What Makes an Effective Assessor - Essay Example

Professional Practice Essay – Critical Reflection; Action Plan Student’s Name: Course: Tutor’s Name: Date: Introduction Teaching is a profession that seeks to enable pupils to become future professionals; however, teachers can only enable students become such professionals if their instructions are clear, focused, and effective (National Research Council 1999, p. 57). As a physics teacher, I am well aware of the important role that tests and formative assessment play in shaping students to become future professionals. Tests for example serve to gauge the student’s grasp of theories and concepts taught in class. Formative tests are on the other hand based on the teacher’s experience with the students, and are vital for shaping and adapting teaching to the needs of the students. As indicated by Burill (2007, p. 1), formative assessment moves beyond “measuring students’ knowledge for purposes of reporting and sorting”. Instead, the teacher who has embraced formative teaching interacts with the students, guides conversations among them, and provides feedback among other activities that move learning forward. Although tests are necessary for purposes of gauging the students’ abilities to use the right procedures in a practical setup or provide the correct answers to theory-based questions, formative assessments are arguably more important to the advancement of learning since they enable the students to internalise what they are taught while also enabling teachers to identify the students’ weak areas. Through the latter, teachers can use targeted teaching to address topics or subjects that the students have a hard time understanding. This essay is a critical reflection focused on five conceptual resources namely: assessment as a social practice; assessment strategies; assessment for learning, of learning and as learning; formative assessment; and assessment ethics. The essay also contains answers to the question ‘what makes an effective assessor?’ as answered by a colleague. The concluding part of the essay contains details of the practicable action plan that this writer seeks to use in future in order to enhance own assessment practice. Overall, the paper ends by noting that assessments (and especially formative assessments) are some of the critical teaching tools that a teacher can use not only to enhance students’ academic performance, but also to make learning a more enjoyable activity – something that eventually contributes to a teacher’s dream of moulding his/her students into future professionals. Assessment as a social practice Assessment is defined as ‘a powerful activity which shapes how societies, groups and individuals understand themselves’ (Stobart 2008, p.1). This definition can be interpreted to mean that assessment takes place in a social setting often involving the assessor and his/her subjects. Lund (2008, p. 32) supports such an interpretation by arguing that assessments need to align ‘learning, instruction and assessment, and connect ‘assessments to collective practice’ in order to reveal ‘new opportunities of learning’. In other words, Lund (2008, p. 32) is implying that as a social practice, assessments have the potential to reveal opportunities through which effective learning in the future can occur. One of the factors that support the notion of assessment as a social practice is the fact that cultures affect how learning and assessments are conducted. As Shepard (2000, p. 4) observes for example classrooms have their own unique practices that allow the students and individual teachers to value some aspects of a learning community. In such a classroom setting, the teacher and the students develop knowledge, share experiences, and acquire new understandings about specific issues (Shepard 2000, p. 7). Away from the classroom, assessments are generally accepted by the larger stakeholder community (i.e. parents, government, teachers, and students) as a social practice especially in relation to scheduled tests that are routine in education (Butt 2010, p. viii). Such assessments have always been summative, but as Butt (2010, p. viii) notes, ‘the current re-focusing of assessment practice in the national curriculum towards the day-to-day normative assessment of students, primarily for education rather than bureaucratic purposes...’ has encouraged more teachers to consider formative (class-based) assessment. The latter is said to be ideal in achieving centrality in the education process since it has the potential to ‘shape, direct and stimulate the educational progress of young people’ (Butt 2010, p. x). Even outside the education context, Stobart (2008, p. 5) observes that ‘assessment in the broad sense of gathering evidence in order to make a judgement, is part of the fabric of life’. In the education setting however, Stobart (2008, p. 5) observes that although people differ in many ways, assessments are a ‘social choice of how they are assessed, labelled and sorted’, and this means that their identities are significantly shaped by the same assessments. In my experience as a physics teacher, and through the answers acquired from my colleague as interviewed for this work, I agree with Stobart (2008, p. 5) that assessments shape learners’ social identities. Unfortunately, such shaping is not always positive as some learners are often perceived as low-performers, and this affects their perceived social standing (albeit in the school setup). In some cases, the learners are over-burdened by assessments from different subjects, and this eventually means that activities such as out-side class assignments should be limited and issued in coordination with other teachers in order to avoid over-burdening the students. Assessment strategies Generally, assessment strategies can be divided