Famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud wrote, "Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise" in an 1897 letter to his friend Wilhelm Fliess. This is, perhaps, an understatement. In the world of education today, there is quite a bit of buzz surrounding the concept of self-assessment.

In fact, in a recent New York Times post entitled, "5 Things Teachers Wish Parents Knew: Your Children Can Do More Than You Think" educator Jessica Lahey wrote that it is imperative that "children develop their own internal locus of approval and honest self-assessment, because as they grow up and face hardship, they need to be able to look to themselves for strength and approval. If they can’t, they will be much more susceptible to the superficial external approval that comes their way in the form of peer pressure, bullying and the usual social jostling." Lahey's classification of self-assessment as transcending the academic realm and being of importantance from a developmental and social-emotional stand-point underscores how important this subject is.

Although writings on the topic of self-assessment have existed since the 1930s, it has only been since the early 1970s or so that this approach has been "seriously studied and...used systematically for both learning and grading purposes" (Boud 21). This work will outline key features of self-assessment, examine some strategies teachers are using to implement this theory in their classrooms, critically analyze the approach, and explore how it might look in a technology-mediated environment.

Most definitions of self-assessment center around three stages of this process. For example, McMillan and Hearn of Virginia Commonwealth University state that students first "identify their learning and performance strategies" then "provide feedback to themselves based on well-understood standards and criteria" and finally "determine the next steps or plans to enhance their performance" (41). Andrade and Valtcheva of the University of Albany describe the process' steps as "articulating expectations, self assessment(comparing performances-in-progress to the expectations),revision"(14). To further simplify, these three phases may be thought of as:

• Setting the Stage (establishing criteria, goals, expectations)
• Under Construction(methodically critiquing one's own work as it is occuring)
• Final Fixes(improvement based on conclusions reached in the second phase)

The self-assessment approach draws heavily from a number of different theories and pedagogical techniques. These are summarized in the graphic below. Please note that the orange text describes the influencing principle, and the purple text how self-assessment fulfills it.

Theoretical Underpinnings of Self-Assessment

One key truth about self-assessment is that it "represents a process that every teacher can emphasize" (McMillan and Hearn 48). All three of the aforementioned steps can be utilized in classrooms with students of all ages and ability levels. What changes, however, is the amount of scaffolding and support students are given. Ideally, as student confidence and compentency with self-assessment grows, they should receive "less structure and specific direction and more responsibility and freedom" (McMillan and Hearn 46).

In the short video below, for example, Deb Armitage undertakes a most verbal and hand-signal based approach to teaching mathematics-focused self-assessment to second graders:

Self-Assessment in a Second Grade Classroom,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0BrgA7zX10

By using a primarily didactic approach, she is modeling slowly and clearly how the students should be thinking when eventually assessing their own work. The use of the up/down/sideways thumbs allows the students to participate, and the instructor to gauge reactions and level of understanding.

A sixth grade teacher might put more responsibility in the hands of students by involving them in phase one of self-assessment("setting the stage") by allowing them to determine the wording and categories on a rubric. Below is the finished product of one such experience. Note that the wording is clearly "kid-friendly" and in first-person language. It is clear that students were engaged from the very beginning in this assignment:

(Louis and Harada 15)

A high school teacher might push his/her students even further during the third part ("final fixes") of self-assessment. By asking them to submit a cover sheet with their final essays, for example, students are placed in the position of having to justify themselves and specifically point to sections of their work that are strong or weak ("Self-Assessment"). Here is a sample of a high school art student's cover sheet:

http://tamarathomasart.blogspot.com/2010/04/high-school-self-assessment-and-rubric.html

Although these examples are by no means exhaustive, they demonstrate the flexible ways in which self-assessment manifests itself in modern day classrooms of all kinds.

There have been many studies that have provided empirical data as to the efficacy of self-assessment. A 1999 study on the writing of fourth, fifth and sixth graders found that lower-level writers who had experience with self-assessment outperformed their counterparts in terms of meeting several key standards of narrative composition, such as plotting,theme and voice(Andrade and Valtcheva 15). Research conducted in 2002 found a relationship between self-assessment and higher performance on mathematics word problems, with the group receiving self-assessment training improving 32% over those in the control group (Andrade and Valtcheva 16).

From a more qualitative perspective, many student participants in self-assessment reported higher motivation and involvement in their learning. One student of Patricia Louis, a librarian in Hawaii, exclaimed that self-assessment was like "riding a bike. The teachers show us how with the training wheels and then we do it by ourselves" (Louis and Harada 16). Educators, too may benefit from the way in which self-assessment "spreads the burden" by giving them more assessment information (Kalantzis and Cope 332). All of the positivity surrounding self-assessment seems to stem simply from its wholly collaborative nature. Instead of assessment being something that happens to learners without their consent and input, it is something that happens with them, occuring completely transparently and at a pace they help to dictate.

There are, however, some deterrents to the approach as well. Perhaps the most major of these is the matter of time. Although the three basic steps of self-assessment(setting the stage, under construction and final fixes) are easy to describe, it can often take multiple trips through the cycle before progress is made. Students and teachers alike may resist this aspect of the process. A 2007 study found that many students encountering self-assessment for the first time described it as "a big pain" at the outset (Andrade and Valcheva 16). Teachers may find themselves struggling to allocate class time to develop a rubric with their students,for example, when they've so long been accustomed to creating tools like these on their own time.

