If Assessment Is Learning, Then What?

Abstract

While recognizing both the difficult yet important nature of sport coaches’ work, as they seek to achieve a wide range of positive outcomes across different participant populations and domains, it is important to acknowledge the value of professional development. As quality coaching becomes an increasingly important agenda item for sport coaching stakeholders, these learning opportunities have come under increased scrutiny. For example, there is growing interest in the role and function of assessment as a consistent feature of these programs. While appearing to be burdened by the legacy of educational concepts such as assessment for learning (formative assessment) and assessment of learning (summative assessment), which depict learning and assessment as distinct entities, the present article sets out to make a compelling case that learning and assessment are one and the same thing. In doing so, this article revisits and summarizes a body of recent work that proposes concepts with which to build a new approach and points to examples of such an approach in action. Engaging in the process of conceptual development, the article will then offer an assessment as learning metaphor for the attention of coach education and development program designers and facilitators. Through engagement with this work, readers are encouraged to reframe and reposition the role, function, and practice of assessment. In doing so, they are invited to consider how they would facilitate assessment opportunities differently if they were considered to be learning opportunities in their own right.