022, from https://ctl.columbia.edu/resources-and-technology/teaching-with-technolo...

Hutchings, P., Jankowski, N. A., & Schultz, K. E. (2016). Designing effective classroom assignments: Intellectual work worth sharing. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 48(1), 6-15.

Planchard, M., Daniel, K. L., Maroo, J., Mishra, C., & McLean, T. (2015). Homework, Motivation, and Academic Achievement in a College Genetics Course. Bioscene: Journal of College Biology Teaching, 41(2), 11-18.

Riddle, R. (2022, March 14). How Much Homework is Too Much? Duke Learning Innovation. Retrieved September 20, 2022, from https://learninginnovation.duke.edu/blog/2018/10/how-much-homework-is-to...

Rosário, P., Núñez, J. C., Vallejo, G., Nunes, T., Cunha, J., Fuentes, S., & Valle, A. (2018). Homework purposes, homework behaviors, and academic achievement. Examining the mediating role of students’ perceived homework quality. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 53, 168-180.

Schroeder, C. (2011). Scaffolded assignments: designing structure and support. History, 22, 23.

Stevens, J. (2018). Finding the balance: Creating meaningful assignments without overwhelming instructional workload. Journal of Educators Online, 15(3), n3.

University of Chicago. (n.d.). Why Assignments? Chicago Center for Teaching and Learning. Retrieved September 20, 2022, from https://teaching.uchicago.edu/resources/evaluating-student-learning/assi...

Vatterott, C. (2010). 5 Hallmarks of Good Homework. Educational Leadership, 68 (1), 10-15.

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Leadership Self-Assessment: How Effective Are You?

• 21 Nov 2019

Knowing yourself is critical to being an effective leader . Building self-awareness and understanding your tendencies and motivational drivers can enable you to unlock the potential in yourself and your team.

“Self-awareness is about developing your capacity to sense how you’re coming across—to have undistorted visibility into your own strengths and weaknesses—and to be able to gauge the emotions you’re personally experiencing,” says Harvard Business School Professor Joshua Margolis in the online course Leadership Principles . “If you’re going to mobilize others to get things done, you can’t let your own emotions get in the way.”

This especially reigns true for professionals with experience in leadership roles. Leaders must be level-headed and capable of making critical decisions for the good of their organizations. Successful leaders must also be in tune with their leadership capabilities before acting on them. There’s reason to suggest that self-aware leaders directly correlate to happier employees and healthier companies.

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Why Is Self-Evaluation Important For Leaders?

According to an analysis by Korn/Ferry International , companies with higher rates of financial return tend to employ professionals with high degrees of self-awareness. Relatedly, research by the Association for Talent Development shows that self-aware leaders report having:

• Greater effectiveness in the workplace
• Better relationships with colleagues
• Improved abilities to identify and manage their emotions
• Reduced stress

Reaping these rewards can be achieved through honest self-assessment. By examining patterns in how you view yourself and how others experience you, you can identify ways to learn and develop as a leader.

If you want to maximize your career trajectory and improve how you guide and manage teams, here are four ways you can assess your leadership effectiveness.

How to Self-Evaluate Yourself as a Leader

1. complete a self-assessment.

Questionnaires can be useful for identifying your motivations and strengths. In the online course Leadership Principles , participants complete two self-assessments: the Emotional and Social Competency Inventory (ESCI) and the Personal Values Questionnaire (PVQ) .

By taking these assessments, leaders can recognize behavioral patterns and gain insight into how they manage themselves and their colleagues.

This self-awareness is critical to effective leadership because it develops emotional intelligence —an ability that’s possessed by 90 percent of top performers in the workplace . Through looking inward and answering questions with honesty and candor, you learn how to better command your emotions—as well as others’—and build a foundation for your leadership approach .

2. Observe Yourself

In addition to self-assessments, observing a video recording of yourself can be a valuable way to learn more about your current leadership tendencies. Taking part in this kind of exercise can enable you to gauge how you present yourself and exhibit attributes of different leadership styles , such as authenticity, humility, and faith. Maintaining these attributes can not only foster concern for your company’s success but employees' wellbeing—also known as “caring leadership.”

Engaging in critical self-observation can also help you overcome the vulnerability of putting yourself in front of others as a leader, providing the confidence needed to inspire and influence your team .

3. Ask for Feedback

Beyond self-reflection, turn to those you interact and collaborate with for feedback on your effectiveness. Unlike management , leadership is less about administering and organizing and more about aligning and empowering employees to pursue organizational goals.

By turning to colleagues for thoughts on how they experience your leadership style, you can identify discrepancies in how you perceive yourself and chart a plan for more effective leadership. Soliciting and heeding feedback also helps develop clear lines of communication , which, according to the Center for Creative Leadership, is essential for building trust and driving performance.

For Juliana Casale , a marketing professional who took the online course Leadership Principles , completing self-assessments and receiving peer feedback led to a greater sense of awareness in her role and improved communication with her team.

