Modern means of assessment

Lecture 1

The quality education indicators

Indicators – figures or data that show the level of the education, knowledge, skills, competencies & abilities. This is the main background & the main condition for assessment procedures. In this light we must understand that assessment is a means of quality management. It means doing all kinds of teaching procedures we involve into this process various assessment procedures. In other words a learner & a teacher is responsible for quality of assessment. Assessment & control are critical components of educational process. If there is no assessment as a procedure it’s almost impossible to deliver good education. If so assessment has 2 important sides: the objective character & the subjective character. Objective means clarity, precision & relatedness to the learning program. The subjective means preferable, desired ways of measuring of the educational level depending of the subjective character of the group that are different from accepted general standards.

Assessment has an object. It can be content, skills, competencies, learning strategies. The subject of assessment is the learner, his/her level of education. The subject matter of the assessment is a little different: topics or things, subject questions, rules, definitions, thinking skills & pragmatic competence. Talking of assessment we ought to remember & understand a number of factors that can influence it.

Education standards are the 1^st factor. These differ with different types of education (elementary etc). They often change (at least once in 10 years). They include usually the learned content, its depth & scope, also number of classroom hours & pedagogical strategies. They go into the curriculum & learning programs. A curriculum is a general & detailed outline of what to learn, develop & achieve. Standards are usually a short description of what to do. A syllabus is a particular subject program, which is a part of the curriculum. Since syllabi are distributed with very in proportions in the curriculum, they all presuppose adequate assessment techniques & means. Consequently another factor of assessment is the length & focus of the academic process. If a course is a short one, assessment procedures can happen once or twice. Particularly if the course does not last long in terms of time (20 hours of classroom work can be done within 2 weeks or 10 weeks). In the 1^st case one procedure will be enough, because the content of the course are usually in the operative memory. In the 2^nd case more assessment procedures are planned because the learner is apt to forget a larger part of the content by the time the course finishes. So the length of the academic process influences the number of assessment sessions. In the 2^nd case assessment procedures can be used at every session as a means of knowledge consolidation. The focus of the learning process is also important & defined by 2 questions: is it basically a knowledge based program or is it a practically oriented program. Another factor of assessment is the age of learners, depending on which we decide upon preferable assessment procedures, such as a written test, an oral or a written exam, creating work or question & answers procedures & the like. The age of learners will influence then the size & the depth of assessment procedure. It’s hardly possible to arrange a complex text for young learners that lasts 2 hours & a half like state exams. This form of assessment is not acceptable for young learners. Not only due to psychological reasons, but also due to physiological reasons as well. Learners of the university age may also dislike long assessment procedures, because a long procedure means a long time of concentration. An integrated test for 5^th year students may last from 1 to 3 hours. At the same time an oral exam may last 15 or 30 minutes, the intensity of workers in both cases may be quite high & the decision which procedure to choose depends on the learning program. Another factor that influences assessment is more of psychological nature; it is teacher-student relationship. They are as a kind of approach, which answer the questions: do I deliver all the information to the students & check them in the end & do I involve the students into exploring & constructing knowledge part of which may not be familiar to the teacher. The assessment procedure will be changed again. It means that the teacher can hardly construct a test or a question-based exam, but should resort to the other types of creating assessment. Project work, thematical presentations, book analysis etc. it means that the object of assessment will change again. Another layer of teacher-student relationships is involving students in creating & designing assessment procedures: brainstorming is the most essential thematic point as part of oral examination or designing grammar & vocabulary tests based on the learner achievement profile. Another factor that influences assessment will be the aim of assessment (what do you assess the students for: to grade, to analyze the achievement level, to find drawbacks, to motivate or to punish). Aims are different also due to the general aim of language learning. Another factor – leading approach of teaching & a method of teaching. Following the communicative approach to language teaching modern test systems very rarely, almost never offer a translational tasks. Modern test often loyal to the quality of the pronunciation. They voice for communicative effectiveness rather than linguistic accuracy. Again it reflects the aim of learning. All of these presuppose another factor – cognitive needs of assessment. It means doing assessment in order to sum up the material, generalize the information, putting into a system, create a knowledge map of the content, to transfer information into a constant memory or giving ways of how to create knowledge for further use & finally consolidating the learned knowledge as a condition for new knowledge.

Which type of grading systems suits modern school better?

1. No grading scale at all – 16 % of pupils & their parents.

2. Traditional grading system from 1 to 5 – 21 %.

3. A 10-point system – 34 %.

4. A 12-point system – about 18 %.

5. A 100-point system – 7 %.

6. Hard to answer – 4 %.

This survey shows that it’s difficult to respond to individual learning means in an assessment system. If the society prefers any kind of grading it means that in teaching we cannot go away from it.

What do we want from education?

Quality of education

The quality of the education is the category that the society uses to treat the system of the education, because education is supposed to address the needs & expectations of the society. Criticism often concerns the following aspects:

1. Quality of teaching

2. The content of what is taught

3. Professional competence of teachers

4. The professional educational standard

Quality – complex, philosophical, systemic, economic, social category that is rendered through a system of definitions & that reflects the unity of structural, evaluative, pragmatic aspects, as a philosophical category, quality reflects a certain level in intrinsic characteristics of objects, which make in unique & specific.

