Best Assessment Strategies in Secondary Schools - Essay Example

Critical Analysis of the Best Assessment Strategies in Secondary schools Learning is a continuous process and therefore there should be a continuousevaluation, assessment and timely feedback for all the learning activities. For the teaching- learning process in secondary schools to be effective, the curriculum should be designed with clear cut curricular objectives and the ultimate duty of the teacher is to assess the learning outcomes with reference to the set objectives. For this, one needs to employ suitable assessment strategies and necessary and timely feedbacks are to be provided to the learners based on the assessment done. Both formative and summative assessment are to be carried out at the secondary level. There should be provisions for continuous and comprehensive assessment and subsequent feedbacks in the learning process. Interactive assessment in the classroom assumes special significance at the secondary level as students need constant feedbacks for the learning activities they undertake. There should be regular assessment at the secondary level. This is rightly suggested by E.C. Wragg when he remarks: " In most of the class rooms, assessment tends to be regular and informal, rather than irregular and formal. This is because teaching often consists of frequent switches in who speaks and who listens, and teachers make many of their decisions within one second." (Wragg, 2001). The purpose of this paper is to analyse critically the best assessment strategies in secondary schools. Interactive assessment, coherent assessment systems, self assessment, peer assessment, and feedback are identified as the most effective strategies in the assessment of the learning outcomes of secondary students. Interactive assessment: The teaching-learning process is highly interactive and assessment during each stage of the interaction is an essential prerequisite for effective learning process. Interactive assessment assumes greater significance as a good teacher can very well understand the learning level and comprehension of students and can assess the student during the teaching learning process itself. For this assessment to be accurate and effective, the teacher needs to be a keen observer who can elicit student responses, understand their thought process, recognize their learning difficulties and guide them with proper feedbacks. One of the major advantages of the interactive assessment is that it creates a strong conviction in the minds of the learners that they are an active part of the instructional process and that their views and thoughts are being taken into account. This can provide them with better confidence to take part more enthusiastically in the teaching learning process. A remarkable study conducted by Eichorn, D. & Woodrow, J. (1999) "indicate that the use of interactive assessment promotes student self-monitoring, goal setting, time management, responsibility and mastery learning. Teachers report that the use of interactive assessment facilitates and supports student-centred, instructional practices." (Eichorn & Woodrow, 1999, P.193-199). Celina Byers (2001) also believes that the teacher has to measure and evaluate whether all the instructional objectives have been achieved and how far learning has taken place is to be assessed. She is of the opinion that there should be a learner centred active assessment in the classroom itself :- "Making the measurement an integral part of class activity allows the identification of problems and consequent improvements even while the course is ongoing. Learner-centred active assessment both provide direct objective measurement of learning and stimulate the use of holistic assessment tools to assess the entire learning environment." (Byers, 2001). For her assessment in the secondary school should never be limited to mere summative evaluation. Instead, there should be interactive assessment in the class room as "it permits important course improvements, made in conjunction with the collaboration of the students themselves, while the course is ongoing. This adjustment has the advantage of using the students as teaching resources and enriching their learning by demonstrating to them that their participation in the course has a real educative application." (Byers, 2001). The teacher can make use of a variety of strategies for the purpose of interactive assessment ranging from effective questioning and prompting to useful markings. Thus, interactive assessment is conceived to be one of the most effective strategies of assessment at the secondary level as it can offer immediate feedbacks to the students. Coherent Assessment System: The major aim of education is the all round development of the personality of the individual and therefore it is necessary that a coherent assessment system is developed to assess secondary students in different areas. Thus, the coherent assessment system undertakes the task of evaluating the progress made by students in achieving the instructional goals by making use of various methods of assessments. Thus, it does not rely on any single tool or strategy of assessment; instead the focus is to gain a thorough understanding regarding the learning outcomes made by students in various spheres. As a result of the instructional process, the students are likely to develop variety of skills and they are sure to come across a lot of meaningful experiences and display a vast number of specifications as the outcome of the newly gained knowledge. All these specifications of new learning are to be assessed on a coherent level to provide them with suitable feedbacks. Allison Crmey and Matthew Hanson (2000) in this respect highlight the importance of student assessment in creative educational reforms and state that rather from assessing the minimal skill of students assessment should be focussed on higher levels of learning outcomes coherently. They remark: "Policymakers, educators, and the general public are looking once again to student assessment as a catalyst for education reform because of its