Using Argumentation Learning Progressions to Support Teaching and Assessments of English Language Arts

1 Over the past few decades, there has been an increasing concern that educational assessment provides little support for classroom learning. Some people question the value of traditional summative assessments used in schools, and fear that teachers lack high-quality formative assessments that target core skills in their curriculum. This problem motivates researchers and educators to investigate best practices for using assessment to inform instruction and learning. One such effort is the Cognitively Based Assessment of, for, and as Learning (CBALTM) research initiative, which draws upon curriculum standards and learning sciences research. The CBAL initiative aims to build a model for an innovative K–12 assessment system that documents what students have achieved (of learning); helps identify how to plan instruction (for learning); and is considered by students and teachers to be a worthwhile educational experience in and of itself (as learning) (Bennett, 2010). In this article, we will show how learning progressions — describing how students’ skills develop over time — can support teaching and assessments. We begin by giving a brief overview of research on learning progressions under the CBAL project, in order to demonstrate how test performance supports inferences about student competency. We proceed to illustrate the theoretical framework using argumentation learning progressions and present assessment items designed to measure the skills addressed by the progressions.