The Role of Assessment in the Learning Process - Coursework Example

Assessment: In Need For New Outlook Introduction Man is born with certain inherent qualities like intelligence and creativity. However,for these qualities to develop and to enhance, what he needs is the right amount of nurturing. Environment in which a person grows plays an important role in the development and nurturing of the abilities that he has. If one has to assess the potential of a child, one has to not only assess the inherent ability of a child but also assess the changes that take place when a right amount of encouragement and resources are made available to him in his surroundings. Everyone is not born similar. Different children have different learning patterns. Some children learn better through demonstration and diagrams, some learn better by doing things themselves while others learn just by grasping things quickly. Children with different learning abilities respond differently to what they are taught in schools. The purpose of the assessment is to help children with learning difficulty to understand their natural learning pattern and to design and create special and nurturing learning environment for them so that they find learning easy and productive. The role of assessment in learning process Richard and Schiefelbusch (1991) described assessment as “a multilevel process, beginning with screening procedures and continuing through diagnosis, planning of intervention, and program monitoring and evaluation” (Gargiulo & Kilgo, 2005, p.90). The assessment of a child is done with a purpose of knowing his abilities, his inherent qualities, his strengths and the areas where he faces difficulties. Assessment should not only aim at knowing why the child is finding it difficult to learn but also to provide a plan to cure his difficulties. The purpose of assessment is to help the child, his parents and his teachers to work together and create a positive environment which caters to his special needs and hence, make the process of learning easy and fun for him. This not only enhances the learning ability but also helps in encouraging the child to come out with his hidden abilities which were somehow suppressed till now because of the lack of the compatible environmental factors. However, purpose of the assessment is not being fulfilled as it ignores the importance of the external factors that influences the child. The child’s learning is influenced by his family environment (e.g. relationship between his parents, harmony at home, financial condition of the family and cultural background), his neighborhood (e.g. group influences, the nature of the activities that he indulges in) and school environment (e.g. teacher’s approach, academic expectations, leadership, staff behavior, treatment towards children from different ethnic background) (Cline, 1992, p.121).The assessment fail to study the influence of external factors and the immediate environment on the learning process of the child. The purpose of the assessment is not yet clearly defined. People expect to analyze different aspect related to child’s learning process from the same procedure, which is not possible (Cline, 1992, p.122). The goal of the assessment program is to recognize the functions of a child which needs special attention and by providing proper guidance in those areas, to produce a desired modification and development in those functions (Haywood & Tzuriel, 1992, p.253). Paget and Nagle(1986) are right when they said that the real justification to the assessments at any given age is done only when the information revealed in the assessment results is used immediately to create a program and the remedieal measures to modify the functions that need attention and hence, help the child to develop those functions (Haywood & Tzuriel, 1992, p.253). The role of assessment is not only to evaluate the abilities of a child. A true goal of assessment should be to study the child’s inherent qualities, to study the environment, the resources available to him, his response to the environment and his compatible with the environment. If a child’s learning pattern is not compatible with his environment then the instruction methods and the environmental factors that can help him learn better should be suggested. The assessment has to be a tool to provide solutions to a problem and not only to detect a problem. It should be done not only to evaluate the learning difficulties of a child but also to help the educational system to establish the environmental conditions under which the promotion and the nurturing of the positive change is possible (Haywood & Tzuriel, 1992, p.253).. The goal of the assessment is to provide the information needed to change the problematic scenario and hence, eradicate the problem from the roots rather than working only on the surface. The place of the standardized assessment in the process of assessment There are different approaches to the assessment of children’s abilities related to their education. For e.g. assessments of abilities like language, academic skills, cognitive, socio-emotional and behavior patterns have been in practice to help the children having difficulty in learning make the most of their natural abilities (Brown-Chidsey & Cummins, 2005, p.43). The behavioral school psychology proved to be a useful tool in assessing the learning abilities of a child considering his behavior patterns and his personality traits as an important aspect of learning process. However, according to Sheridan and Gurkin (2000), even this approach was found insufficient as it failed to take into consideration the effect of the interaction