Teachers engage with classroom assessment data every day, but barely as an intentional tool for their own professional growth. Researchers from Singapore have developed a novel methodological tool — the Classroom Assessment-Informed Reflection Laddering (CAIRL) method — that uses teachers' own classroom assessment activities as a springboard for deep professional reflection and practice change. Dr. Heng Jiang and Mr. Saminathan s/o Moghan from the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, shared their findings from a single case study, as part of their larger-scale research project on CAIRL.
The CAIRL method draws on Dewey's theory of reflective thinking, Argyris's laddering framework, and situated theories of teacher professional learning to construct a three-tier structure linking observable classroom assessment results to pedagogical intention to underlying values and beliefs. By making this reasoning visible, CAIRL enabled the teacher in the study to identify and challenge deeply held assumptions, a process the researchers characterize as analogous to double-loop learning. As the researchers noted, CAIRL created a structured space for teachers to interrogate not just what they do, but why — and whether their beliefs still hold up against the evidence in front of them.
The study challenges the dominant assumption that classroom assessment exists primarily to serve student learning. Instead, it argues that the daily acts of designing, implementing, and interpreting classroom assessments constitute a powerful and underutilized reflective tool for teacher professional growth. Specifically, the study traces one primary school English language teacher in Singapore across four months of lesson observations and post-lesson interviews, using CAIRL — a structured laddering approach that surfaces the purposes, intentions, and reasoning behind teachers' instructional decisions, informed by classroom assessment results. Findings reveal a significant evolution in the novice teacher's professional thinking: from an initial preoccupation with examination preparation and content coverage toward a more adaptive, student-centered pedagogy grounded in close attention to evidence of student learning.
The findings have implications beyond Singapore's high-stakes examination context, speaking to global reform efforts that seek to move teachers from technical compliance toward genuine adaptive expertise and professional judgment.
Recognized with the sole Honorable Mention for the Distinguished Paper Award of the Classroom Assessment SIG at the 2026 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Conference, this study was subsequently published online in ECNU Review of Education in June 2026.
Journal
ECNU Review of Education
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