Student Assessment as Teacher Research

In preparing to teach the topic of social science research methods in my IB Business Management course last year, some questions occurred to me. To what extent was the job of the classroom teacher when it comes to student assessment the same as that of the researcher doing primary data collection? As a teacher, when I create, assign, collect and analyze student assessments, am I not collecting primary data? Is not this part of the teacher's job the same as that of the researcher? Am I not collecting data for the purpose of gaining some sort of information about my students, such as how much they've learned of a given topic?