Another issue, somewhat related to that of time, is the debate over how (if at all) self-assessment should factor into formalized grades. Some sources argue potentially in favor of students' self-assessments becoming part of their final score: "If students mark their own work, either with respect to specified standards...or their self-established criteria, they not only release staff for more educationally worthwhile activities, but they are encouraged to reflect on their own work" (Boud 22). On the other hand,it can be claimed that self-assessment should occur before evaluation. "Given what we know about human nature," argue Andrade and Valtcheva, students cannot be trusted to have any impact on their formal markings, and self-assessment should be "purely formative" (13). If instructors feel as though self-assessment may not buy them anything in terms of the evaluation responsibilities, this can compound the time-consuming problem.

Finally, systemic expectations on the part of school administration teams and the parents of the students may pose a barrier. There may, for example, be a demand that teachers input a certain number of assignments in the gradebook in each term. It may be difficult to get these members of the educational team on board if the usage of self-assessment ends up reducing the amount of quantifiable teacher-produced data on each pupil.

Although self-assessment predates the ubiquity of computers and other internet-equipped devices in the classroom, the proliferation of technology is actually a boon to the approach. As described above, one of the disadvantages of the techinque is its sometimes lengthy nature. Many computer-based applications can alleviate some of this burden. Scholar, for example, is a "web writing space" that allows for very well-organized and naturally on-going self-assessment. When a student creates a work in Scholar, s/he is required to "explicitly consider the nature of their own knowledge" because the way in which s/he chooses to structure his/her writing "focuses...on the information architecture of...knowledge representation"(Kalantzis and Cope 332). A writer in Scholar always has access to the multipart criteria on which s/he will ultimately be assessed summatively. The manager of a Scholar-based learning experience may even require writers to review their own work using this criteria prior to submission. This cumulative step helps a user to ensure that his/her work is in order before it becomes more visible (through publication) to the rest of the learning community.

Google Apps for Education is a collection of web-based tools that can also support self-assessment. If a class is developing a rubric together(stage one of the self-assessment process), for example, Google Documents allows for real-time collaboration in one document. This can expedite the process because one group of pupils can work on one section of the grid, while another group can simultaneously work on another, and yet a third group can proofread. Teachers can have access to all student work on Google Documents if they wish, so they may efficiently provide feedback to student works-in-progress using the Comments tool without even having to leave their desks:

http://www.jeadigitalmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/gDocs-new-comments.jpg

Furthermore, all Google Apps for Education keep a log of every single change that has been made to a slideshow, document, form or spreadsheet so teachers and students may retrace their steps and analyze their revisions if need be. This feature allows for learners to take a more deliberate look at their thought processes and editing patterns:

http://library.willamette.edu/wordpress/blog/2013/02/22/better-than-printing-tip-4-google-drive-revisions-comments-and-markups/

These are just a few programs that have the potential to make the self-assessment process speedier and more streamlined. As is always the case, an individual seeking to utilize computer technology in the classroom should remember the key elements of the pedagogical approach they are undertaking and not become too wrapped up in all the bells and whistles a shiny piece of software can offer. Technology is merely a tool that can enhance instruction, it alone can not transform the learning experience.

Self-assessment is a lifelong process.The ability to engage in the technique confidently can improve not just an individual's academic or professional life, but also his/her personal relationships and level of self-awareness. It should not, of course, be the only means by which a learner is evaluated. When combined with other processes, such as peer assessment, it has the potential to become all the more powerful. With the rate of self-employed (or independent workers) in the United States projected to grow from 17.7 million(as of 2013) to more than 24 million by 2018, it is perhaps more important now than ever that schools begin training adolescents from an early age to rely on themselves to set goals and work to monitor their progress on the road to achieving them. 

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Boud, David. "The Role Of Self-Assessment In Student Grading." Assessment And Evaluation In Higher Education 14.1 (1989): 20-30. ERIC. Web. 6 Sept. 2014.

Ibabe, Izaskun, and Joana Jauregizar. "Online Self-Assessment With Feedback And Metacognitive Knowledge." Higher Education: The International Journal Of Higher Education And Educational Planning 59.2 (2010): 243-258. ERIC. Web. 6 Sept. 2014.

Kalantzis, Mary, and Bill Cope. New learning: Elements of a science of education. Port Melbourne, Vic.: Cambridge UP, 2012.

Louis, Patricia, and Violet H. Harada. "Did Students Get It? Self-Assessment As Key To Learning." School Library Monthly 29.3 (2012): 13-16. ERIC. Web. 6 Sept. 2014.

McMillan, James H., and Jessica Hearn. "Student Self-Assessment: The Key To Stronger Student Motivation And Higher Achievement."Educational Horizons 87.1 (2008): 40-49. ERIC. Web. 6 Sept. 2014.

"Self-Assessment." Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE). Cornell University, n.d. Web. 06 Sept. 2014. <http://www.cte.cornell.edu/teaching-ideas/assessing-student-learning/self-assessment.html>.

Shepard, Lorrie A. The Role Of Classroom Assessment In Teaching And Learning. CSE Technical Report. 1-77.: 2000. ERIC. Web. 6 Sept. 2014.