Assessment and appraisal (original) (raw)
Related papers
2008
Andrew Watts began his career as a teacher of English in secondary schools in the UK. After eleven years he moved to Singapore where he taught in a Junior College for over four years. He then worked for five years as a 'Specialist Inspector' for English in the Ministry of Education in Singapore, focusing on curriculum development and in-service teacher development. In 1990 he returned to England and has been working with Cambridge Assessment since the summer of 1992. For most of that time he looked after teams that were developing national tests in English, Maths and Science for 14-year-olds in England, Northern Ireland and Wales. He is now Director of the Cambridge Assessment Network, whose purpose is to promote professional development for assessment professionals internationally.
From Assessment Cocktail to Assessment Symphony: The Development of Best Assessment Practices
Health Professions Education, 2015
Introduction of the best possible assessment practices is a requirement for any institution seeking to foster excellence in its students. Assessment practices have been assumed to drive students' learning. However the extent of which this driving role of assessment negatively or positively influences attainment of curriculum objectives and educational outcomes is not well known. In an effort to improve assessment practices, assessment has moved from an era of strict implementation of assessment of learning and a dominance of the psychometric theory into a focus on assessment for learning. In the latter view, a cocktail of assessments is proposed to enhance students' learning. In this paper, we are suggesting that well-planned assessment, summative and formative, may contribute to a positive effect of assessment on student learning and may result in desired educational effects. This practice of assessment should take into consideration the implemented curriculum, the institution culture, and the practiced health care setup. We call this well planned assessment an "assessment symphony". The successful implementation of such assessment symphony requires the willingness of an institution to critically look at its assessment and further efforts that are beyond the power of an individual medical school; such as modifying the provision of job opportunities and a change in the national educational culture. Despite the proven positive effects of formative compared to summative assessment on students' learning, most examinations in medical schools are still summative. Even assessment that is meant to be formative, is often used for summative decision making. The question therefore is: Are we reversing back to the psychometric era?
Values, uses and problems of assessment
1991
This paper is intended to raise questions and identify some of the problems posed by assessment within an educational setting. The principal aim is to offer a springboard for discussion, rather than to propose a specific plan of action. It is also worth stressing that assessment designates more than just examinations (public or otherwise). As teachers and educators, we are constantly making assessments of our students, passing official, unofficial, conscious and unconscious judgements. These are judgements which inevitably influence our attitudes to our jobs, our performance and our teaching or administrative styles. They also have wide-ranging repercussions on the attitudes, performances and future of our students. They are judgements based on a complex series of assumptions which we habitually make about, for instance, what education involves, the nature of schooling, school structures and their aims, the learning process as it relates to human development. What follows is largely inspired by a desire to identify and scrutinize some of the most recurrent of these assumptions.
Handbook of Research on Technology Tools for Real-World Skill Development
This chapter aims to address assessment in the modern age in terms of its importance, challenges and solutions by examining the views of 1,423 users at UK test centres following their recent experience of using two systems which employ computer-based assessment (CBA) and computer-assisted assessment (CAA). Generally speaking, based on the research, which informs the findings presented in this chapter, both systems face similar challenges but there are challenges which are specific to the CAA system. Similarly, both systems may require common solutions to improve user's future experience, but there are solutions which are more relevant to the CAA system. The chapter concludes with a discussion around the UK apprenticeship and a case study of a pilot apprenticeship programme in which CBA and CAA are also integrated.
Medical Teacher, 2013
Workplace-based assessment is more commonly given a lukewarm than a warm welcome by its prospective users. In this article, we summarise the workplace-based assessment literature as well as our own experiences with workplace-based assessment to derive lessons that can facilitate acceptance of workplace-based assessment in postgraduate specialty training. We propose to shift the emphasis in workplace-based assessment from assessment of trainee performance to the learning of trainees. Workplace-based assessment should focus on supporting supervisors in taking entrustment decisions by complementing their ''gut feeling'' with information from assessments and focus less on assessment and testability. One of the most stubborn problems with workplacebased assessment is the absence of observation of trainees and the lack of feedback based on observations. Non-standardised observations are used to organise feedback. To make these assessments meaningful for learning, it is essential that they are not perceived as summative by their users, that they provide narrative feedback for the learner and that there is a form of facilitation that helps to integrate the feedback in trainees' self-assessments.
Redefining assessment? The first ten years ofassessment in education
Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 2004
The completion of the first ten years of this journal is an occasion for review and reflection. The main issues that have been addressed over the ten years are summarized in four main sections: Purposes, International Trends, Quality Concerns and Assessment for Learning. Each of these illustrates the underlying significance of the themes of principles, policy and practice, which the journal highlights in its subtitle. The many contributions to these themes that the journal has published illustrate the diversity and complex interactions of the issues. They also illustrate that, across the world, political and public pressures have had the effect of enhancing the dominance of assessment so that the decade has seen a hardening, rather than any resolution, of its many negative effects on society. A closing section looks ahead, arguing that there is a move to rethink more radically the practices and priorities of assessment if it is to respond to human needs rather than to frustrate them.
In essence, ‘learning can be defined as changes in knowledge, understanding, skills and attitudes, brought about by experience and reflection upon that experience’ (Brown, Bull & Pendelbury, 1996, p21). This research highlights how feedback from learners, peers and tutors, augments the experience and reflection, a form of internal feedback, accelerates the learning (Schmidt et al, 1990). The authors draw on their experience as lecturers and course designers for the module “Curriculum Assessment” which is offered to both, traditional full-time undergraduates and part-time professional educators. This paper builds on research described at the 2009 ECER conference, which focused on the introduction of an assessment portfolio that was designed with the aim of promoting a constructivist approach to the development of professional competence among trainee teachers. This new paper focuses on the next stage of the research and highlights how using multiple ‘voices’ from the research process...