Critical, analytical and reflective literacy assessment: Reconstructing practice

The 'Information Age' of the new millennium is a world where global and multicultural education, internationalisation of the curriculum and the notion of multiliteracies exist. In this world of new learning it is no longer feasible to speak of literacy as if it were a unitary concept. Learners in the Information Age must access, understand, transform and transmit information using not only the new mediums of information communication technology (ICT), but also at an exponential rate. Therefore, there are new and very challenging questions to be addressed: What does it mean to be literate in the 21st century? How can educators effectively assess students' literacies? How can educators ensure that the assessment process empowers an individual? Such questions require educators to rethink the literacy assessment practices of the past. Teachers need to collect a range of information in order to make informed, consistent and on-balanced judgements regarding students' literacy achievements. The use of one-off, single testing instruments is not appropriate. Building a portfolio of students' work from a range of multimodal and multidimensional assessment techniques provides the rich data from which teachers and students themselves can build up a profile of a learner's literacy competence. This paper explores a range of innovative literacy assessment data gathering techniques such as: personalised literacy assessment matrices; rubrics; digital accumulative literacy assessment portfolios; and online assessment. However, it is still important to keep in mind that all literacy assessment strategies highlight the importance of teacher judgement as being fundamental to efficient and effective literacy assessment and reporting practices in the classroom. Professionally informed teachers who are articulate, knowledgeable and reflective practitioners are the change agents of the future.