Types of Assessment
Types of Assessment
Assessment for Learning
Understanding the concept of ‘Assessment for Learning’
Assessment for learning is the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners and their teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to go there. Assessment for learning is also known as formative assessment (UK 2002 Assessment Reform Group).
The ongoing process of gathering and interpreting evidence about student learning for the purpose of determining where students are in their learning, where they need to go, and how best to get there.
Nature of ‘Assessment for Learning’
Assessment for Learning is based on extensive research conducted by Paul Black and Dylan William. In their 1998 study Inside the Black Box, they refined the term ‘formative assessment’ by emphasising that assessment is only formative when: it is an integral part of the learning and teaching process; and assessment evidence is actually used to: modify teaching to meet the needs of pupils; and improve learning.
Assessment for learning is inevitably part of classroom activities. It is a fundamental process required to promote learning and ultimately achievement. In this approach learners need to know and understand the following before learning can take place: What is the aim of the learning? Why do they need to learn it? Where are they in terms of achieving the aim? How can they achieve the aim?
When learners know and understand these principles, the quality of learning will improve. Sharing this information with learners will promote ownership of the learning aims and a sense of shared responsibility between the teacher and learner to achieve those aims. Improving learners’ confidence and self-esteem reflects positively in learners’ work and their motivation is improved.
Assessment for Learning is all about informing learners of their progress to empower them to take the necessary action to improve their performance. Teachers need to create learning opportunities where learners can progress at their own pace and undertake consolidation activities where necessary. Assessment for Learning strategies should be implemented in such a way that quality feedback provided to learners will help to challenge the more able learner to reach new levels of achievement and, in doing so, reach their full potential. The individuality of feedback, by its very nature, has the facility to support weaker learners and challenge more able learners.
We know that much classroom practice can be described as assessment activities. Teachers set tasks and activities and pose questions to learners. respond to the tasks, activities and questions. The teachers make judgements on the learners’ knowledge, understanding and skills acquisition as evidenced in the learners’ responses. These judgements on learners’ performance happen quite naturally in the course of any teaching and learning session. This requires two-way dialogue. The teacher is responsible for decisionmaking. The teacher communicates these decisions in the form of feedback to the learners on their performance. The quality of learning depends on how successfully these classroom practices have been undertaken. At the end of each session, teachers ask themselves: What do learners know now that they did not know before they attended the session?
Assessment for Learning offers an alternative perspective to traditional assessment in schools. Simply put, Assessment for Learning shifts the emphasis from summative to formative assessment, from making judgments to creating descriptions that can be used in the service of the next stage of learning. Robert Stake has beautifully expressed the role of formative and summative evaluation, when he says, “When the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative; when the guests taste the soup, the summative.”
In the process of assessment for Learning, teachers collect a wide range of data so that they can modify the learning work for their students. The assumption underlying this approach is classroom assessment can enhance learning. The teachers design assessment tasks in such a way that they help teachers to know what students know and can do already. They use these insights to design the next steps in observation, worksheets, questioning in class, and other learning situations. Whatever way they present the judgements about the performance, they should highlight the strengths and weakness of students. These are the cues for both teachers and students for further learning plans.
Clearly, teachers are the central characters in Assessment for Learning as well, but their role is quite different from other two approaches of assessment.
They use their personal knowledge of the students and their understanding of the context of the assessment and the curriculum targets to identify particular learning needs. Assessment for learning happens in the middle of learning, often more than once, rather than at the end. It is interactive, with teachers providing assistance as part of the assessment. It helps teachers provide the feedback to scaffold next steps. And it depends on teachers’ diagnostic skills to make it work.
It is important to remember Hynes (1991) in this context. He said, ‘In reality, it is through classroom assessment that attitudes, skills, knowledge and thinking are fostered, nurtured and accelerated – or stifled.”
