Learning-Oriented Assessment: The Contextual Dimension

Over five hundred years ago, Copernicus presented findings that revolutionized the world by shifting focus away from the Earth and towards the sun as the center of the universe. Education has been encountering a similar paradigm-altering shift with the center of learning moving from the teacher to the learner. Learning-oriented assessment (LOA) is an emerging framework of that reconceptualization. LOA is, at its core, learner-centric, where attention falls concentrically, beginning with the learner, followed by learner interactions with other agents in the learning process, then moving to factors outside of the learner within the learning space (J. E. Purpura, personal communication, September 12, 2014)