Why should we assess?
The reasons for assessing students vary widely. On a positive note, assessment can serve the following purposes:
- giving feedback to teachers and learners;
- providing motivation and encouragement; acting as both an arm-twister (a stick) and an incentive or reward for some students (a carrot);
- to boost the self-esteem of pupils (equally it can dampen it) and give a sense of achievement;
- as a basis for communication, e.g. to parents, governors or the outside world;
- as a way of evaluating a lesson, a teaching method, a scheme of work or a curriculum;
- to entertain (if done in the right way).
- Assessment performs many other functions in society which may not be viewed as positively as the six roles above:
- as a means of ranking pupils so that they can be grouped, streamed or segregated in some way;
- as a means of selection or filtering (sorting and sifting) for either employment or further education;
- to allocate students to a certain choice or pathway, e.g. a career, a new subject choice at the next level up;
- as a way of discriminating or choosing between students for other reasons.
The wide range of purposes for assessment can be seen in the types of assessment that can be identified:
- Diagnostic assessment (pre-testing): this is a form of assessment used to evaluate, before and during teaching, every pupil’s knowledge, skills and understanding, in order to inform and improve the teaching that is to follow it. The pupils’ strengths and weaknesses can be gauged, as can their prior conceptions (see alternative frameworks) on the area to be taught and learnt. Diagnostic assessment is essential for a constructivist approach to teaching (see constructivism) and forms a good basis for differentiation, by enabling teaching to be ‘pitched’ at the right level and tailored to individuals’ needs.
- Formative assessment, also known as assessment for learning: this occurs when assessment is seen as an essential part of the learning process (unlike summative assessment, which takes place after learning is complete). It is another way, like diagnostic assessment, of using assessment to look forward, to guide action and to shape future teaching and learning. Assessment for learning can include self assessment (in which pupils reflect on and evaluate their own learning) and peer assessment, in which they help to evaluate and think about each other’s learning. Formative assessment has received, quite rightly, increasing attention in recent years (from about 1998 onwards). It has been said to be especially helpful for ‘low achievers’ and in narrowing the gap between lower and higher achievers (Black and Wiliam, 1998a, 1998b), in contrast to summative assessment, which is said to increase this gap and to demotivate those who don’t succeed.
- Summative assessment this occurs at the end of a teaching unit, a module or a course, such as GCSE or A-levels. Its purpose is usually to give a student a mark, grade or ranking. This form of assessment tends to receive the most publicity in terms of media coverage (school league tables), political debate (‘falling standards’), complaints from employers (‘we’re not supplied with the skills we need’) and criticisms from higher education (‘A-levels don’t discriminate between students at the highest levels’; ‘Alevels are too easy’).
One of the aspects of assessment said to be beneficial is the use by teachers of a wide range of methods and means. Teachers can assess through what they hear and see, as well as what they read. Assessments can be oral or written; they can be formal or informal; they can involve teachers’ observations as well as tests; they can consider co-operative group work as well as individual work; they can include coursework as well as tests and examinations. Assessment can involve a variety of outputs: spoken presentations, exhibitions, posters, or portfolios. Assessment can involve the use of ICT: word processing, desktop publishing,
PowerPoint presentations, or Internet searches. Running through all these varied means of presenting and assessing students’ work is Bloom’s taxonomy. This can be used as a checklist so that assessment can be seen to involve not only factual recall but also the use of synthesis and evaluation at the top end of the taxonomy. It should also reflect the affective domain (enthusiasm, motivation, attitude) as strongly as the cognitive (skill, knowledge and understanding).
Current and recurrent debates on assessment
The topic of assessment seems to generate a great deal of debate (hot air in some cases) from educationalists, politicians, universities, employers and parents. Certain issues are current and are certain to recur. Perhaps the main issue for teachers and for parents in the past 20 years has been the huge growth in the sheer volume of assessment. Pupils of all ages seem to have been subjected to an increasing number of formal tests at different
stages from 5 to 16. This may have pleased some parents but it has certainly worried others and their offspring. For every single teacher, the rise in the quantity of testing has created a huge demand on their time and energy. The growth era in the volume of assessment saw the popularity of the dubious adage: ‘You don’t fatten a pig by continually weighing it.’
Another major, recurrent debate has concerned ‘standards’ and, in most cases, allegedly falling standards. This has occurred as the percentage of pupils obtaining five ‘good’ GCSEs has risen above 50 per cent and the success rate at Advanced level has grown, with special attention being paid to the numbers gaining three A-levels at Agrade.
Some of the ‘elite’ universities have complained that they need a new means of discriminating between students in the top echelons of A-level; equally, employers have grumbled that standards of literacy and numeracy have fallen despite rising achievement at GCSE and equivalent examinations in Scotland and elsewhere. The standards debate is certain to continue—there can never be an absolute standard in education as there is, for example, for time or for length. The metal rod, exactly one metre in length, housed at a certain temperature in Paris, has no equivalent in education.
A long-standing and complex debate, which I cannot go into fully here, is the question of validity of tests and examinations. What do exams actually measure, apart from a student’s ability to do the exam? Can certain qualities, aptitude, potential as an employee or prediction of future success be inferred from examination and test results? The debate is analogous to the old question of intelligence testing: what do IQ tests measure other
than one’s ability to do an IQ test?
Finally, one of the most heated debates in education in the UK and elsewhere has arisen over the publication of examination and test results in the local and national media. Supporters say that this is necessary for parental choice and (even more unfairly) for naming and shaming certain schools. Critics have argued that the examination ‘league tables’ do little more than reflect the socio-economic class of the students’ families. My
own view is that any table of results should show the ‘added value’ developed by the school based on the entry point of the pupils and their ‘social capital’.
Read More : Secondary Education: The Key Concepts (Routledge Key Guides)
