The worldwide impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education has been impossible to imagine, predict, and measure. As a result, traditional modes of learning and assessment are being challenged, and the quality of our education systems questioned—on a global scale. This unprecedented disruption to education has had a tremendous negative impact on the learning of all students, particularly vulnerable young elementary students and their parents who are being put to a strenuous test, juggling their work duties with their parenting responsibilities, all in a full-time capacity. These global challenges have highlighted and magnified the importance of students becoming self-regulated learners. A self-regulated learner has the capacity to monitor their own learning, set goals for themselves, establish plans and access resources to achieve their goals, and assess their progress.

The global pandemic has further elucidated the diversity of socio-cultural values embedded in learning and assessment across educational systems internationally, including how self-regulated learning (SRL) is endorsed and supported differently across cultures. This study examines how formative classroom assessment practices (defined as assessment for and as learning) can support SRL in elementary students to take control, responsibility, and pride in their learning through a pioneering cross-cultural study in Canada and China. Exploring the productive linkage between formative assessment and SRL within the two learning cultures through a culturally-contextual and sensitive study is critical as we know learning and assessment processes are situated differently across cultures, a phenomenon further highlighted through pandemic responses; therefore, results on the role of formative assessment in the promotion of SRL may vary across contexts. However, examining the relationship between SRL and assessment is challenging due to the traditional divide, theoretically and methodologically, between two research disciplines, i.e., SRL is examined in educational psychology while classroom assessment is examined in educational assessment research. Although emerging research on SRL and classroom assessment is converging, the research question of how formative classroom assessment as a pedagogical approach supports SRL in students is still underexplored, particularly among young learners and across learning cultures. The five-year study addresses the research gap on developing and modelling a spectrum of SRL and assessment across learning stages and learning cultures. Our model stands to improve the educational experiences and learning outcomes of the next generations of learners through SRL and assessment, starting at a young age.