SUSAN M.

BROOKHART, MARISSA ANDOLINA, MEGAN ZUZA

and ROSALIE FURMAN

MINUTE MATH: AN ACTION RESEARCH STUDY OF STUDENT

SELF-ASSESSMENT∗

ABSTRACT. Forty-one students in two third grade classes, including special education
students, participated in an action research project conducted jointly by two university
supervisors, three teachers, and three student teachers. The “Minute Math” project involved
students in predicting and graphing their test scores on a weekly conventional timed test
of the 0–9 multiplication facts. Students also reflected each week on their progress and
the success of their studying and problem-solving strategies. Student self-assessment was
successful at turning the rote memorization task of learning the times tables into a deeper
experience for students about monitoring their own mathematics learning.

KE Y W O R D S : formative assessment, goal orientation, multiplication facts, student in-

volvement in assessment, student reflection

1. I NTRODUCTION

Memorizing the math facts tables is a part of the third grade curriculum in
Pleasant Hills Elementary School (pseudonym). The primary purpose of
this action research study was to see whether student self-assessment in the
service of this required, rote activity would add desirable outcomes besides
simple knowledge of math facts. It was expected that the higher-order
thinking and metacognitive processes required for self-assessment would
turn this rote memory task into an exercise in “learning how to learn” and
contribute to students’ mathematical literacy development (Gellert, 2004).
Memorizing math facts forms a large and important part of the third grade
math curriculum and is not likely to diminish in importance soon because of
the state testing program and because of parents’ wishes that students learn
these facts. This study took place during the period when students were
working on the multiplication tables. A secondary purpose of the study was
to examine the use of action research as a professional development tool
for the educators; these results are presented elsewhere.
Many assessment authors have made general recommendations to in-
crease the amount of student self-assessment (e.g., Arter and Busick, 2001;
∗
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2004 annual meeting of the American
Educational Research Association.

Educational Studies in Mathematics 57: 213–227, 2004.


C 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
214 SUSAN M. BROOKHART ET AL.

Black and Wiliam, 1998; Stiggins, 2001). The main reasons for this fall
into two categories, motivational and cognitive. Motivation theorists sug-
gest that student self-assessment will contribute to feelings of control over
one’s own learning, of choice and of agency, and of self-worth (Covington,
1992). Theorists who focus on the formative feedback loop emphasize that
the learning task requires students to compare their performance with de-
sired performance and take steps to close that gap (Sadler, 1989). Accurate
appraisal of their own work is a necessary part of this cycle.
Two reports of using self-assessment in high school mathematics were
found (Csongor, 1992; Stallings and Tascione, 1996). The NCTM As-
sessment Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM, 1995) recommend
student self-assessment as part of a total assessment plan to foster stu-
dent confidence and independence in learning math. Stallings and Tascione
(1996) reported their students who used self-assessment of particular errors
in performance were engaged in their work and developed communication
skills and math vocabulary, as well.
One study (Wood and Frank, 2000) investigated the effects of having
fifth grade special education students use memory-enhancing strategies
on their learning multiplication facts. This report was of particular interest
because the goal, student learning of the multiplication tables, was the same
as for this Minute Math study. For the special education students in Wood
and Frank’s project, a teacher selected the particular learning strategies
for students. In the third grade classes in this study, which did include
some special education students, students were to choose from a variety
of strategies. The choices of strategies themselves were part of weekly
student reflections. To keep track of progress, Wood and Frank’s students
kept graphs like the students in this study. Wood and Frank (2000, p. 82)
wrote:
An important part of this instructional package is continuous data collection to
determine each student’s progress in learning the multiplication facts. You can
accomplish this by asking students to complete a multiplication facts worksheet
two or three times per week as part of instruction. After the worksheets have been
scored (and analyzed if errors have been made), each student should plot the results
on a graph . . . . Most students are highly motivated when they observe the progress
they are making and strive to reach the goal shown on their graph.
All three reports of student self-assessment in mathematics described
here were descriptions of the work of individual teachers in their class-
rooms. No large scale controlled studies of student self-assessment in math
were located. This study shares with the existing literature the characteristic
of being situated in individual classroom settings. This may not be a short-
coming, but rather a statement about the nature of student self-assessment.
The classroom assessment context is very important (Stiggins and Conklin,
 AN ACTION RESEARCH STUDY OF STUDENT SELF-ASSESSMENT 215

1992). Therefore, action research may be particularly suited for studying

student self-assessment. This study gives a more extensive presentation of
the empirical results than the other self-assessment in mathematics project
reports found in the literature (Csongor, 1992; Stallings and Tascione, 1996;
Wood and Frank, 2000).

