The Survey of Assessment Beliefs (SAB) was developed to measure teacher candidates' perceptions about grading practices. After piloting, the SAB was administered to 222 teacher candidates at a large northeastern urban university, along with a measure of their beliefs about teaching. Candidates were found to support many grading practices not recommended by professional standards. Support for grading practices that deviate from professional recommendations was positively associated with support for constructivist approaches. Significant differences were found in grading and teaching attitudes between elementary and secondary education teacher candidates. Teacher candidates became more moderate in endorsing nonstandard grading practices following coursework in classroom assessment but on average maintained a tendency to approve academically enabling grading practices. This study provides empirical evidence about possible areas of tension between constructivist learning theory and principles of educational measurement, and it helps classroom assessment teachers understand the needs of their target audiences.

We describe the use of think alouds to examine substantive processes involved in performance on a formative assessment of computational thinking (CT) designed to support self-regulated learning (SRL). Our task design model included three phases of work on a computational thinking problem: forethought, performance, and reflection. The cognitive processes of seven students who reported their thinking during all three phases were analyzed. Ratings of artifacts of code indicated the computational thinking problem was moderately difficult to solve (M = 15, SD = 5) on a scale of 0 to 21 points. Profiles were created to illustrate length and sequence of different types of cognitive processes during the think-aloud. Results provide construct validity evidence for the tasks as formative assessments of CT, elucidate the way learners at different levels of skill use SRL, shed light on the nature of computational thinking, and point out areas for improvement in assessment design.