PHILOSOPHY OF ASSESSMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Philosophy of Assessment in Higher Education

Philosophy of Assessment in Higher Education

Introduction

Assessment is an essential part of a student's learning environment. The main goal of assessment is to improve student learning. For the student, assessments help gauge individual progress to build on strengths and weaknesses. For teachers, assessments provide information to assist in identifying instructional needs of students, to determine the level of mastery of students, and to evaluate of the effectiveness of a lesson/unit (Shepherd, 2004).

Assessment is an integral part of a student's educational experience. The primary goal of assessment is to improve student learning. Therefore, educators need to have the knowledge and skills necessary to create, administer, and interpret assessments. Any one assessment is a limited source of information and must be used in conjunction with all other available information about a student. In order to increase student achievement and create an environment that supports life long learning, educators must form a partnership with students and parents by involving them in the assessment and evaluation process. When assessments are used and interpreted properly, the results provide information that is valuable in designing educational opportunities that promote student achievement and meet the needs of all learners. Assessment of student performance exerts extraordinary influence on every level of the United States education system, from state house to classroom. For this reason, many argue that assessment is an impediment to meaningful reform, while others contend just as forcefully that it is perhaps the most crucial catalyst for effecting change in educational practice. In either case, the power that assessments exert on education is unlikely to wane. Therefore, any effort at nationwide science education reform must include reform of student assessment as a major goal (Banion, 2009).

Purpose, Rationale, And Aims Of Assessment In Higher Education

Assessment serves multiple purposes that are both formative and summative. Its results must be interpreted in terms of the context in which the performance occurs. Assessment works best when the programs it seeks to improve have clear, explicitly stated purposes. Assessment is a goal-oriented process. It entails comparing educational performance with educational purposes and expectations -- those derived from the institution's mission, from faculty intentions in program and course design, and from knowledge of students' own goals (Neill, 2006). Where program purposes lack specificity or agreement, assessment as a process pushes a campus toward clarity about where to aim and what standards to apply; assessment also prompts attention to where and how program goals will be taught and learned. Clear, shared, implement able goals are the cornerstone for assessment that is focused and useful. Its rationale is to entail not only what students know but what they can do with what they know; it involves not only knowledge and abilities but values, attitudes, and habits of mind that affect both academic success and performance beyond the classroom (Mary, 2005). Assessment should reflect these understandings by employing a diverse array of methods, including those that call for actual performance, using them over time so as to reveal change, growth, and increasing ...