into two broad categories: formative assessments, and summative assessment. Under each category are different strategies that are used to attain different objectives among the learners. In formative assessment for example, cooperative learning assessment, concept tests, oral presentations, and peer reviews are just some of the strategies that could be used. Summative assessment on the other hand would include scoring rubrics, portfolios, concept tests, exams, and written reports among others. Strategies that reinforce assessment for learning would for example use approaches indicated in the chart 1 below. They are divided into day-to-day, periodic, and transitional assessment strategies. Chart 1: Approaches that reinforce assessment for learning Source: Department of Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) (2008, p. 6). One of the authors who have specifically addressed the concept of assessment strategies is Ormrod (2008), who divides the strategies into informal assessments vs. formal assessments; paper-pencil assessments vs. performance assessments; standardized tests vs. teacher-developed assessment; and traditional assessments vs. authentic assessment. Ideally, effective teachers choose appropriate assessment strategies for different learning situations. Choosing the right assessment strategies for teachers is tantamount to choosing the right tools for performing handiwork. In my experience, I have learnt that planning instruction for purposes of accommodating differences in the student population enables me to design and/or select the best assessment tools. While interviewing a colleague, I also realised that using different assessment strategies reveals the unique knowledge, experiences, learning styles, abilities, motivations, behaviours, attitudes, intelligences and interests that different students have. According to The Manchester College (2012, p. 4), assessment strategies need to meet specific standards before being picked for use among learners. The standards require the strategies to be fair, relevant, consistent, transparent, valid, reliable and current. Formative assessment According to Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006, p. 199), formative assessment refers to a learning activity meant to generate feedback and improve and accelerate learning. This form of assessment is founded on the argument that students need to be empowered to become self-regulated learners. Self-regulation refers to the ‘degree to which students can regulate aspects of their thinking, motivation and behaviour during learning’ (Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick 2006, p. 199). For effective assessment to take place, it is worth noting that teachers need to help students formulate goals, since it is only by so doing that they can assess their learning progress against the identified goals. Moreover, teachers ought to ensure that students are active participants in the assessment, and that they have bought-in to the assessment criteria, understood its role and importance in the learning process, and are voluntary rather than coerced participants in the same. As Lund (2008, p. 32) further notes, assessment needs to be a mediated activity between the teachers and the learners, since by so doing, it will gain acceptance among teachers, students, and the larger education stakeholder community. As indicated in the introductory part of this essay, formative assessment has the potential to give teachers the information needed to move learning forward among students. The main reason why formative assessment is perceived as critical for the enhancement of learning is that it ‘can be used to shape and improve the student’s competence by short-circuiting the randomness and inefficiency of trial-and-error learning’ (Sadler 1989, p. 120). Yet, this seemingly agreeable position has faced critics who state that formative assessment is theoretically admirable, but practically challenging or even impossible to enforce (Gipps & James 1996, n.pag.; Shepard 1995, n.pag.). Shepard (1995, n.pag.) specifically argues that formative assessment cannot improve learning since teachers often lack the support and resources needed to implement it. Shepard (1995, n.pag.) therefore proposes that teachers need support from those mediating between classroom practice and government policies. The critique notwithstanding, Heritage (2007, p. 1) seems to have found the conditions by which formative assessment works, and specifically states that ‘formative assessment, if used effectively, can provide teachers and their students with the information they need to move learning forward’. The conditionality provided by Heritage (2007, p. 1) therefore indicates that without effective use, formative assessment would not enhance learning. Arguably, critics of formative assessment tend to perceive it as a competitor to teaching, something that Heritage (2007, p.1) refutes by observing that assessments should be ‘an integral part of teaching and learning’. This writer shares similar opinions with Heritage (2007, p. 2) and maintains that assessments should have a reciprocal relationship with teaching, rather than being perceived as tools for competitive evaluation of students, teachers and schools only. Specifically, this writer is convinced that through formative assessment, gaps in student’s comprehension will be identified, feedback will be provided, students will be involved in the process, and ultimately, learning will progress. Additionally and unlike summative assessments which according to Johnston (2004, p. 397) assume that students’ abilities are ‘fixed, consistent and acontextual human trait’, formative assessments guide the teacher in identifying the environment that individual students seem to learn most in. In actual