2. M ETHOD

2.1. School context and participants

The Minute Math action research project involved three student teachers,
two university supervisors, and three cooperating teachers with two classes
of students (20 and 21 students, respectively) at a suburban elementary
school in the eastern United States. Two of the teachers were the regular
third grade teachers, and the third was the special education teacher who
worked in those classes. The students included both regular and IEP
students.
The school was a primary (grades K–3) building located in a suburban
setting. At the time of this study, it had a total enrollment of 425, of which
1.6% were classified as low-income, and had 24 professional staff. Math
instruction in Pleasant Hills school could be characterized as direct, whole
group instruction with adaptations for individual students requiring more
support. A paraprofessional was available in both classrooms represented
in the study because of the inclusive philosophy embraced by the school dis-
trict. The Harcourt Math series was the primary resource used by the third
grade teachers. However, teachers enhanced their math instruction with
teacher-designed materials prepared during district sponsored professional
development days. The teachers in this study exhibited a commitment to us-
ing reading and writing across the curriculum, as evidenced by the students
having to create math logs to describe their problem-solving strategies. The
three teachers in this study were both experienced and expert, according to
the judgment of their principal and of the professional development staff
in the district.
The university was located in the city and served about 9,500 students,
about 500 of whom were undergraduate education majors and 1,500 of
whom were graduate education majors. The three student teachers included
two seniors working for a [Link]. and one graduate student working for
an [Link]., all three intending to qualify for initial teaching certification.

2.2. Procedure and instrumentation

In each class, 5-minute timed multiplication facts tests (100 facts from the
0–9 tables) were given once a week for 10 weeks. Classroom instruction
216 SUSAN M. BROOKHART ET AL.

during that time included practice with individual times tables and practice
with strategies to learn them (e.g. flash card games, student partnering).
To help students make more of this task than just rote memorization, each
class accompanied the weekly testing with a prediction exercise and a
reflection sheet. The third graders predicted how they would do on the 5-
minute timed test and graphed this on a bar graph. After their results were
in each week, students graphed their actual score next to their predicted
score and predicted their next week’s score. They used a reflection sheet to
write whether they had met their goal from the previous week, what study
strategy they used and how well it worked, and what strategy or strategies
they planned to use for the next week.
Data from students included the bar graphs (graphing 10 predictions
and 10 actual scores) and 10 weekly reflection sheets for each student. The
reflection sheets were originally designed by the student teacher in Class 2.
She adapted the “GPAR (Goals, Plan, Action, Reflection)” process from a
methods course she had taken at the university for use in the Minute Math
project. The GPAR reflection sheets asked students to write responses to
the following questions, which were formatted onto a full sheet of paper.

GOAL – What did you want to learn? [space provided]

LOCATION – Right now I can do facts in five minutes.
PLAN – My goal is to get /100 facts on my next test. I need to
improve in [space provided]
ACTION – When will you begin? Starting I will use these study
strategies to improve (study flashcards, play multiplication games, study
with parents, etc.) [space provided] I will use these problem-solving
strategies to improve (write a number sentence, use repeated addition,
draw a picture, make a model, array) [space provided]
RESULTS – Did you follow through with your plan? What happened?
Did you see improvements? [space provided]

Class 1’s teacher felt that her students were having trouble with the re-
flection and modified the reflection sheet to include some selected response
questions and a drawing. The revised form did not require students to look at
last week’s reflection (as the GPAR form did) because the “results” section,
instead of being the last item on the previous reflection form, was the first
item on the stand-alone form. Class 2 continued with the GPAR reflection
form for all 10 weeks. The teacher, student teacher, and university super-
visor reasoned that it was working for that class and that there was some
merit to having students look back at what they had written previously.
Class 1 used the GPAR form for 2 weeks; for weeks 3 to 10 they used
the revised reflection sheet designed by the teacher. It too was formatted
 AN ACTION RESEARCH STUDY OF STUDENT SELF-ASSESSMENT 217

onto a full sheet of paper. It had a picture of a fat pencil and a word-art title
(“Math”) at the top. It read as follows.