The following list consolidates the nature of ‘assessment for learning’:
Does not stop at a point but continues till the learning task is completed Contributes and encourages learning
Is a cooperative task of both student and teacher
Believes in using variety of assessment methods to make decisions for further planning
The results reveal the strengths and limitations of learning
Results of assessment are further utilised for improving learning
Learning goals are clearly intimated to the learner and learners’ understanding in this regard is ensured
No grades of scores are assigned
Record is maintained in anecdotal and descriptive form
Based on the assumption that assessment helps learning better.
Involves formal and informal assessment activities as part of learning and assessment
Goals of learning are very clear and specific
Encourages self-assessment as well as peer assessment
The results of assessment are obvious for both learners and teachers
Is inclusive of all learners.
Motivation is inbuilt since the learner is continuously guided in the process of learning
Contributes for teachers to plan further activities for learning.
There are five main processes that take place in assessment for learning:
(i) Questioning enables a student, with the help of their teacher, to find out what level they are at.
(ii) The teacher provides feedback to each student about how to improve their learning.
(iii) Students understand what successful work looks like for each task they are doing.
(iv) Students become more independent in their learning, taking part in peer assessment and self-assessment.
(v) Summative assessments (e.g. the student’s exam or portfolio submission) are also used formatively to help them improve
Teachers’ role in ‘Assessment for Learning’
Teacher acts as a mentor, doctor, reporter and director in this approach. They provide feedback and support for each student. The teacher collects data and identifies the problems. They involve themselves in the process of diagnosis. Teachers also work as reporters and report to parents, students, and the school administration about students’ progress. Like a director, they take decisions and give instructions about how the process should continue in the immediate future, through meticulous planning of instruction.
The specific tasks of teachers in assessment for learning approach are the following.
Gives instruction in view of targeted outcomes
Identifies particular learning needs during different sessions of learning Selects and adapts materials and resources
Plans the course of learning
Creates differentiated teaching strategies and learning opportunities for students to move forward in the process of learning
Provides immediate feedback for students
Ensures that learning has taken place
Makes attempts to enhance students’ motivation and commitment to learning They see that classroom culture is conducive for learning
They try to make learning convincing for students
They ensure that learning is manageable for students.
They observe keenly how students are making connections between previous and present learning and plan further learning situations.
They are keen on tasks that expose students’ knowledge, skills and attitudes
Planning Procedure
Learning in formal situation is a planned process. It is an essential part of a teacher’s workload. Teachers need to plan and create opportunities within each session for two major purposes. One, to help students to achieve desired learning, and secondly, to obtain information about a learner’s progress towards the learning goals defined by the teacher in the beginning of the session. It is very important that these learning goals are communicated to the learner. It is equally crucial that the teacher checks to ensure that the learner not only understands the learning goals, but also appreciates the assessment criteria which will be used to assess the work. The following tasks have to be considered while planning assessment for learning: decide what is going to be learnt in a particular session define the learning goals communicate the learning goals to the learners compile questions and design tasks to check learner understanding of the learning goals explain to the learners the criteria which will be used to assess their work decide how feedback is going to be provided define how learners will take an active part in the assessment process plan opportunities for learners to use the feedback provided on the assessment decision to further progress.
Focus of assessment
The curriculum can be used as the starting point in deciding what to assess, and to focus on why and how students gain their understanding. Assessment for learning requires ongoing assessment of the curriculum outcomes that comprise the intended learning. These assessments should be designed in such a way that they expose students’ thinking and skills in relation to the intended learning, and the common preconceptions.
Use of methods Number of methods can be used in this approach. Focussed observations, questioning, conversations, quizzes, computer-based assessments, learning logs, or whatever other methods are likely to give information will be useful for planning and teaching. Whenever an assessment is planned, one should think about what information is expected from this attempt and which assessment approach/approaches are best suited for this. It is important that these methods need to incorporate a variety of ways for students to demonstrate their learning. For example, designing opportunities to complete tasks in a pictorial form, or writing form, or orally or even through non formal talks etc. This is because students may not be able to express their learning in one particular way.
