Building students’ academic confidence

Involving students in assessing their own learning can give them a sense of engagement and control that many have lost.

At a Glance (click to reveal)

Assessment FOR learning — in which students monitor their own academic growth — promotes student engagement and success.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused many students to become disconnected from school.
This disconnection from school has accompanied a loss of confidence among students.
Educators can build student confidence by involving them in monitoring their own learning.
As they become more aware of their success, students see how they can improve and become engaged in learning.

In a 1991 Kappan article, I introduced the concept of “assessment literacy” as a set of professional standards that encapsulate an educators’ understanding of and ability to apply the principles of high-quality assessment in the classroom. Those standards reflected what my colleague (Nancy Conklin) and I had learned from a decade of research documenting the tasks teachers must complete to dependably monitor student achievement day to day during their learning. (Stiggins & Conklin, 1992).

In that research, we also found and reported that the teachers we studied did not meet these standards. Even though our teachers typically spent a quarter to a third of their professional time engaged in assessment-related activities, the vast majority had never been trained in sound assessment practices. Other researchers (cited in our report) also reported low levels of classroom assessment literacy.

As a result, we became advocates of improved assessment literacy training for teachers and school leaders. In 1992, I established the Assessment Training Institute (ATI) to lead the way in providing much-needed professional development in classroom assessment literacy.

In a later Kappan article, I expanded our definition of assessment literacy to include the expectation that, in addition to gathering dependable evidence with high-quality assessments, educators should understand how to use the classroom assessment process as a teaching and learning tool; that is, to cause student learning, not merely measure it (Stiggins, 2002). This revision was triggered by the publication of watershed research revealing that, when used properly, the classroom assessment process can have a profoundly positive impact on student academic achievement (Black & Wiliam, 1998). The research found that involving students in the ongoing process of monitoring their own academic growth caused gains in student achievement of up to a full standard deviation or more. They labeled this classroom intervention the use of “assessment FOR learning.”

From then on, our ATI assessment literacy training programs centered on:

How to develop and use high-quality dependable classroom assessments.
When and how to bring students into the process of monitoring and helping to manage their own learning.

This two-part definition of assessment literacy has guided ATI’s pre- and in-service professional development for the last four decades.

The COVID crisis

I provide this brief historical perspective because, as it turns out, the evolution in our thinking provides a strong basis from which to address a deeply troubling crisis that has emerged in American education over the past three years. The COVID-19 pandemic forced school closures and reliance on remote learning. Remote learning did not work for large numbers of students, causing them to lose faith in school and in themselves as capable learners. Many gave up in hopelessness and remain in learning limbo even today. This has left teachers, school leaders, and families asking, “How can we help our students regain the academic confidence needed for success in their classrooms?”

Learning remotely contributed to the emotional dynamics at play here. When online teaching tactics just didn’t work for students, it was easy for them to tune out or drop out. The online format often limited the frequency and/or quality of the feedback students received, so they could not track their learning successes. If their achievement began to slip and if that slippage became chronic in their thinking — that is, if learning success appeared to them to have moved out of reach — the result may well have been (and often was) a sense of futility. Evidence suggests that this happened for many students.

When schools reopened, many students simply didn’t return. Enrollments plummeted. Among those who did return, dropout rates have doubled. Ongoing absenteeism is at record levels. Often, achievement has lagged. Achievement gaps remain chronic between subgroups of students. Many teens are experiencing profound emotional crises. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2023) found that 40% of high schoolers report feeling a sense of hopelessness. Such emotions can arise from many complex causes. But a loss of faith in oneself is certainly on that list.

The power of confidence

I have written extensively about how these dynamics of classroom success or failure and confidence or self-doubt played out in my early learning life (Stiggins, 2024). The more encouraging evidence of my learning success I received over time, the more I came to believe that, if I kept trying, success would keep coming. A positive pattern, trend, or progression would emerge in my thinking. I would feel a sense of control over my future success. I gained confidence. The more confident I became, the more willing I was to take the risk of striving for more success. The result of trying with gusto was even more success, which triggered more confidence, and this cycle continued to repeat itself.

We simply cannot have any students giving up to hopelessness, dropping out, or losing faith in themselves as learners.

Unfortunately, sometimes this emotional dynamic flowed in the other direction, as it did for me in reading. My failure became chronic, and the more failure I experienced, the more likely I was to give up in frustration. Eventually, I gave up and stopped trying, which doomed me to inevitable consequences.

A student’s sense of her or his own academic self-efficacy or agency exists on a continuum that ranges from a strong to a weak sense of control. Our need for post-pandemic recovery has made understanding this continuum especially important. We simply cannot have any students giving up to hopelessness, dropping out, or losing faith in themselves as learners because, if they do, they will not master the essential content they need to survive. But, in the context of our post-pandemic recovery, it appears that this is exactly what is happening for many students.

