Assessment alternatives for primary education

1. Read the text and find the answers to the following questions:

· What is assessment?

· What for should pupils be assessed?

· What is formative assessment?

· What is summative assessment?

· How do teachers use the evidence collected in assessment?

· How is effectiveness of education evaluated?

· How are aggregated results used?

Why and how we assess our pupils has an enormous impact on their educational experience and consequently on how and what they learn. At the start it is perhaps necessary to make clear that the word ‘assessment’ is used here to refer to the process of making judgements about pupils’ learning - and more generally about any learner’s learning. In some countries, including the USA, the word ‘evaluation’ is used for this process and in many cases the two words are used interchangeably. Here we use the word evaluation to refer to the process of making judgements about teaching, programmes, systems, materials, and so on.

There are two main reasons for assessing pupils:

• to help their learning

• to report on what has been learned.

These are usually discussed as different purposes of assessment and sometimes, mistakenly, as different kinds of assessment and ones that are somehow opposed to one another. They are certainly different in several important respects, but what should unite them is the aim of making a positive contribution to learning. This impact on learning is one of the criteria to be used later in evaluating different answers to the question of how we assess.

Assessment for first of the two reasons above is called formative assessment or alternatively, assessment for learning. It is defined as: 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 get there. It is carried out as part of teaching and so involves the collection and use of evidence about the learning in relation to the specific activities and goals of a lesson. This is detailed evidence, interpreted by the teacher and pupil to decide where the pupil has reached and so what next steps are needed to help achievement of the goals, or to move on.

Assessment for the second reason is called summative, or assessment of learning, and is carried out for the purpose of reporting achievement of individual pupils at a particular time. It relates to broad learning goals that are achieved over a period of time. It can be conducted in various ways, as discussed later, including by tests or examinations at a certain time, or summarising achievement across a period of time up to the reporting date.

Before going on to the question of ‘how’, it is necessary to consider the use made of the results since this influences decisions about how to gather and interpret evidence. For formative assessment there is, by definition, one main use of the data, to help learning. If the information about pupils’ learning is not used to help that learning, then the process cannot be described as formative assessment. By contrast, the data from summative assessment are used in several ways, some relating to individual pupils and some to aggregated results of groups of pupils.

For individual pupils, the uses of summative assessment can be described as either ‘internal’ or ‘external’ to the school community:

• ‘Internal’ uses include using regular grading, record keeping and reporting to parents and to the pupils themselves; at secondary level, informing decisions about courses to follow where there are options within the school.

• ‘External’ uses include meeting the requirements of statutory national assessment, for selection, where selective secondary schools exist; at the secondary level, certification by examination bodies or for vocational qualifications, selection for further or higher education.

In addition to these uses, which relate to making judgements about individual pupils, results aggregated for groups of pupils are used for evaluating the effectiveness of the education provided by teachers, schools and local authorities. The main uses of aggregated results in England are:

• Accountability: for evaluation of teachers, schools, local authorities;

• Monitoring: to compare results for pupils of certain ages and stages, year on year, to identify change in ‘standards’.

________________________

contribution – вклад

impact – влияние, воздействие

achievement – достижение

vocational – профессиональный

1. Look through the text again and find words and constructions you may use in your professional discourse (scientific terms etc.). Translate and memorize them.
2. Find the transcription of the following words and practise pronouncing them: consequently, interchangeably, criteria, summarizing, further, accountability.
3. Decide whether the following statements are true or false according to the text:

· Assessment is different from evaluation.

· Assessment for learning shows the pupils’ progress.

· External use of assessment results may tell on a child’s admission to certain schools.

· The change in standard is revealed in aggregated data.

Дата добавления: 2015-07-08