What kind of assessment system promote and develop lifelong learning in the Swedish school?

The project aims to understand how different assessment/grade systems best can promote and develop life-long learning among students. The assessment systems under study are: 1) 1980-1994 (Lgr80); 2) 1994-2010 (Lpo94); and 3) 2011-2022 (Lgr11).

Large-scale data from the national infrastructure Evaluation-through-Follow-up (UGU) will be used and additionally different subgroups of low- and high achieving students will be considered.

The project runs four years, conducting three subprojects where the first deals with construct validity of items in each cohort (1982; 1992; 2004), the second investigate students´ socio-cognitive competencies and academic achievement in each of the systems and the third consists of longitudinal analyses of student’s development of socio-cognitive competencies in relation to academic achievement in the three systems.

The work will be jointly conducted by Jonsson, Yang Hansen, Klapp and the recruited junior researcher. Analyses such as Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques will be used.

In that the grade segregation between low- and high achieving students escalates in the assessment system of today and the students’ school-related well-being has decreased, where a possible cause could be the goal-and referenced assessment system, it is important to understand how summative assessment/grades best can promote and develop students’ socio-cognitive competencies that predict achievement beyond school.