Abstract

Educational assessment is at heart an exercise in evidentiary reasoning. From a handful of things that students say, do, or make, we want to draw inferences about what they know, can do, or have accomplished more broadly. Evidence-centered assessment design (ECD) is a framework that makes explicit the structures of assessment arguments, the elements and processes through which they are instantiated, and the interrelationships among them. This chapter provides an overview of ECD, highlighting the ideas of layers in the process, structures and representations within layers, and terms and concepts that can be used to guide the design of assessments of practically all types. Examples are drawn from the Principled Assessment Design in Inquiry project. An appendix provides annotated references to further ECD readings and examples of applications.