Plan for Learning Multiplication Facts

My last test score was /100
Reflection
To learn my multiplication facts last week, I [space provided]
How well did this plan work for me? terrible not well o.k. pretty well
great
Why did or didn’t my plan work?
Prediction
I want to try to score /100 next week.
This week to help me improve I will use these strategies: [space pro-
vided]
This face shows how I feel about multiplication: (draw a face below)
[space provided]

Data from teachers included exit interviews completed by one of the

authors. The three interview questions included: (1) What did the students
learn from the Minute Math project? (2) What did you (the teacher) learn
from the project? (3) What might you do again? What might you do differ-
ently? The intention of these questions was to tap perceptions of learning
and perceptions of value (good/bad), keeping these perceptions in the pro-
fessional context of classroom instruction and assessment.

2.3. Analysis
Because the classroom assessment environment is different in each class
(Stiggins and Conklin, 1992), data from each class were first analyzed sepa-
rately. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the quantitative data from
students’ bar graphs and reflection sheets. Qualitative data from student re-
flection sheets were summarized into tables by week and by question and
inspected for patterns. These patterns were used to generate case studies
for each student [available from the first author]. Interpretive summaries
were constructed for data teacher interviews.
Combined student data from Classes 1 and 2 were used to address ques-
tions of interest regarding the motivational and cognitive reasons given for
recommended student involvement in assessment. Regarding motivation,
the case study analyses allowed classifying students according to their ex-
pressed goal orientations (Ames and Archer, 1988): Mastery, Performance,
or both. Regarding cognition, the case study analyses allowed classifying
students according to their strategy use: whether their reflections indicated a
218 SUSAN M. BROOKHART ET AL.

clear pattern of study strategy use and problem-solving strategy use (either
sticking with one set of strategies or purposefully switching) or whether
strategy use was inconsistent (no clear pattern or no strategy use). Strategy
use is also the vehicle by which students use formative feedback to close
the gap between current and desired achievement.
A summary measure of students’ achievement was constructed by tak-
ing the mean of the last five quizzes (weeks 6–10) for each student. It
was about at the middle of the project that the “learning curve” seemed
to level off for both classes. Students were then classified into quartiles
on this achievement measure. Crosstabs investigated the relationship be-
tween goal orientation and achievement and between strategy use and
achievement.
Prediction accuracy was calculated as student prediction minus the
actual score for each of the 10 quizzes. Therefore, positive numbers rep-
resented overpredictions, and negative numbers represented underpredic-
tions. Descriptive statistics were used to examine prediction accuracy,
overall and by goal orientation.

3. R ESULTS

3.1. Student scores and predictions

On average, students in both classes predicted their achievement very well.
Graphs of mean, minimum, and maximum predicted and actual scores,
across 10 weeks, for each class separately, were constructed. To save space,
only two are presented here.
The overall average in Class 1 rose as the 10 weeks progressed, and
on average the predictions were accurate. Students’ predictions of their
performance followed a pattern of generally rising over the 10 weeks.
The range of predictions narrowed over time, demonstrating that stu-
dents got more accurate in their prediction. Part of this narrowing hap-
pened because the maximum topped off at 100 by Week 3, but the mini-
mum prediction consistently rose, too, closing the gap and indicating even
the lowest-predicting students rose in their estimation of performance as
the multiplication unit progressed. A similar pattern of increasing per-
formance and decreasing range was present in the actual test scores for
Class 1.
Similarly, the overall average in Class 2 rose as the 10 weeks progressed,
and on average the predictions were accurate after a bit of an overprediction
for Week 1. Students’ predictions of their performance followed a pattern
of generally rising over the 10 weeks after a self-correction in Week 2
for the over-prediction in Week 1 (Figure 1). The range of predictions
 AN ACTION RESEARCH STUDY OF STUDENT SELF-ASSESSMENT 219

narrowed over time until Week 8 but then widened again for Weeks 9 and
10 (Figure 2). The erratic minimum reflects the predictions of two students,
one in Week 9 and a different one in Week 10, who wrote 35 and 45,
respectively, as their predictions. Without these two, the Class 2 pattern of
narrowing predictions would have been similar to that for Class 1. A similar
pattern of increasing performance and decreasing range for a while, then
widening out toward the end, was present in the actual test scores for Class 2.

Figure 1. Series 1 – Predicted scores; Series 2 – Actual scores.

Figure 2.
220 SUSAN M. BROOKHART ET AL.

