Encouraging Teachers to Use Rubrics - Assignment Example

Rubrics refers to the use of a selected set of criteria that is used to assess performance and for each set criteria there is a certain level of potential achievement and may include performance samples in each criteria, this can be measured in numerical scores and to find the student performance an average summary of all the scores is obtained.
In a classroom scenario, teachers can evaluate the performance of students not only on a one off test but by considering a variety of scenarios that are closer to the real life experiences. In an exam setting teachers already know beforehand what will make a given task average or excellent, this places the learners at a disadvantage from the start. Rubrics enables the teacher to provide a guideline that the students follow and in so doing they are able to increase the quality of their work and the knowledge they acquire from any given assignment.
The use of rubrics by teachers is beneficial to all the parties involved in the education process such as the teachers, students and parents. It makes the assessment process more accurate and fair since each student is graded individually and not based on a general overall task given to them. Teachers also get to give instructions on how a task ought to be handled and the delivery process and so the students can streamline their work so as to achieve the desired outcome.
Such instructions can be used by the students for self assessment (Hafner&Hafner, 2004). According to research, when done by peers, this type of critism helps learners to improve. Use of rubrics also makes the students aware of the learning targets, this way they can work in a manner that increases their chances of hitting them and so getting better grades.
REFERENCE:
Hafner, J. C., & Hafner, P. M. (2004). Quantitative analysis of the rubric as an assessment
tool: An empirical study of student peer- group rating. International Journal of
Science Education, 25(12), 1509-1528. Read More