reputed ability to leverage instructional improvement and to hold school systems accountable for their results. Recent mandates for improved student outcomes have shifted focus away from assessments that test students' "minimal" skills to those that emphasize high standards in skill areas that are considered necessary for success in today's technologically advanced society." (Cromey & Hanson, 2000). Coherent Assessment System, thus, aims to assess the performance and the learning outcomes of students from all the possible angles giving importance to all types learning outcomes and learning difficulties faced by the students. Self assessment and peer assessment: Self assessment and peer assessment are two key terms associated with the process of assessment at the secondary level. One of the best strategies that a good teacher can adopt for the purpose of assessment is to enable each student to assess his/her performance by himself/herself and to provide ample opportunities for group work so that each one learns through collective responsibility. One should never forget the fact that one of the ultimate aim of education is to promote individual free thinking and enable the student to take decisions for oneself. The provision for self-assessment, undoubtedly, enhances the self-esteem of students and this will make them confident of what and where they are. Thus, this self-awareness enables the student to see for himself where he stands and this also makes him aware of the things he needs to acquire. As David Boud rightly remarks: "It is important for the learners to develop the ability to be realistic judges of their own performance and to collectively monitor their own learning. Learning can only be effectively undertaken when the learner monitors what is known, what remains to be known and what is needed to bridge the gap between the two." (Boud, 1995). It is the duty of the teacher to prepare the students to go through effective self-assessment process by clearly setting before the students the instructional goals and making him aware of the competency that they need to acquire after each phase of the instructional process. Thus, it enables the students to judge for themselves where they stand and make necessary individual effort to attain them. An effective teacher needs to train the students to set still higher goals for his life and career and assist them in their accomplishment. The divergent thinking and individuality of the learner is to be taken into account when one prepares him to do the self-assessment. The role of group work and peer assessment deserve equal attention in effective assessment strategies. Students at the secondary level gain a variety of things collectively and the teacher has to design the in structional package in such a way as to provide ample opportunities for peer work and peer assistance. It is universally accepted that students easily accept peer criticism quite positively and benefit a lot through peer assistance. Besides, working in groups can enhance one's own individual responsibility as everyone is keen to perform for the benefit of the group. This is very well suggested by Black et al (2003) when he remarks:- " One of the reasons peer assessment is so valuable is because students often give and receive criticisms of their work more freely than in the traditional teacher/student inter-change. Another advantage is that the language used by students to each other is the language they would naturally use, rather than 'school language." (Clarke & Black et al, 2003). Thus, it is sure that students assess themselves in comparison and in contrast with his peer group and this sort of assessment can be highly fruitful if it is done in a healthy manner not giving vent to unhealthy competitions among students. Cooperation, rather than competition is to be promoted in peer works as well as in peer assessment. Formative and summative assessments: Both formative and summative evaluation and assessment strategies are to be employed judiciously to ensure quality teaching learning process. There should be continuous and comprehensive means of assessment regarding the accomplishment of the set instructional goals. While summative assessment seeks to assess the overall performance of the students at the end of the instructional package, the formative assessment strategies are aimed at the assessment of stundents' performance on continuous basis so that the teacher can adapt his teaching to meet the instructional goals better. It provides opportunity for the teacher to identify students' learning difficulties at various stages of the teaching learning process and undertake necessary re3medial measures to make improvements:- "The purpose of formative evaluation is to validate or ensure that the goals of the instruction are being achieved and to improve the instruction, if necessary, by means of identification and subsequent remediation of problematic aspects." (Formative v.s. Summative Evaluation). Thus, formative assessment helps the teacher to know for certain where the students have difficulty and he/she can make use of the information gained through formative assessment to make amends in his/her teaching strategy or try alternative approaches to meet the instructional objectives as well as the needs of the students. Formative assessment can bring about variety in learning experiences and instructional process and the teacher can clearly understand what suits his learners the most. The summative assessment, on the other hand, is used to assess the achievement or performance of the students at the end of the course, module or year. The main objective of summative assessment is to see how far the students have accomplished the instructional objectives and based on the assessment it can be decided whether any changes have to be made to the instructional material. In other words, the formative assessment focuses more on the individual performances of students at various stages of the course whereas the summative assessment tries to assess the performance and learning outcome of the target group as a whole. According