“I'm now more mindful of how my colleagues are experiencing me and less averse to having difficult conversations,” Casale says.

Related: How to Give Feedback Effectively

4. Build and Maintain a Robust Network

Leadership is a skill that must be honed. As you progress throughout your career, it’s vital to cultivate a robust network you can rely on for coaching, support, and guidance.

“Your internal and external networks are important leadership assets,” says HBS Professor Anthony Mayo in the online course Leadership Principles . “They're how you gain access to resources like information, know-how, and funding that are crucial in enabling you to help those you’re leading. Networks also foster your learning by connecting you to people in organizations with different skills, perspectives, and contexts than your own.”

Through networking, you can build a powerful resource that exposes you to new opportunities and drives personal growth and success.

Unleashing Your Leadership Potential

You can be an effective leader at any stage of your career . Whether you’re a mid-level manager or new to the workforce, honing your leadership skills can pay dividends for your professional development.

By building self-awareness, soliciting feedback, and networking, you can gain a better understanding of your personal leadership style and unleash the potential in yourself and others.

Do you want to enhance your leadership skills? Explore Leadership Principles —one of our online leadership and management courses —to discover how you can become a more effective leader and unleash the potential in yourself and others.

This article was updated on July 19, 2022. It was originally published on November 21, 2019.

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Student Self-Assessment: Importance, Strategies & Steps

One of the most important skills that students can learn is how to assess their work. This skill allows them to take control of their learning process, set personal goals, and track their progress.

With the use of readily available technology, students are provided with the opportunity to assess their work in various formats.

However, without a clear understanding of why self-assessment is important, many students will not take the time to do it.

In this article, we will explore why student self-assessment is essential, and we will provide some tips on how to build this skill in steps.

Let’s get right into it.

What is Student Self Assessment?

Successful student self-assessment is the process of students evaluating their work to improve their understanding and learning strategy.

This can be done in various formats, including writing reflections, drawing diagrams, recording audio or video, or using online tools.

Self-assessment allows students to take control of their learning by setting learning goal, tracking progress, and identifying areas for improvement.

It is an important skill that can be used in all subjects, and it can be adapted to different age groups and abilities.

The Importance of Student Self Assessment

There are many reasons why student self-assessment is important. Understanding some of these reasons can help to motivate college students to take the time to assess their work.

Here are 10 of the most important benefits:

• Student self-assessment helps students take ownership of their learning.
• It allows students to set goals and track their progress.
• Student self-assessment helps students identify areas for improvement.
• It develops critical thinking skills.
• Student self-assessment encourages reflection on independent learning experiences.
• It teaches students how to evaluate their work.
• It helps students with authentic, human-centered learning.
• It prepares students for assessment by others (e.g., teachers and employers).
• Student self-assessment promotes metacognitive skills (thinking about thinking).
• It encourages learners to be self-motivated and resourceful.

As you can see, there are many benefits to student self-assessment. It is an important skill that can help students succeed in all areas of their lives. Let’s now look at how to build this skill in steps.

4 Step Strategy for Student’s Self-Assessment

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to student self-assessment. However, there is a general four-step strategy that can be adapted to different ages and abilities.

Let’s go into more detail about each step.

1. Expose your students to examples of mastery

Creating folders with strong examples of high-quality work can be a great way to introduce self-assessment into the classroom.

For example, if you are teaching a science class, create a folder with examples of what well-written lab reports look like.

You can have your students take turns looking at the folders and seeing how each piece of work is different from the others but still meets a general standard.

If you’re learning another language, creating a learning vocabulary with pronunciation can be a great way to introduce speaking standards to your students.

2. Provide your students with the vocabulary to analyze work

Providing young learners with basic vocabulary words such as ‘detail,’ ‘example,’ and ‘description’ can encourage them to use important self-assessment skills such as problem-solving and critical thinking.

It’s also important that we don’t tell them the answer but rather let them find it themselves.

In other words, we let our students make mistakes and have a learning journey instead of always trying to prevent their mistakes from happening in the first place.

This fundamental principle for teaching and learning will be explored more thoroughly in a future post.

3. Teach your students how to give peer critiques

The purpose of giving a peer critique is not necessarily for students to make peer assessments but rather to identify areas for improvement using descriptive language.

Commonly, one student will have peer feedback about something they don’t understand about another student’s work, and the other student won’t be able to explain it either because they didn’t know what they were doing when they created their work.

This creates good post-critique discussions.

4. Visual Thinking Strategies

Visual thinking strategies can be used to support self-assessment by helping students identify specific elements of their work (e.g., the number of details, and quality of description).

There are many different types of visual thinking strategies – each with its unique purpose and design. For example, there is a strategy for identifying main ideas and supporting details called ‘Venn Diagrams .’

Another strategy for assessing understanding is called ‘Think-Aloud Protocols.’  The possibilities are endless.

How to Execute Student Self-Assessment?

Teach students different strategies of self assessment.

The most important thing is to teach students multiple self-assessment strategies. This will help them become more aware of their strengths and weaknesses.