practice, formative assessment still seems to be underutilised, especially since different teachers have different opinions regarding the same. While interviewing a colleague, I realised that he did not place as much value on formative assessment as I did. As an arts teacher, my colleague did not believe that formative assessments would play a critical role in enhancing learning among his students, but agreed that science subjects would probably benefit from such an approach owing to their complex nature. Assessment for learning, of learning and as learning Stiggins (2000, p. 1) argues that ‘both assessment of learning and assessment for learning are essential. But only one is in place, and the other is not’. Seemingly, Stiggins (2000, p.1) is referring to the educators’ commonplace use of assessment to gauge how much learning has taken place among students, while failing to acknowledge its role as a tool for learning, and as a learning approach. While assessment for learning is important in determining the success rate of teachers’ and students’ efforts in knowledge acquisition, it is also true that such a role does not comprehensively acknowledge the entire role that assessments should be used for. If assessment is to be perceived as learning, teachers, students and other stakeholders would need to see it as such (i.e. as learning rather than an addition or complimentary activity to learning). Similarly, assessment for learning requires teachers and students alike to use it as part of the learning process specifically for purposes of motivating students to acquire more knowledge and by so doing, reduce the gap between their current and ideal knowledge statuses. Arguably, the advise by Leathwood (2005, p. 319), that ‘student-centred learning, greater transparency, self and peer-assessment, portfolio development...’ should be emphasised by educators may serve as the solution needed to make assessment not only a ‘for learning’ gauging device, but also to be adopted as learning and for learning. To engage the learners fully and hence use assessment as and for learning, while also increasing their efficiency when used to gauge the level of learning, Sadler (1989, p. 121) recommends that learners should know the goal that they ought to aim for; possess the capacity to compare their actual performances against set or identified goal; and possess the ability to take appropriate action in order to bridge the gap between actual and standard performances. Assessment ethics Assessments in learning are not shielded from ethical challenges. Specifically, Scmeiser (1995, p. 1) observes that issues such as abusive practices when preparing students for assessments and the unfair or unjust interpretation of results are just some of issues that come up when ethics in assessment is being discussed. Unfortunately, and unlike other professions, the education sector does not have a code of ethics that provides guidelines on how to remain ethical during assessments (Schmeiser 1995, p. 1). As things stand at the moment, different organisations have adopted ‘a code of ethical assessment practices’ and as such, ‘engage in educational activities that are intended to promote greater understanding of what constitutes ethical assessment practice’ (Schmeiser 2005, p. 2). According to Schmeiser, since a code of ethics is not a code of ‘givens’, most educational institutions still have problems implementing the same. Citing JCSEEE (2003, Green, Johnson, Kim and Pope 2006, n.pag.) observe that assessments should be ‘fair, useful, feasible and accurate’ if they are to meet the ethics threshold. Estaji (2011, p. 91) observes that ethics come up in assessments because those in positions of power (i.e. the assessors) can abuse such powers, and hence proposes that ‘orientation should be directed towards the people in the power position in order to help them make fair decisions’. To maintain ethical standards in assessments, it is recommended that teachers should consider ethical concerns such as equity, validity and justness in all the stages of assessment development. From the interview that this writer conducted with a colleague, it was evident that while observing ethics in standardised tests is relatively easy, the same cannot be said about ethical standards in formative assessment. My interview subject for example noted that requiring different groups to handle different curriculum-related tasks is a problematic task when ethical considerations are concerned because no one group is equal to another, and a teacher has no way of confirming the justness or lack thereof in grouping specific students together. From this writer’s experience as a physics teacher, the probability of unethical behaviour in assessment is great especially considering that much of it would go unnoticed. Having noted how other professions uphold ethics especially in reference to a specific code of ethics, this writer is convinced that considering the moral or ethical nature of each assessment activity would serve as a good reference tool for each teacher in future. This means that instead of conducting assessments without due consideration, each teacher should take time to reflect on its composition, and the ethical or moral nature of the activities therein. The reflection would enable the teacher to consider evidence that such assessment has benefited learning in the past, the assessment’s recommended uses, and the nature of the assessment takers, their strengths, and their limitations among other things (Wall 2007, p. 2). In regard to summative assessments (most especially tests), Wall (2007, p. 2) recommends that assessment developers should: develop and select appropriate assessment; administer and score assessments fairly; report and interpret results without bias; and inform students of the assessments