What is this thing called assessment? (original) (raw)
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The potential of assessment in science
2009
Before we speak of assessment in science, we need to understand what the goals of science education are, so that we may know what it is that we want to assess. The National Focus Group (of the National Curriculum Framework) document on the teaching of science lists Options “observation, looking for regularities and patterns, A All are animals. making hypotheses, devising qualitative or C Lion, Man and crocodile D Lion, man, crocodile, fly and are animals. fish are animals mathematical models, deducing their consequences, verification or falsification of theories through observation and controlled experiments” as the steps of the scientific method. The above stated process skills have to be developed while working on certain content, indeed, content in multiple areas. For instance, the skills of observation and looking for regularities (similar to classification into groups), for example, can be developed both while working with different types of leaves, as well as while working wit...
Evolution of Ideas About Assessment in Science: Incidence of a Formative Process
Research in Science Education, 2017
Assessment is one of the key elements in the development of the curriculum since it forms a cycle of interdependence with the other curricular areas (content, methods, etc.). This work presents the changes detected in the conceptions about assessment in science that a sample of 311 prospective primary teachers had before and after a training course presented from a constructivist perspective. This course was designed to follow the principle of isomorphism, with the educator striving 'to teach how to teach and to do so by teaching'. Information was acquired through a pre-test and post-test, 12-item, Likert-scale questionnaire. The items formed two groups of six: one typical of a traditional assessment and the other of a formative assessment. Each group consisted of two items for each category studied: the purpose of assessment, its content and the methods used. The responses were subjected to different analyses (principal components, descriptive, inferential and effect size). The results showed that initially, the trainees identify themselves as belonging to an inquiry-based model of working in class. They also showed a certain insecurity about questions that are very characteristic of traditional assessment. After the course, significant differences were found in their agreement with statements typical of a formative assessment and a reduction of their uncertainties concerning traditional assessment.
Journal of Philosophy of Education, 2012
It is sometimes said that there has been a 'paradigm shift' in the field of assessment over the last two or three decades: a new preoccupation with what learners can do, what they know or what they have achieved. It is suggested in this article that this change has precipitated a need to distinguish two conceptually and logically distinct methodological approaches to assessment that have hitherto gone unacknowledged. The upshot, it is argued, is that there appears to be a fundamental confusion at the heart of current policy, a confusion occasioned by the demand to know what learners know and compounded by a failure to recognise what this properly entails for assessment methodology.
Thinking about Assessment. (1999)
'Thinking about assessment' in Journal of Philosophy of Education Vol 33, No 2 A defence of Andrew Davis's approach to assessment against his critics, emphasising the role of personal acquaintance in assessing 'rich' understanding
International Journal of Learning and Media, 2009
Assessment gets a bum rap. Part of this is because people tend to equate assessment with testing. 1 In addition, assessment has historically acted as a barrier rather than a bridge to educational opportunity. Now, suppose that you surveyed a random sample of 100 people on the street regarding their thoughts on "assessment." It's quite possible that many of them may view it negatively-as unfair, difficult, confusing, inauthentic, boring, constraining, contrived, old school, and so on. Similarly, if you surveyed a random sample of 100 K-12 teachers, it's likely that they, too, may harbor some ill will toward the topic of assessment. Their misgivings may be colored by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2002) initiative which has, so far, failed to live up to its promises. Instead, NCLB, with its focus on accountability, has promoted a zeitgeist of "teaching to the test" where ultimately what gets left behind is deeper, more meaningful learning (i.e., knowledge, skills, concepts, and beliefs that are fully understood and can be related to other concepts). That is, meaningful learning is a desirable goal but much harder to test than rote learning, which is less desirable but fairly easy to test. There is, however, another more attractive face of assessment, where the primary goal is to improve peoples' learning (e.g., Black & Wiliam, 1998; Shute, 2007; Stiggins, 2008). Stiggins (2008) suggests that we assess for two reasons: to gather evidence to inform instructional decisions, and to encourage learners to try to learn. It is this face of educational assessment that I find to be exciting, powerful, and absolutely critical to support the kinds of learning outcomes and processes necessary to succeed in the 21 st century. I'm referring to "formative assessment," which may be thought of as assessment for learning, in contrast to "summative assessment" (or assessment of learning). The primary premise underlying this essay is that assessment results can and should have important implications for instruction, positively influencing both the teaching and learning sides of the equation. In today's classrooms, however, assessments are too often used for purposes of grading, promotion, and placement, but not for learning. The stance I take on assessment is that it should: (a) support, not undermine, the learning process for learners and teachers/mentors; (b) provide more formative, compared to summative, information (i.e., give useful feedback during
Towards a philosophy for educational assessment 1 2
2000
Many authors over the past twenty years have argued that the prevailing ‘psychometric’ paradigm for educational assessment is inappropriate and have proposed that educational assessment should develop its own distinctive paradigm. More recently (and particularly within the last five years) it has become almost commonplace to argue that changes in assessment methods are required because of changing views of human cognition, and in particular, the shift from ‘behaviourist’ towards ‘constructivist’ views of the nature of human learning. However, these changes are still firmly rooted within the psychometric paradigm, since within this perspective, the development of assessment is an essentially ‘rationalist’ project in which values play only a minor (if any) role. The validation of an assessment proceeds in a ‘scientific’ manner, and the claim is that the results of any validation exercise would be agreed by all informed observers. Developing on the work of Samuel Messick, in this paper...