Ensuring Quality of assessment
One can be sure of the quality of assessment for learning whenIt helps to make decisions about students’ learning in specific ways. It should help both the teacher and learner, to know, what exactly has been learnt and what is yet to be learnt. It should give clues about how to plan to learn further. This specificity will help 48 teachers to give clear feedback for learners so that learners can focus on what to accomplish next and how to accomplish the same.
Using Assessment Information /Feedback
The results of assessment are most useful to give feedback to students. This is the key to successful assessment for learning. The success of learning to a large extent depends on the quality of feedback. When the feedback is clear, specific and crisp, students easily plan their further learning sessions and achieve the goals. Feedback needs not be after the end of learning session. It can be at any point where teachers feel the need for it. It is the vital link between the teacher’s assessment of a student’s learning and the action following that assessment. To be successful, feedback needs to be immediate and identify the way forward. It should not simply tell learners whether their answers are right or wrong, or simply provide evaluative feedback in the form of grades and short, non-specific comments of praise or censure. This latter kind of feedback affects students’ senses of themselves and tells them how they stand in relation to others, but it offers very little direction for moving forward. Feedback for learning, on the other hand, is descriptive and specific. Descriptive feedback makes explicit connections between students’ thinking and the learning that is expected. It addresses faulty interpretations and lack of understanding. It provides the student with manageable next steps and an example of what good work looks like. Feedback for learning provides evidence that confirms or challenges an idea that a student hold. It gives recognition for achievement and growth, and it includes clear directions for improvement. It encourages students to think about, and respond to, the suggestions. And it focusses on both quality and learning.
Reporting
Reporting in assessment for learning is based on open, frequent, and ongoing communication with students and their parents about progress in learning, methods that the teacher is using to ensure ongoing progress, and ways that students, teachers, and parents might help move learning forward with minimal misunderstanding and confusion for the student. The reports might focus on a single outcome but more often on a series, or cluster, of outcomes. Reporting should take into account what learning is expected, provide good models of what students can achieve, and identify strategies for supporting students.
Assessment as Learning
Meaning and Nature of ‘Assessment as Learning’
Assessment as learning focuses on students and emphasizes assessment as a process of metacognition (knowledge of one’s own thought processes) for students. Assessment as learning emerges from the idea that learning is not just a matter of transferring ideas from someone who is knowledgeable to someone who is not, but is an active process of cognitive restructuring that occurs when individuals interact with new ideas. Within this view of learning, students are the critical connectors between assessment and learning. For students to be actively engaged in creating their own understanding, they must learn to be critical assessors who make sense of information, relate it to prior knowledge, and use it for new learning.
Assessment as learning is when learners are asked to assess their performance on their own, they use various assessment techniques and strategies to assess themselves. This practice helps learners to identify their knowledge gaps, adopt appropriate learning strategy and use assessment as tool for new learning.
This is the regulatory process in metacognition; that is, students become adept at personally monitoring what they are learning, and use what they discover from the monitoring to make adjustments, adaptations, and even major changes in their thinking. Assessment as learning is based in research about how learning happens, and is characterized by students reflecting on their own learning and making adjustments so that they achieve deeper understanding.
The ultimate goal in assessment as learning is for students to acquire the skills and the habits of mind to be metacognitively aware with increasing independence. Assessment as learning focusses on the explicit fostering of students’ capacity over time to be their own best assessors, but teachers need to start by presenting and modelling external, structured opportunities for students to assess themselves.
In assessment as learning, the role of the student, is not only seen as a contributor to the assessment and learning process, but also as the critical connector between them. The student is the link. Students, as active, engaged, and critical assessors, can make sense of information, relate it to prior knowledge, and master the skills involved. This is the regulatory process in metacognition. It occurs when students personally monitor what they are learning and use the feedback from this monitoring to make adjustments, adaptations, and even major changes in what they understand. Assessment as Learning is the ultimate goal, where students are their own best assessors.
