ASSIGNMENT 1

Assignment 1

Assignment 1

Assessment may be defined as "any method used to better understand the current knowledge that a student possesses." This implies that assessment can be as simple as a teacher's subjective judgment based on a single observation of student performance, or as complex as a five-hour standardised test. The idea of current knowledge implies that what a student knows is always changing and that we can make judgments about student achievement through comparisons over a period of time. Assessment may affect decisions about grades, advancement, placement, instructional needs, and curriculum. (Johnson Gordon. 2004 Pp. 77.)

Purposes of Assessment

The reasons why we assess vary considerably across many groups of people within the educational community.

Who Needs To Assess? Purposes of Assessment

Policymakers use assessment to:

Set standards

Focus on goals

Monitor the quality of education

Reward/sanction various practices

Formulate policies

Direct resources including personnel and money

Determine effects of tests

Administrators and school Monitor program effectiveness planners use assessment to: Identify program strengths and weaknesses Designate program priorities Assess alternatives Plan and improve programs

Teachers and administrators Make grouping decisions use assessment to: Perform individual diagnosis and prescription Monitor student progress Carry out curriculum evaluation and refinement Provide mastery/promotion/grading and other feedback Motivate students Determine grades. Parents and students use Gauge student progress assessment to: Assess student strengths and weaknesses Determine school accountability Make informed educational and career decisions

Effects of Traditional Tests

Billions of dollars are spent each year on education, yet there is widespread dissatisfaction with our educational system among educators, parents, policymakers, and the business community. Efforts to reform and restructure schools have focused attention on the role of assessment in school improvement. After years of increases in the quantity of formalised testing and the consequences of poor test scores, many educators have begun to strongly criticise the measures used to monitor student performance and evaluate programs. They claim that traditional measures fail to assess significant learning outcomes and thereby undermine curriculum, instruction, and policy decisions.

The higher the stakes, the greater the pressure that is placed on teachers and administrators to devote more and more time to prepare students to do well on the tests. As a consequence, narrowly focused tests that emphasise recall have led to a similar narrowing of the curriculum and emphasis on rote memorisation of facts with little opportunity to practice higher-order thinking skills. The timed nature of the tests and their format of one right answer has led teachers to give students practice in responding to artificially short texts and selecting the best answer rather than inventing their own questions or answers. When teachers teach to traditional tests by providing daily skill instruction in formats that closely resemble tests, their instructional practices are both ineffective and potentially detrimental due to their reliance on outmoded theories of learning and instruction.

Assignment 2

. The concept of test validity captures these essential characteristics and the extent that an assessment actually measures what it is intended to measure, and permits appropriate generalisations about students' skills and ...