Assessment and learning: fields apart?
Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 2017
Educational assessments define what aspects of learning will formally be given credit and therefore have a huge impact upon teaching and learning. Although the impact of high-stakes national and international assessments on teaching and learning is considered in the literature, remarkably, there is little research on the connection between theories of learning and educational assessments. Given the voluminous assessment that takes place annually in systematic ways in most many nations, it is surprising that more has not been gained from these assessments in the development of theories of learning and vice versa. In this article we consider both theories of learning and assessment and draw the main message of the article, that if assessments are to serve the goals of education, then theories of learning and assessment should be developing more closely with each other. We consider fundamental aspects of assessment theory, such as constructs, unidimensionality, invariance and quantifiability, and in doing so, we distinguish between educational and psychological assessment. Second, we show how less traditionally considered cases of a) international assessments and b) Assessment for Learning affect student learning. Through these cases we illustrate the otherwise somewhat theoretical discussion in the article. We argue that if assessment is to serve the learning goals of education, then this discussion on the relationship between assessment and learning should be developed further and be at the forefront of high-stakes, large-scale educational assessments.
FOCUS ARTICLE: The Foundations of Assessment
Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research & Perspective, 2003
2001). The committee issuing this report was charged with synthesizing advances in the cognitive sciences and measurement, and exploring their implications for improving educational assessment. The article opens with a vision for the future of educational assessment that represents a significant departure from the types of assessments typically available today, and from the ways in which such assessments are most commonly used. This vision is driven by an interpretation of what is both necessary and possible for educational assessment to positively impact student achievement. The argument is made that realizing this vision requires a fundamental rethinking of the foundations and principles guiding assessment design and use. These foundations and principles and their implications are then summarized in the remainder of the article. The argument is made that every assessment, regardless of its purpose, rests on three pillars: (1) a model of how students represent knowledge and develop competence in the subject domain, (2) tasks or situations that allow one to observe students' performance, and (3) interpretation methods for drawing inferences from the performance evidence collected. These three elements-cognition, observation, and interpretation-must be explicitly connected and designed as a coordinated whole. Section II summarizes research and theory on thinking and learning which should serve as the source of the cognition element of the assessment triangle. This large body of research suggests aspects of student achievement that one would want to make inferences about, and the types of observations, or tasks, that will provide evidence to support those inferences. Also described are significant advances in methods of educational measurement that make new approaches to assessment feasible. The argument is presented that measurement models, which are statistical exam-ples of the interpretation element of the assessment triangle, are cuuently available to support the kinds of inferences about student achievement that cognitive science suggests are important to pursue. Section III describes how the contemporary understanding of cognition and methods of measurement jointly provide a set of principles and methods for guiding the processes of assessment design and use. This section explores how the scientific foundations presented in Section II play out in the design of real assessment situations ranging from classroom to large-scale testing contexts. It also considers the role of technology in enhancing assessment design and use. Section IV presents a discussion of the research, development, policy, and practice issues that must be addressed for the field of assessment to move forward and achieve the vision described in Section I.
A traditional versus a constructivist conception of assessment
Research in Hospitality Management, 2013
Conceptions of education Every educational programme can be considered to be an operationalisation of a particular educational philosophy. Using the main areas of philosophy as a framework, we could say that the educational philosophy consists of particular ideas about knowledge and knowing (epistemology), the nature of being (ontology), acting (ethics), reasoning (logic), and the supernatural (metaphysics). In this paper only the first of these five areas will be more closely examined. While epistemology is often defined as covering both the nature of knowledge as well as the nature of knowing (Hofer and Pintrich, 1997; Hofer, 2000), we prefer to split the two parts. Our definition of epistemology will be restricted to the first part, which concerns a subject's conceptions of knowledge. The second part, on the nature and process of knowing, will be categorised as conceptions of learning. Both sets of conceptions are supplemented by two further sets of conceptions, about instruction and assessment, together creating what we identify as a conception of education (see Figure 1). We further assume that all conceptions of education are located on a continuum ranging from a traditional to a constructivist orientation toward education (Samuelowicz and Bain, 2002). Some indicators for each of these two broad orientations are included in Figure 1. The success of a particular conception of education as propagated by a particular institution will depend on the successful implementation of its principles and policies. Implementation in turn will depend on the acceptance and actions by staff and students. We hypothesise that if the institutional and individual conceptions of education are in alignment, improved performance will be realised. Beside the match between the conceptions of education held by the institution on one side and by the students and instructors involved on the other, we are also interested in the internal structure of the four constituent parts of a subject's conception of education. More specifically, we like to find out whether someone can have a traditional conception of knowledge while at the same time embracing a constructivist view on assessment. Is the orientation on all four subsets of conceptions independent of or dependent on each other? First, the different sets of conceptions will be explained, starting with conceptions of assessment. Conceptions of assessment Conceptions of assessment have to do with the format,