At some point, students will need to be self-motivating and able to bring their talents and knowledge to bear on the decisions and problems that make up their lives. They can’t just wait for the teacher to tell them whether or not the answer is “right.” Effective assessment empowers students to ask reflective questions and consider a range of strategies for learning and acting. Over time, students move forward in their learning when they can use personal knowledge to construct meaning, have skills of self-monitoring to realize that they don’t understand something, and have ways of deciding what to do next.
Assessment as learning is a process of developing and supporting metacognition for students. Assessment as learning focusses on the role of the student as the critical connector between assessment and learning. When students are active, engaged, and critical assessors, 50 they make sense of information, relate it to prior knowledge, and use it for new learning. This is the regulatory process in metacognition. It occurs when students monitor their own learning and use the feedback from this monitoring to make adjustments, adaptations, and even major changes in what they understand.
Teachers’ Role in Assessment as Learning
The role of teacher here is different form the context of traditional assessment contexts. The teacher needs to shift from a presenter of content to a practitioner of more productive pedagogy. Here one can witness a shared responsibility of teachers and students for learning. The idea of Zone of Proximal Development suggested by Vygotsky is more applicable here. He proposes that the aim of teaching is to encourage the learner to be more independent from the teacher. This approach implies that the teacher needs to set procedures of learning that allow the learner to take up independently in the course of learning. In this approach, the students are encouraged to use assessment information to set their learning goals, make learning decisions related to their own improvement. The students assess the status of their work and identify where they have to reach. They take the feedback from peers and students and understands the demands of further learning. The teacher helps to make future learning plans
One should not think that, the role of teacher in this approach is less important because students take the responsibility of their learning. The teachers have equal and greater responsibility here, more than in learning for assessment contexts. The teacher is supposed to design instruction and assessment that allows all students to think about, and monitor, their own learning. Assessment as learning is based on the conviction that students are capable of becoming adaptable, flexible, and independent in their learning and decision-making. When teachers involve students and promote their independence, they are giving them the tools to undertake their own learning wisely and well. To become independent learners, students must develop sophisticated combinations of skills, attitudes, and dispositions. Self-monitoring and evaluation are complex and difficult skills that do not develop quickly or spontaneously. Like any other complex set of skills, becoming metacognitively aware requires modelling and teaching on the part of the teacher, and practice on the part of the student.
The teacher’s role in promoting the development of independent learners through assessment as learning is to
model and teach the skills of self-assessment.
guide students in setting goals, and monitoring their progress toward them.
provide exemplars and models of good practice and quality work that reflect curriculum outcomes.
work with students to develop clear criteria of good practice.
guide students in developing internal feedback or self-monitoring mechanisms to validate and question their own thinking, and to become comfortable with the ambiguity and uncertainty that is inevitable in learning anything new.
provide regular and challenging opportunities to practise, so that students can become confident, competent self-assessors.
monitor students’ metacognitive processes as well as their learning, and provide descriptive feedback.
create an environment where it is safe for students to take chances and where support is readily available Students need to experience continuous and genuine success.
This does not mean that students should not experience failure but, rather, that they need to become comfortable with identifying different perspectives and challenge these perspectives; they need to learn to look for misconceptions and inaccuracies and work with them toward a more complete and coherent understanding. Students (both those who have been successful - in a system that rewards safe answers—and those who are accustomed to failure) are often unwilling to confront challenges and take the risks associated with making their thinking visible. Teachers have the responsibility of creating environments in which students can become confident, competent self-assessors by providing emotional security and genuine opportunities for involvement, independence, and responsibility.