well in advance. Notably students who may need special accommodation (e.g. the physically disabled during practical assessment) may need some modified forms of assessments in order to place them at par with the rest of the student population. In conclusion, it is worth noting that assessments (and especially formative assessments) are some of the critical teaching tools that a teacher can use to enhance students’ academic performance. More so, formative assessments have the potential to make learning a more enjoyable activity, and this may eventually contribute to a teacher’s dream of moulding his/her students into future professionals. Justifying the practicable action plan in (Appendix A) below The action plan contained in (Appendix A) is a reflection of the knowledge gained from writing this critical essay. As a physics teacher, I know understand the importance of formative assessment for and as learning. I also understand that with formative assessments, I can advance learning among the student population more rather that through the use of summative assessment. By interviewing a colleague, I came to realise that the use of different assessment strategies reveals the unique knowledge, experiences, learning styles, abilities, motivations, behaviours, attitudes, intelligences and interests that the different students have. Consequently, I have included flexibility and the use of different assessment strategies in the action plan in the hope that such strategies will help me and my students to advance the learning of physics to greater levels. To ensure my approach to assessment is ethical, and borrowing from Estaji (2005); Green et al. (2006); Schmeiser (2005); and Wall (2007), the concluding part of the action plan as contained in (Appendix A) indicates this writer’s intended approach to ensuring that assessments uphold the ethical tenets of fairness, equity and justice. Appendix A: Action plan Clearly articulate the main goal and sub-goals in the learning progression. As indicated by Heritage (2007, p. 3), the teacher needs to identify the desired goals, and gauge the learning progression attained through formative assessment based on those goals. Involve students in formative assessment in order to enhance their individual and collective understanding of their learning statuses; learn to reflect on learning; learn to monitor their current knowledge levels and hence determine the areas that they need further assistance in; learn to develop and use self-regulation strategies that enable them to adapt different learning approaches to their learning needs; and learn the importance of collaborating with teachers in the learning progression process. Attain feedback from different levels of the formative assessment, and use the same to determine the next learning steps and/or intervention measures. Identify existing learning gaps and construct structures that will facilitate growth in order to bridge the gaps Infuse flexibility in learning through the use of different assessment methods and strategies. As revealed through an interview with a colleague, the different assessment methods are important for identifying the abilities, beliefs and attitudes held by individuals and groups of students. Through such knowledge, the teacher is then able to identify the ideal assessment methods to use on specific students. Always consider the ethical nature of an assessment before embarking on its implementation, and make the necessary adjustments in order to enhance equity, justice and fairness among all assessment targeted students References Burill, G 2007, ‘The role of formative assessment in teaching and learning statistics’, IASE/ISI Satellite, pp. 1-7, viewed 09 Oct. 2012, Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) 2008, ‘The assessment for learning strategy’, pp. 1-21, viewed 11 Oct. 2012, Estaji, M 2011, ‘Ethics and validity stance in educational assessment’, English and Literature Studies, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 89-99. 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Lund, A 2008, ‘Assessment made visible: individual and collective practices’, Mind, Culture and Activity, vol. 15, pp. 32-51. National Research Council 1999, How people learn: Brain, mind, experience and school, In Bransford, J D, Brown, A L, & Cocking, R R (eds.), National Academy Press, Washington DC. Nicol, D J, & Macfarlane-Dick, D 2006, ‘Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: a model and seven principles of good feedback practice’, Studies in Higher Education, vol. 13, no.2, pp. 199-218. Ormrod, J E 2008, Education psychology: Developing learners, Sixth edition, Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, NJ. Sadler, R 1989, ‘Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems’, Instructional Science, vol. 18, pp. 119-144. Schmeiser, C B 1995, ‘Ethics in assessment’, Eric Digest, EDO-CG-95-23, pp. 1-2. Shepard, L A 1995, ‘Using assessment to improve learning’, Educational leadership, vol. 52, no. 5, pp. 38-43, viewed 10 Oct. 2012, < http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb95/vol52/num05/Using-Assessment-to-Improve-Learning.aspx>. Shepard, L A 2000, ‘The role of assessment in a learning culture’, Educational Researcher, vol. 29, no.7, pp. 4-14. Stiggins, R J 2000, ‘Assessment crisis: The absence of assessment for learning’, Kappan International Journal, pp. 1-8. Stobart, G 2008, ‘Assessment in education: Principles, policy & practice’, Assessment in Education, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 275-287. The Manchester College 2012, ‘Higher education assessment strategy’, pp. 1-12, viewed 10 Oct. 2012, Wall, J. E 2007, ‘Code of far testing practices in education’, Sage Solutions, viewed 12 Oct. 2012, http://www.home.earthlink.net/~sagesolutions/Code.pdf Read More