Remedies are at hand

One excellent way to prevent students from giving up or to turn them around if they start to lose confidence is reliance on the principles of assessment FOR learning. Student involvement in monitoring their own learning and watching themselves succeed can provide a basis for regaining academic confidence. The resulting upward spiral can bring students back from the edge of hopelessness.

Specific assessment FOR learning strategies developed in the 1990s and continuously refined since then are easy to understand, practical to apply, and have proven their power in promoting student learning success. They rely on well-established classroom strategies for helping students learn to monitor their own success. As students monitor their success, they begin to see themselves as capable learners. If we tap into the students’ growing faith in themselves as learners, we can give students what I have labeled elsewhere as “the gift of confidence” (Stiggins, 2024).

As students monitor their success, they begin to see themselves as capable learners.

My ATI colleague, Jan Chappuis (2015), offers seven specific strategies of assessment FOR learning. These strategies provide a pathway to the positive end of the continuum of student confidence and learning success. She follows the thinking of Royce Sadler (1998), who contends that every student must always remain aware of their own personal answers to three driving questions:

Where am I headed in my learning?
Where am I now in relation to those expectations?
How can I close the gap between those two?

In her book, Seven Strategies of Assessment FOR Learning, Chappuis (2015, p. 11) expanded these questions into strategies teachers can rely on to be sure students remain informed. Those instructional tactics are:

Where am I going?

Strategy 1: Provide students with a clear, understandable vision of learning targets from the beginning of the learning.
Strategy 2: Share examples of performance that display the continuum of quality from strong to weak work.

Where am I now in relation to those expectations?

Strategy 3: Offer regular descriptive feedback during the learning.
Strategy 4: Teach students to self-assess and set goals for learning steps.

How can I close the gap between the two? (Notice the locus of control.)

Strategy 5: Use evidence of student learning needs to determine the next steps in teaching.
Strategy 6: Design focused instruction, followed by practice and continuous feedback.
Strategy 7: Provide students with opportunities to track, reflect on, and communicate about their learning progress.

These strategies are best seen as a progression in which each one provides a foundation for moving to the next.

How the strategies work

The strategies open by providing learners with a clear learning orientation. We provide a clear student-friendly version of the learning target(s) up front, along with examples of work that illustrate what success looks like along the continuum to those targets. This eliminates the anxiety of trying to guess what counts.

When students can compare their work to the examples on the road map to success, they get to see concrete evidence of their growth. This helps them believe that success is within reach and that promotes confidence and engagement.

Providing regular feedback that reveals how students can improve specific attributes of their work amplifies their confidence and gives them a way to exercise control over their success. As their understanding of the key attributes of good work increases over time, they gain the ability to evaluate their own work and generate their own feedback, once again expanding their sense of control over their success. Again, we are building their confidence.

Providing regular feedback that reveals how students can improve specific attributes of their work amplifies their confidence and gives them a way to exercise control over their success.

All these strategies shine a light on what the learner must improve in order to grow. Teachers can build focused instruction centered on those attributes of student work and teach students the skills of focused revision. As all of this unfolds over time, learners can reflect continuously on changes in their own capabilities and develop the vocabulary and awareness needed to communicate with others about how their success is evolving and what specific help they may need to continue growing.

Thus, students take the reins to control their own learning, with their teacher coaching them. With clear targets and a path for progressing toward them, they can think, “I see what success means, I’m getting ever closer, and I’ve got this.”

As we support them on their journey to success, we help them see what needs to change and how to critique and fix their own work along the way. This leaves them thinking, “I can figure out what help I need and how to get it. I’ve got this.”

And finally, by providing them with focused and timely instructional help, we promote students’ continuous movement toward success. Everyone knows that growth is being achieved. No surprises, no excuses. Students can tell the story of their own growth with evidence to back it up. If we don’t define lifelong learners in these terms, I don’t know how to define it. This sense of control represents precisely the kind of emotional foundation for student confidence needed to fuel a strong post-pandemic recovery.

References

Black, P. & Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 80 (2), 139-148.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023). Youth risk behavior survey: Data summary and trends report. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Chappuis, J. (2015). Seven strategies of assessment FOR learning (2nd ed.). Pearson Education.

Sadler, D.R. (1998). Formative assessment: Revisiting the territory. Assessment in Education, 5 (1), 77-84.

Stiggins, R.J. (1991). Assessment literacy. Phi Delta Kappan, 72 (7), 534-539.

Stiggins, R.J. (2002). Assessment crisis: The absence of assessment literacy. Phi Delta Kappan, 83 (10), 758-765.

Stiggins, R.J. (2024) Give our students the gift of confidence. Corwin.

Stiggins, R.J. & Conklin, N. (1992). In teachers’ hands: Investigation the practice of classroom assessment. SUNY Press.

This article appears in the Spring 2025 issue of Kappan, Vol. 106, No. 5-6, pp. 51-54.