Planning Procedure
In order to know what steps to take to support students’ independence in learning, teachers use assessment as learning to obtain rich and detailed information about how students are progressing in developing the habits of mind and skills to monitor, challenge, and adjust their own learning. For their part, students learn to monitor and challenge their own understanding, predict the outcomes of their current level of understanding, make reasoned decisions about their progress and difficulties, decide what else they need to know, organize and reorganize ideas, check for consistency between different pieces of information, draw analogies that help them advance their understanding, and set personal goals.
Let us see how students plan the assessment procedure:
Students identify and clarify the standards to be achieved including standards required by the teacher;
Clarify what high standards mean in behavioural terms;
Establish goals for assignments;
Choose strategies deemed appropriate to go through and complete the assignments;
Record entire progress, makes not of any issues arising and have been resolved; Write Self-reflections;
Write peer reviews;
Prepare questions based on self, peer and tutor evaluations prior to communication;
Communicate with teacher directly or through self reflections after the completion of learning exercise;
Modify learning strategies based on results.
Focus of assessment
In assessment as learning, teachers are interested in
how students understand concepts.
how they use metacognitive analysis to make adjustments to their understanding.
observe students’ goal-setting process and their thinking about their learning.
pay attention on the strategies students use to support or challenge, adjust, and advance their learning.
Use of Methods
In this approach, multi-faceted and various types of assessment need to be used. These are actually the opportunities provided for students to exhibit their learning. The assessment methods can either be selected from ready-made lists or can be adapted or designed according to the needs of students and situations. Teachers need to orient students about how to use these approaches for self-assessment. The assessment methods should have scope for reflection and review. exemplars, criteria, rubrics, frameworks, and checklists etc may help in this situation.
Ensuring Quality of assessment
Quality in assessment can be ensured if during the process of assessment
students are engaged in considering and challenging their thinking;
students made proper judgements about their understanding;
used appropriate tools and accumulated evidence
made reasonable decisions based on the evidence collected
presented clearly what they have understood and what requires more clarity
made proper decisions about what they need to do to deepen their understanding.
Using Assessment Information /Feedback
Students use assessment as learning to gain knowledge about their progress, show milestones of success that are worthy of celebration, adjust their goals, make choices about what they need to do next to move their learning forward, and advocate for themselves.
Feedback and support, for example: - Try using smaller tasks to make timely feedback possible. Feedback can be informal or formal; Give constructive feedback that helps students understand what and how to advance; Through dialogue, help facilitate students planning of strategies to improve learning; Acknowledge students’ achievements. For students: Self involvement, for example: - Understand different standards including the standaFeedback to Students Feedback is particularly important in assessment as learning. Learning is enhanced when students see the effects of what they have tried, and can envision alternative strategies to understand the material. When feedback enhances understanding and provides models for independent learning, students tend to be diligent and more engaged. Although assessment as learning is designed to develop independent learning, students cannot accomplish it without the guidance and direction that comes from detailed and relevant feedback. Students need feedback to help them develop autonomy and competence. Complex skills, such as monitoring and self-regulation, become routine only when there is constant feedback and practice using the skills. Effective feedback challenges ideas, introduces additional information, offers alternative interpretations, and creates conditions for self-reflection and review of ideas. It provides students with information about their performance on a task, and how they could come to the conclusions on their own.
Reporting
Reporting in assessment as learning is the responsibility of students, who must learn to articulate and defend the nature and quality of their learning. When students reflect on their own learning and must communicate it to others, they are intensifying their understanding about a topic, their own learning strengths, and the areas in which they need to develop further. Student-led parent-teacher conferences have become a popular reporting forum that fits with assessment as learning. However, the success of these conferences depends on how well they are structured and how well the students prepare. The students need to have been deeply involved in assessment as learning throughout the instructional process, and be able to provide their parents with evidence of their learning. The evidence needs to include an analysis of their learning progress and what they need to do to move it forward. Recordkeeping in assessment as Learning is a personal affair. Students and teachers decide (often together) about the important evidence of learning and how it should be organized and kept. Students routinely reflect on their work and make judgements about how they can capitalise on what they have done already. Comparison with others is almost irrelevant. 53 Instead, the critical reference points are the student’s own prior work and the aspirations and targets for continued learning.
