Assessment in the Classroom Revisited

 

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What Are Assessments?

Assessments are a very important aspect of education within the classroom. Someone with little background knowledge on assessments might see it as an easy concept to understand. "It's just a test...isn't it?" But when you sit down and really dig deeper into what an assessment is, you will find it is much more complex than that, with many different interconnected parts. The Foundations of Education gives a clear definition of what an assessment is. They put it this way, "the term assessment refers to the wide variety of methods or tools that educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning progress, skill acquisition, or educational needs of students."

My understanding of assessments has broadened as I have studied it. Specifically, the purpose of assessments has caught my attention. Originally, I viewed assessment as having one single purpose: to measure the educational needs of students. But this past week has taught me that the purpose of assessment is much more complicated than that. I am of the opinion that although there are many different names for assessment like summative or formative...in reality there truly is just one form of assessment. The difference between assessments comes down to its purpose. There are many different purposes that assessment can have. The North American report of the Committee on the Foundations of Assess-ment Pellegrino et all, 2001, pp 37-42) give three points of summary on the purpose of assessment:

1.    Assessment is to assist learning – formative assessment

2.    Assessment of individual student achievement – summative assessment

3.    Assessment to evaluate progammes

The difference between a formative assessment and a summative assessment ultimately comes down to this question, "what is the purpose of this assessment?" If I had to give a simple summary of all the different purposes that assessments have, I would say that all assessment should IMPACT and PREPARE student's for their future lives.

Assessments Assist Learning

As stated earlier, assessment should assist in learning. Assessment should even be used to MOTIVATE the students in their learning. From my experience in teaching though, it does not always motivate the students...in fact at times it does quite the opposite. This brings a challenge to teachers. We as teachers should create assessments that do motivate students. A colleague of mine discussed a great way to motivate students through assessments. She decided to have students track their own assessment progress and make goals for themselves based on that data. This inspired curiosity and interest on the students part both to succeed and continue to improve as the class continued on.

Assessments and learning goals have a connection as well. We as teachers have learning goals to focus the instruction that we have in the classroom. Teachers can use the data that they receive from assessments to adapt the lesson in order to properly meet the students needs. The learning goals therefore remain the same, but how you as a class meet those learning objectives might change depending on what the assessment reveals about your students.

End Comment

May we as teachers take careful time to consider the purpose of assessments as we create ways to promote our student learning!