to the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, "Formative assessment- the frequent, interactive assessments of student understanding and progress to identify learning needs and ahape teaching-has become a prominent issue in educational reform. The approach is frequently contrasted with 'summative' assessment-the more familiar, and much more newsworthy, tests and examinations that seek to provide summary statements of students' capabilities." (Formative Assessment; Improving Learning in Secondary Classrooms, 2005, p.5). Thus, it is evident from the above discussion that even though summative assessment is traditionally followed widely; it is the formative assessment that can be of better assistance to the learners in the teaching learning process. Feedbacks: The provision of timely feed back is the ultimate aim of any assessment methods and strategies. In fact, feedbacks can be said to be the continuation of assessment or rather it is the next step after any useful and meaningful assessment is made. There have been a lot of studies conducted on the effect of feedbacks on the teaching learning process. Each and every learning activities provided in the secondary class room is to be evaluated and assessed on a regular and continuous basis and students should be provided sufficient feedbacks to make improvements in the learning process. Timely feedbacks can enhance teacher student rapport and they can be highly helpful for the learner to see the areas he needs to work on. According to Leakey and Goldsworthy (2001), providing feedback to the students is the ultimate duty of teachers in the assessment process. Research has also proved that mere provision of grades or marks do not act as strong tools of assessment for students. Instead, "feedback on tests and other assessment tasks should give pupils guidance on how to improve, and individual pupils should be given the assistance and opportunity to work toward improvement." (The important qualities of meaningful assessment). The question when, where and how feedbacks are to be given also deserve attention. Feedbacks can be given any time the teacher feels that the students benefit from them. It can be provided after a formative assessment, or self assessment, peer assessment or any time an interactive assessment is made in the actual classroom. Feedbacks are to be given in such a way to expand the self-esteem of students and to unleash their inner potentialities to the maximum. Shirley Clarke (2004) has made some remarkable studies on the teaching learning process and the role of assessment in it. According to him, there should be an effective sharing of learning goals between the teacher and the learners. He identifies effective questioning as an important tool in the teaching learning process as well as in the assessment of learning activities. With effective questioning, the teacher can elicit responses from the students and he can provide effective feedbacks to the students based on his interactive assessment in the class room. As Black et al (2003) suggests: "More effort has to be spent in framing questions that are worth asking; that is questions that are critical to the development of student understanding." (Clarke & Black et al, 2003). Clark also gives much importance to formative assessment and considers self evaluation as an important part of formative assessment. For him, formative assessment should aim at "self evaluation of how well criteria for the lesson have been met and where they could be improved." (Clarke, 2004). Having gone through the major assessment methods and strategies at the secondary level instructional process, it can be rightly concluded that no single assessment strategy can best serve the purpose of continuous and comprehensive assessment. What we need is a combination of Interactive assessment, coherent assessment systems, self assessment, and peer assessment and all these assessment strategies are to be followed by effective feedbacks. Secondary level of schooling is a time where the students will be looking at their teachers for guidance, feed back and encouragement. There is no doubt that only an efficient teacher can continuously assess his students on a regular basis and equip him with timely feed backs to face the challenges in the learning process and on a higher level to meet the challenging needs of the time. Reference Wragg, E C. (2001). Assessment and Learning in the Secondary School, London: Routledge. Eichorn, Dean., & Woodrow, Janice. (1999). Self Monitoring: A Study of Student Interactive Assessment: Abstract, Ed/IT Lib. Vol.1999. P.193-199. Retrieved 19 May, 2008 from http://www.editlib.org/INDEX.CFMfuseaction=Reader.ViewAbstract&paper_id=9138 Byers, Celina. (2001). Interactive Assessment: An Approach to Enhance Teaching and Learning, Journal of Interactive Learning Research. Vol.12. Cromey, Allison., & Hanson, Matthew. (2000). An Exploratory Analysis of School-Based Student Assessment Systems, Learning Point Associates: North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. Retrieved 19 May, 2008 from http://www.ncrel.org/policy/pubs/html/data/index.html Boud, David. (1995). Enhancing Learning Through Self Assessment, London: Routledge. Clarke, Shirley., & Black et al. (2003). Formative Assessment in the Secondary Classroom, AAIA National Conference. Retrieved 19 May, 2008 from http://www.aaia.org.uk/pdf/Formative%20Assessment%20in%20the%20Secondary%20Classroom%20-%20Shirley%20Clarke.ppt Formative vs. Summative Evaluation, Retrieved 19 May, 2008 from http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/edtech/etc667/proposal/evaluation/summative_vs._formative.htm Formative Assessment; Improving Learning in Secondary Classrooms, (2005). Centre for Educational Research and Innovation: OECD. P.5. Clarke, Shirley. (2004). Formative Assessment in the Secondary Classroom, AAIA National Conference. Retrieved 19 May, 2008 from http://www.aaia.org.uk/pdf/Formative%20Assessment%20in%20the%20Secondary%20Classroom%20-%20Shirley%20Clarke.ppt The important qualities of meaningful assessment, The Customer. Read More