Assessment of Learning
Meaning and Nature of ‘Assessment of Learning’
Assessment of learning refers to strategies designed to confirm what students know, demonstrate whether or not they have met curriculum outcomes or the goals of their individualized programs, or to certify proficiency and make decisions about students’ future programs or placements. It is designed to provide evidence of achievement to parents, other educators, the students themselves, and sometimes to outside groups (e.g., employers, other educational institutions).
Assessment of learning results in statements or symbols about how well students are learning. Assessment of learning: It basically focuses on learners’ achievement against some predefined outcomes and standards. Sometimes, it is referred to as summative assessment. Generally, teachers undertake this type of assessment at the end of a Unit or term or semester in order to grade or rank the learners.
We have seen that the objective of assessment from behaviourist perspective is to assess the extent of learning that has taken place at a particular point of time, for instance, after teaching a lesson or unit, you might be interested to know the level of achievement of students on the content you have taught and therefore you give them some test for it. The predominant objective of assessment in schools is assessment of learning.Youmightbeusingvariousforms ofteststoassessthequantityandaccuracyoflearners’workrepresentedthrough grades or marks. This type of assessment tells you as to how well the students are performing in comparison to certain criteria such as ‘high and low achievement’ or ‘pass or fail’, etc. School report card of students provide feedback to parents about the progress of their wards as well.
Similarly, at the larger scale, State level or National level surveys are conducted to assess the performance of students at different levels. The focus of such assessment is to rank order students in groups in terms of their position within the group such as first or second, and so on. Although such type of assessment has long historical tradition and is widely accepted by schools and parents alike, but, it has several limitations and doubts have been raised about the reliability and validity of such type of assessment procedures. Assessment from this perspective has been considered as a means to achieve the goal of mastery learning. This approach led to identifying minimum levels of learning (MLL). The National Policy on Education (NPE) 1986, revised in 1992 and its Programme of Action (POA1992) stressed on minimum levels of learning(MLL) which subsequently led to stage- wise and subjectwise development of MLL by the NCERT. Traditionally assessment of learning has been carried out in our schools with the help of numerical assessment (0-100) or grades (A-E), etc. and is summative in nature reflecting how much a learner has achieved at the end of learning any concept and unit. Assessment of learning, therefore is summative and linear which is carried out with the objective to ascertain what the learner has learnt after teaching is over. It is the end product of learning
Assessment of learning represents the assessment conception of measurement. Judgments of performances are taken at the end of learning. The predominant kind of assessment in schools is Assessment of Learning. Its purpose is summative, intended to certify learning. Assessment of Learning in classrooms takes the form of tests or exams that include questions drawn from the material studied during that time. In Assessment of Learning, the results are expressed symbolically, generally as marks across several content areas to report to parents.
This is the kind of assessment that still dominates most classroom assessment activities, especially in secondary schools, with teachers firmly in charge of both creating and marking the test. Teachers use the tests to assess the quantity and accuracy of student work, and the bulk of teacher effort in assessment is taken up in marking and grading. A strong emphasis is placed on comparing students, and feedback to students comes in the form of marks or grades with little direction or advice for improvement. These kinds of testing events indicate which students are doing well and which ones are doing poorly. Typically, they don’t give much indication of mastery of particular ideas or concepts because the test content is generally too limited and the scoring is too simplistic to represent the broad range of skills and knowledge that has been covered.
Assessment of Learning and grading has a long history in education. They have been widely accepted by parents and the public. If they have served us so well, why would we worry about a process that works? Without moving too far away from my primary purpose, I’d like to highlight a few of the issues that are currently contentious about what we have always done. Although the public has been largely supportive of grading in schools, scepticism is increasing about its fairness and even its accuracy.