3.2. Student reflections

Class 1. There were 20 students in Class 1. The first week they used the
“GPAR” form; for the following weeks they used the “Plan for Learning
Multiplication Facts” form. Tallies possible from these data indicated the
following strategies, reasoning, and feelings. Flash cards and timed tests
were the most used strategies (Table I). Drill, games, and worksheets were
strategies with moderate use. Nine students did “nothing” at least some of
the time. In some cases, perhaps they did not feel a need to practice because
they were already achieving at a comfortable level. In some cases, perhaps
they were not motivated to put forth the effort.
Practice and memory were the attributions students most often suggested
as the reasons for their success (Table II). This is not surprising because the
task – memorizing multiplication facts – was a memory task. Conversely,

TABLE I
Strategies used by students in class 1 (open ended question)

Number of students noting Percent of students noting

Strategy strategy at least once strategy at least once
Flash Cards 16 80%
Timed Tests 15 75%
Nothing/Did not practice 9 45%
Drill 6 30%
Games 5 25%
Worksheet 4 20%
Paid attention in school 1 5%
Wrote and typed 1 5%
Song 1 5%

TABLE II
Reasons why plan worked in class 1 (open ended question)

Number of students noting Percent of students noting

Reason reason at least once reason at least once
Practiced 11 55%
Memorized 9 45%
Paid attention in school 2 10%
Learned new strategies 2 10%
Followed through w/plan 1 5%
Strategy – do easier 1 5%
problem first
I don’t know 1 5%
 AN ACTION RESEARCH STUDY OF STUDENT SELF-ASSESSMENT 221

lack of practice was the reason most students cited for not feeling their study
strategy worked (Table III). The rating scale for how well their strategy
worked elicited mostly positive responses (Table IV).
Students were categorized as having a mastery goal orientation if their
answers to the question about their learning goals were about the content
(e.g., “to learn my facts,” “to learn the 8 tables,” etc.). Students were
categorized as having a performance goal orientation if their answers to
the question about their learning goals were about their performance (e.g.
“to get 100,” “to get them all right”). Eighteen (90%) students in Class 1
expressed the intention to learn the math facts rather than to get high test
scores. One expressed mixed mastery and performance goals, and one did
not express any goals.
Patterns in responses about strategy usage were also inspected. Overall,
about 70% of the students persisted with stable strategy use (either one
strategy or consistent use of a few strategies); about 30% of the students
used variable strategies (switching strategies from week to week).
Class 2. There were 21 students in Class 2 who contributed data packets.
This class used the “GPAR” form all 10 weeks. Tallies possible from these

TABLE III
Reasons why plan did not work in Class 1 (open ended question)

Number of students noting Percent of students noting

Reason reason at least once reason at least once
Did not practice enough 7 35% Total for lack of
Forgot to practice 1 5% practice – 40%
Did not work fast enough 3 15% Total for ineffective
Did harder problem first 1 5% strategies – 20%
I don’t know 3 15%
Need to pay better attention 1 5%

TABLE IV
How well plan worked in Class 1 (response choices given)

Number of students noting Percent of students noting

Rating rating at least once rating at least once
Great 18 90% Total for “Great” 95%
Wonderful (written in) 1 5%
Pretty well 12 60%
OK 11 55%
Not well 3 15%
Terrible 3 15%
222 SUSAN M. BROOKHART ET AL.

TABLE V
Strategies used by students in Class 2 (open ended question; some suggested choices given)

Number of students noting Percent of students noting

Strategy strategy at least once strategy at least once
Repeated addition 16 76%
Flash cards 15 71%
Write a sentence 13 62%
Study with parents 12 57%
Array 8 38%
Drill 6 29%
Games 6 29%
Model 5 24%
Draw a picture 4 19%
Timed test 1 5%

data indicated the following strategies and results. Repeated addition, flash
cards, writing sentences, and studying with parents were the most used
strategies (Table V). About half (10 students, 48%) the students in Class 2
expressed the intention to learn the math facts rather than to get high test
scores. Four expressed a performance goal orientation, and six expressed
both. One student did not express any goals.
Patterns in responses about strategy usage were also inspected. Overall,
about 67% of the students persisted with stable strategy use (either one
strategy or consistent use of a few strategies); about 33% of the students
used variable strategies (switching strategies from week to week). There-
fore, similar to Class 1, Class 2 students ran about 2 to 1 in favor of sticking
with the strategies they selected.