Quality of education is described by the following criteria:

1. Profoundness

2. Depth

3. Efficiency (результативность)

4. Flexibility

5. Conscious usage

6. Applicability

Quality of skills:

1. Strength

2. Flexibility

3. Ability to adapt & apply

4. Direct reference to knowledge

5. Sustainability (development of the level of knowledge)

Quality of education – a social category that defines the state & effectiveness of the educational process in society that meet its needs & expectations. It is the degree of addressing the needs & expectations. It is a case of manipulation. It is defined by educational doctrine, norms & practices, by the state order (государственный заказ), & is consumed by an individual.

Lecture 2

The quality of educational goals – the 1^st factor. The 2^nd – the quality of educational standards & doctrine. The 3^rd – quality of educational programs (curricular & syllabi). The 4^th – quality of professional staff, their research potential & competence. The 5^th – professional development programs (повышение квалификации), teacher training & training trainers. The 6^th – quality of learners (schools students, university students & others). The 7^th – quality of educational means & techniques. The 8^th – quality of teaching strategies, methods, materials & recourses. The 9^th – efficiency & the effectiveness of assessment systems. The 10^th – effective system of teaching traditions & system innovations. The 11^th – availability of feedback. The 12^th – conditions for teacher-learner shared responsibility. The 13^th – conditions for maintaining quality. The 14^th – the individual success at entering society. The 15^th – assonance between individual attainments & social requirements to the educational level. All these factors are in a kind of interplay with each other. When one is exercised some of the others start to function. Getting back to the 1^st factor, modern higher education targets the following goals:

1. Addressing an individual’s educational needs

2. Meeting society’s needs

3. Satisfying the needs of the state which is supposed to look ahead

4. Providing conditions for an individual’s attainment of professional competencies & relevant qualifications.

Professional activity is viewed in 2 main aspects:

a) It is a means of self-realization

b) It is a means of social security & adaptation

To be able to estimate the quality of education we need to understand the following 2 notions:

1. Norm of education (норма)

2. Standard of education (эталон)

The norm of education quality is a clearly defined & officially accepted system of requirements as to education quality that is congruent to the needs of individual, society & the state. Assessment of education quality is a measure of quality which both numerical & semantic & it ought to relate measurement features & functions to the standardized level (эталонный уровень). The latter one is a reflection of the quality norm (норма качества). Quality assessment can be both internal & external. Internal assessment is an assessment that is done by an individual or the educational body in which that individual is educated. This form of assessment is usually available throughout the time education is provided with the aim at regular feedback or correcting the educational practice. All kind of grading & assessment in exams, credit sessions, tests are to be considered as only internal & intermediate ones but they can give an indirect & inexact picture of one’s qualification level.

External assessment – assessment given to the educational quality providing by the educational body, by the state represented by the state examining board oк the professional environment. External assessments are usually few in number. Whereas internal are many in number. The norm of education quality is a complicated matter & requires an introduction of a standard system that is part & parcel of the general educational standards. These ones reflect the opinion of the state, not of the educational body because there is one important condition – state’s certificate, diploma that is signed by the state in the face of educational body.

Quality of education programs, curricula & syllabi

Since quality is a complex notion, it also relates to the structure & content of an educational program. An educational program integrates a curriculum. A curriculum is a standard system (эталонная система). It includes content & time period of learning. Content is usually divided into sessions or blocks, each of which comprises subject programs or syllabi. E.g. our philology curriculum includes:

1. General education programs (pedagogy, history etc.) not related to English

2. Specific professional disciplines (Linguistics, lexicology, stylistics etc.)

3. Elective courses (optional courses for professional development) (a course in translation, in the use of American slang, modern English fairytales etc.)

4. Student’s research work (general pedagogy, psychology, linguistics, EFL teaching, philology)

The size of the curriculum, the number of learning hours are reflected both in the standardized curriculum & in the certificate. 5400 or 5000 of classroom work + almost the same number of independent work. The nature of the curriculum & the content & the length of it depend on the issued standards that change often. E.g. English classes, 1^st yeas studies 20 years were 18 a week classroom work. Today – about 14. And this can change with more emphasis of independent work. The number of hours is an economic term. The more hours you have, the more money you get. If you want more education – pay. A curriculum is always developed by the particular educational body, e.g. RSU. According to the accepted standards, developed by the ministry of education. Very often there is a lot of disagreement. E.g. a syllabus in country studies for university student according to the standards includes: geographical position of GB, the political system of GB, the economic system of GB, the system of education, customs, traditions & the like. The same content is included into school syllabi on country studies. The question is: why should we repeat the same content? If the university issues a new syllabus in which the content will be different, it means a violation of standards. A syllabus is developed by an educational body of an individual teacher to quickly react to the changing needs of the consumers, customers. A curriculum or a syllabus can be subject of cooperation between different institutes. Somebody develops for somebody else.

Дата добавления: 2015-12-08