Teachers’ Role
The consequences of assessment of learning are often far-reaching. They affect students seriously. Teachers have the responsibility of reporting student learning accurately and fairly, based on evidence obtained from a variety of contexts and applications. Effective assessment of learning requires that teachers provide
a rationale for undertaking a particular assessment of learning at a particular point in time
clear descriptions of the intended learning
processes that make it possible for students to demonstrate their competence and skill a range of alternative mechanisms for assessing the same outcomes
public and defensible reference points for making judgements
transparent approaches to interpretation
descriptions of the assessment process
strategies for remedy in the event of disagreement about the decisions
With the help of their teachers, students can look forward to assessment of learning tasks as occasions to show their competence, as well as the depth and breadth of their learning.
Planning Procedure
The purpose of assessment of learning is to measure, certify, and report the level of students’ learning, so that reasonable decisions can be made about students. There are many potential users of the information: teachers (who can use the information to communicate with parents about their children’s proficiency and progress) parents and students (who can use the results for making educational and vocational decisions) potential employers and post-secondary institutions (who can use the information to make decisions about hiring or acceptance) principals, district or divisional administrators, and teachers (who can use the information to review and revise programming)
Focus of assessment
Assessment of learning requires the collection and interpretation of information about students’ accomplishments in important curricular areas, in ways that represent the nature and complexity of the intended learning. The genuine learning for understanding is much more than just recognition or recall of facts or algorithms. Therefore, assessment of learning tasks need to enable students to show the complexity of their understanding. Students need to be able to apply key concepts, knowledge, skills, and attitudes in ways that are authentic and consistent with current thinking in the knowledge domain.
Use of Methods
In assessment of learning, the methods chosen need to address the intended curriculum outcomes and the continuum of learning that is required to reach the outcomes. The methods must allow all students to show their understanding and produce sufficient information to support credible and defensible statements about the nature and quality of their learning. This helps others to use the results in appropriate ways. Assessment of learning methods include not only tests and examinations, but also a rich variety of products and demonstrations of learning—portfolios, exhibitions, performances, presentations, simulations, multimedia projects, and a variety of other written, oral, and visual methods.
Ensuring Quality of Assessment
Assessment of learning needs to be very carefully constructed so that the information upon which decisions are made is of the highest quality. Assessment of learning is designed to be summative, and to produce defensible and accurate descriptions of student competence in relation to defined outcomes and, occasionally, in relation to other students’ assessment results. Certification of students’ proficiency should be based on a rigorous, reliable, valid, and equitable process of assessment and evaluation.
Using Assessment Information /Feedback
Because assessment of learning comes most often at the end of a unit or learning cycle, feedback to students has a less obvious effect on student learning than assessment for learning and assessment as learning. Nevertheless, students do rely on their marks and on teachers’ comments as indicators of their level of success, and to make decisions about their future learning endeavours.
Reporting
There are many possible approaches to reporting student proficiency. Reporting assessment of learning needs to be appropriate for the audiences for whom it is intended, and should provide all of the information necessary for them to make reasoned decisions. Regardless of the form of the reporting, however, it should be honest, fair, and provide sufficient detail and contextual information so that it can be clearly understood. Traditional reporting, which relies only on a student’s average score, provides little information about that student’s skill development or knowledge. One alternate mechanism, which recognizes many forms of success and provides a profile of a student’s level of performance on an emergent-proficient continuum, is the parent student-teacher conference. This forum provides parents with a great deal of information, and reinforces students’ responsibility for their learning.
Record-Keeping Whichever approaches teachers choose for assessment of learning, it is their records that provide details about the quality of the measurement. Detailed records of the various components of the assessment of learning are essential, with a description of what each component measures, with what accuracy and against what criteria and reference points, and should include supporting evidence related to the outcomes as justification. When teachers keep records that are detailed and descriptive, they are in an excellent position to provide meaningful reports to parents and others.
Difference among assessment for learning, assessment as learning and assessment of learning
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