3.3. Teacher interviews

Teacher 1 said that the students’ primary learnings came from seeing
how they did on the test, receiving feedback in a consistent manner, and
applying what they knew about bar graphs to their own real life. By the end
of the 10 weeks, she thought they had learned more about bar graphing and
cited as evidence the fact that she did not have to show them where to put
the numbers any more. She also thought the project made the students a
little more aware of the different learning strategies. Teacher 3, the special
education/inclusion teacher, participated in the interview. She agreed with
Teacher 1 about the value of students’ graphing their own progress.
Teacher 1 also observed that written reflection was hard for students.
She was not sure they saw much value in it, especially if they were not
making progress on their scores. She observed, “I don’t think they value
 AN ACTION RESEARCH STUDY OF STUDENT SELF-ASSESSMENT 223

writing down their thought processes as much as they value writing the
right answer. So if they write ‘using flash cards,’ it might not be that they
thought flash cards were good as much as that they thought it would be
the right thing to say. We need to teach them to be confident in their own
thought processes.”
Asked about what the students learned in the project, Teacher 2 said,
“I really think they learned what worked best for them.” She went on to
say that for some of the students, this was surprising. She said students
continued their reflections even beyond the written papers; for example,
many of them told her the small quizzes she gave (on the 4 tables, or 8
tables, etc.) helped with the timed tests. She interpreted some of these oral
comments as appreciation, feeling that the students were thanking her for
structuring activities like the quizzes that they could see benefited their
learning. Teacher 2 also liked the graphing process and said she would use
that again (and in fact, used to do it, especially with spelling, and had not
done so for a while). She saw it as “a good visual.” She also used the project
as an avenue to talk with the students about different strategies and about
how their success on the test was connected with their studying.

3.4. Goal orientation

Table VI presents a crosstabulation of goal orientation, as expressed in stu-
dent reflections, and achievement quartiles. For these two classes, mastery
goal orientations were fairly evenly distributed across all achievement lev-
els. Performance goal orientations were concentrated among lower middle
achievers, and there were no very high or very low achievers who expressed
performance goal orientations in their reflections. Students who expressed
both mastery and performance goal orientations were concentrated among
low achievers. Of course, as with any action research study, the results may
not generalize to other contexts.
Table VII presents mean prediction accuracy (defined as the predic-
tion minus the actual score for each of the 10 quizzes) by goal orienta-
tion. Positive numbers represent overpredictions, and negative numbers
TABLE VI
Cross-tabulation of goal orientation and achievement quartile, both classes
Second quartile Third quartile
Goal First quartile (Low (Low middle (High middle Fourth quartile
orientation achievement) achievement) achievement) (High achievement) Total
Mastery 7 6 9 8 30
Performance 0 3 1 0 4
Both 3 1 1 1 6
Total 10 10 11 9 40
224 SUSAN M. BROOKHART ET AL.

TABLE VII
Mean prediction accuracy (S.D.) for 10 weeks by goal orientation

Orientation MasteryM PerformanceP BothB Total

Week 1 8.2 (19.9) 9.8 (10.4) 18.3 (19.3) 9.9 (19.1)
Week 2 −2.6 (11.7) −2.3 (15.9) −0.5 (15.9) −2.2 (12.5)
Week 3 −4.4 (10.8) −9.3 (16.4) −4.3 (13.6) −4.9 (11.6)
Week 4 −3.1 (11.3) −1.5 (3.7) −2.8 (16.5) −2.9 (11.3)
Week 5 1.8 (11.5) 4.7 (5.0) −11.6 (21.4) 0.2 (13.4)
Week 6 0.9 (9.2) 2.8 (4.9) −0.8 (10.0) 0.8 (8.8)
Week 7 −0.1 (11.2) 3.3 (11.9) 4.2 (14.4) 0.9 (11.6)
Week 8 3.7 (7.9) 7.5 (11.9) 7.2 (12.1) 4.7 (8.9)
Week 9 4.8 (7.2) 0.5 (17.1) 5.0 (33.2) 4.4 (13.7)
Week 10 3.3 (13.1) 4.0 (7.1) 4.5 (13.0) 3.6 (12.4)
M – Sample size for Mastery group ranged from 27 to 30, depending on the week.
P – Sample size for Performance group was 4 (except 3 for Week 5).
B – Sample size for Both group was 5 or 6, depending on the week.

represent underpredictions. Because of the small number in the “perfor-

mance” and “both” categories, caution should be used in interpreting the
means.
Prediction accuracy varied widely, for all students. Standard deviations
were large, and ranges were wide. The first week, students generally over-
predicted, then reacted with three weeks of underprediction, followed by
three weeks of overall accuracy, then three weeks of moderate overpre-
diction. Mean prediction accuracy for the “Both” group more resembled
that of the “Mastery Goal Orientation” group for weeks 1 to 6 and the
“Performance Goal Orientation” group for weeks 7 to 10.