One way to do this is to provide students with a graphic organizer such as a ‘Self-Assessment Checklist.’ Students can use this checklist to record their thoughts after completing a task.

For example, a student might record the different steps they took to complete a math problem or the different strategies they tried when they were stuck on a reading passage.

Another way to get students thinking about student self is by using think-aloud protocols. These protocols require students to talk aloud about their thinking process while completing a task.

Doing so will help them become more aware of the different steps to complete a task effectively.

A final way to support students’ self-assessment is through Venn diagrams. These diagrams are very useful for comparing different elements of work.

For example, they can compare two types of music or two books that were read in the class.

There are many ways these kinds of self-assessment strategies can be used in the classroom, and it’s important to make sure the entire class understands their purpose and that they are done in an inclusive learning environment.

The best way to help students become better at self-assessment is through plenty of practice. As with anything else in life, the more they do it, the better they will become at it.

One way to provide students with practice is by having students complete short tasks throughout the day. This can be done as a warm-up activity or as a quick assessment tool.

For example, you might ask your students to identify the main idea and three supporting details from a reading passage.

Another way to provide practice is by using writing prompts. Writing prompts are great for practicing different types of self-assessment because they can be used for various purposes (e.g., narrative writing, persuasive writing, etc.).

Finally, you can also provide self-assessment practices through collaborative tasks.

Collaborative tasks are an excellent way for students to assess each other’s work because they allow for peer-to-peer feedback.

The important thing is to make sure that students are provided with multiple opportunities to practice different types of self-assessment.

This will help them become more familiar with the strategies and better equipped to use them independently.

Find out your strengths and weaknesses

The final goal of self-assessment is to identify their strengths and weaknesses. This can be done in various ways, but the most important thing is that it is done in a safe and supportive environment.

One of the best ways to do this is through doing the HIGH5’s strengths test. This test is completed by a single student independently through a series of questions designed to show students their strengths.

Another way to discover strengths and weaknesses is by using standardized tests like the SAT or ACT.

These tests are designed to measure a student’s academic ability, providing a great snapshot of where a student stands academically.

Moreover, a different way to discover your strengths and weaknesses is by completing achievement tests such as the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement (WJ-III).

These tests measure other areas of achievement such as reading, writing, math, etc. They are also useful because they allow students to compare their scores with others across the country.

In addition, you can also have students complete learning portfolios, which are collections of work that reflect their different skills and abilities.

These can be used over time to track student progress and identify areas needing more support.

Student Self Assessment – Checklist

A checklist is to help you remember things without forgetting any detail.

Some of the common uses for checklists are when you need to run through all the necessary steps in a process or if you have many things to do and want to move through them systematically.

A self-assessment checklist is an effective strategy for students because it helps them think about their skills in different areas. It also provides a detailed account of what they know and still need to learn.

A student can use a self-assessment checklist by asking themselves questions such as: 

• What do I like doing?
• Do I like working with other people?
• What kind of work do I enjoy doing?

Self-assessment checklists are beneficial because they show progress over time; therefore, it’s important to be as detailed and thorough with the questions you ask.

A checklist such as this one will help you remember things without forgetting any detail when assessing work.

You can even create your checklist tailored to your specific needs by asking yourself specific questions that are important to you.

You can use the following questions to build your self-assessment checklist:

• What am I good at?
• What can I do easily and quickly?
• Which skills do I need to work on the most?
• What would be a good project that is challenging but also builds on my skills?
• What do I need to do to practice more?
• How can I get better at this?

By regularly completing a self-assessment checklist, students can track their progress over time and become more effective self-assessors.

Frequently Asked Questions About Student Self Assessment

How do i do a student self-assessment.

There are a variety of ways that students can complete self-assessments. One common way is through the use of checklists.

Students can ask themselves a series of questions to better understand their strengths and weaknesses.

Another way to self-assess is by using standardized tests like the SAT or ACT.

Achievement tests such as the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement can also be useful in identifying areas where a student might need more support.

Finally, students can also complete learning portfolios which are collections of work that reflect their different skills and abilities.

How do you write a self-assessment sample for students?

This can be done in a variety of ways, such as through the use of checklists, standardized tests, or learning portfolios.

When writing a self-assessment for students, it’s important to be specific and thorough with the questions you ask.

This will help students track their progress over time and become more effective self-assessors.

How do I get my learners to take self-assessment seriously?

One way to get your learners to take self-assessment seriously is by emphasizing its importance.

Explain that self-assessment is not just about identifying areas where they need improvement; it is also about celebrating their strengths and accomplishments.

When getting your learners to take self-assessment seriously, you must also model self-assessment behaviors.

You can do this by asking students questions about their learning and using those answers as a starting point for reflection.

When should students use self-assessment?

Because it’s a tool that facilitates reflection, self-assessment can be used at all stages of learning.

Whether you are an effective teacher or parent, encouraging students to reflect on their learning is important for helping them improve their academic performance.

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