3.5. Strategy use

Strategy use is a variable of interest in cognitive psychology. It also is
the vehicle by which students use formative feedback to close the gap
between current and desired achievement. Students were asked to re-
flect on two kinds of strategy use: study strategies and problem-solving
strategies. Most students’ reflections showed they had some clear pat-
tern of strategy use: either sticking with preferred strategies or switch-
ing in some purposeful way they were able to describe. Nine of the stu-
dents’ reflections indicated either no strategy use or inconsistent strategy
use.
Table VIII presents a crosstabulation of strategy use, as expressed
in student reflections, and achievement quartiles. Students who demon-
strated some kind of clear pattern of strategy use were distributed across
 AN ACTION RESEARCH STUDY OF STUDENT SELF-ASSESSMENT 225

TABLE VIII
Cross-tabulation of strategy use and achievement quartile, both classes
Second quartile Third quartile
Strategy First quartile (Low middle (High middle Fourth quartile
use (Low achievement) achievement) achievement) (High achievement) Total
Clear pattern 6 9 10 7 32
Inconsistent 4 1 1 3 9
or nothing
Total 10 10 11 10 41

achievement levels. Students whose strategy use was either inconsistent or

nonexistent clumped in the very high or very low achievement categories,
suggesting that this strategy use pattern was either indeed ineffective (for
the low achievers) or not necessary (for the high achievers).
The relationship between strategy use and mean prediction accu-
racy for each of the 10 quizzes was examined, but no relationship was
found.

4. DISCUSSION

This study suggests that student involvement in their own assessment can,
indeed, add reflection and metacognition (“thinking about thinking”) to
rote memory lessons like learning the multiplication tables. Student pre-
dictions were accurate, on average, and became more accurate with time.
There was great variability in prediction accuracy. Student involvement in
their own assessment was context-dependent. The project worked differ-
ently in the two classrooms. This reflected differences in the classroom
assessment environments (Stiggins and Conklin, 1992). Genuine reflec-
tion was more supported in Class 2. Getting the task accomplished –
filling in the form easily and correctly – was more of the emphasis in
Class 1.
For the most part, students enjoyed participating in self-assessment. Stu-
dents liked seeing their “steps,” as they called their progress on the graphs.
Student comments in the self-reflections indicated a mastery goal orien-
tation (as opposed to a performance goal orientation; Ames and Archer,
1988). Student achievement was high. One teacher reported that she thought
the third graders learned the multiplication tables better this year than in
previous years.
Flash cards was a preferred strategy. Strategy use patterns differed some-
what by class. “Nothing” or “did not practice” was reported, too. “Didn’t
practice enough” was the main reason given in reflections by students whose
performance did not meet expectations. Therefore, it may be possible to
226 SUSAN M. BROOKHART ET AL.

conclude that participating in the reflection helped students articulate the

value of their own studying.
Students reported sticking with study strategies they had selected about
twice as often as they reported changing strategies. However, some of the
students appeared to be “filling in blanks” in the reflection sheet just to
have something to put on the paper, without really reflecting. Support for
this conclusion comes from both teacher interviews and from the fact that
ineffective strategy use was associated with either low achievement (where
reflection did not help students much) or high achievement (where it was
not needed). Therefore, it is also necessary to conclude that student self-
assessment is not a magic bullet that will guarantee student learning or
involvement. As with all learning strategies, student self-assessment needs
to be taught, coached, and supported.
Student involvement in assessment is much in the assessment news these
days. Exhortations to do it are most typically based on generalizations made
from the motivation literature from educational psychology. This study is
one of few classroom assessment studies that add empirical data to this
claim, and the results were positive.

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 AN ACTION RESEARCH STUDY OF STUDENT SELF-ASSESSMENT 227

SUSAN M. BROOKHART, MARISSA ANDOLINA, MEGAN ZUZA

and ROSALIE FURMAN
Department of Educational Foundation & Leadership,
Duquesne University,
Helena, Montana 59601,
U.S.A.
Telephone: 00-01-406-442-8257
Fax: 00-01-406-442-8257
E-mail: susanbrookhart@[Link]