between the character and the behavior traits of a child and the environments in which they function (Brown-Chidsey & Cummins, 2005, p.44). This makes the behavior assessment incomplete as learning is not just a function of child’s inherent qualities but also his environment. What kind of environment he gets when he is learning matters a lot. The theory that assesses the process of learning by not only considering the child’s abilities and his behavior but also the dynamic interactions with the environment is the ecological-behavior theory. The theory states that a child’s ability to learn is affected by the dynamic influences of the environment and if one has to understand the true ability of a child, one has to study the systematic influences that surrounds the child (Brown-Chidsey & Cummins, 2005, p.44). Only then is it possible to give a proper direction to the education of a child and to suggest modifications to his learning environment. Hence, this requires the evaluation of not only the inherent personality traits of a child (e.g. aptitude, intelligence) but also the evaluation of the environmental factors (e.g. instructions, demands) to see if they are compatible to each other (Brown-Chidsey & Cummins, 2005, p.44). The study of the compatibility between the inherent traits and the environment factors is necessary as it shows if the environment is meeting the special needs of a child and if it is nourishing the child’s inherent traits or damaging it. This kind of complete evaluation helps to suggest the modifications according to the special needs of a child and hence makes the process of learning easy, comfortable and beneficial for a child. However, as the standardized assessment tests focus only on the assessment of the inherent abilities of the child and hence, fails in meeting its purpose. The standardized assessment tests have proved to be insufficient in many ways. The studies have found that standardized assessment tests have failed to consider the importance of the environment in the process of learning. Learning is a dynamic process. Human being is not a machine. Human being has emotions, behavior patterns, thinking patterns and energy levels. Different children have different behavior patterns, different emotional response and different ways of leaning. The assessment which does not take into consideration these factors cannot be a complete assessment. Studies have found that there are many negative aspects related to standardized assessment. They are as follows: 1. The procedure of the standardized assessment in itself is the first problem. The situation in which the assessment is conducted poses a challenge for children taking the assessment. According to Lidz (983), young children are not used to the environment of assessment. They fail to understand the importance of alertness and concentration during assessment. Their short attention span, lack of ability to concentrate, low verbal skills and the short period of interest in responding to the assessment makes the assessment process difficult. The assessment in which a child was not participating to his best ability cannot give results that are reliable. Hence, the process of standardized assessment is a problem (Haywood & Tzuriel, 1992, p.253) . 2. The second problem is of the standardized test is an assumption that its results can predict the future trend of the performance of a child. This is not true. For many years, it has been believed that the performance of a child remains stable throughout his educational period (Haywood & Tzuriel, 1992, p.253). The practice of pre-school assessment is proving fatal due to its belief that if a child does poor on the psychoeducational assessment in preschool, he will have difficulties in later educational life. This belief leads to discouragement and lowering of the confidence of a child and parents. The fact is that, the relationship between the results of these assessments and the future performance of the child has not yet been clearly established. Studies by Schmidt & Perino (1985) found that there is a relationship between the assessment scores and the future performance of a child (Haywood & Tzuriel, 1992, p.253). However, studies by Goodman and Cameron (1978) found no relationship between the assessment results and the future performance of a child. This shows that the assumption that the standardized test predicts the future performance of a child is wrong and misguiding. 3. The third aspect where the standardized assessment test remains insufficient is in its inability to consider the importance of the environment in the process of learning. According to a study by Tzuriel and Klein (1985), the standardized assessments give a lot of emphasis on the performance of a child and insufficient importance is given to the process of learning (Haywood & Tzuriel, 1992, p.254). Reynolds and Clark (1983) have concluded that although the standardized assessment is useful in diagnosis of a learning problem by identifying the difficulties of a child, it remains insufficient as it does not give the accurate picture of the problem (Haywood & Tzuriel, 1992, p.254). The standardized assessment does not give any information of the hidden potential of a child, which usually is tapped only after making some specific modifications in the environment. Knowing that the environmental factors play a very important role in the learning process, it can be seen that the standardized assessment does not really help in understanding what really can help a child to improve. The proponents of the standardized testing believe that the inherent qualities of a child are fixed (Haywood & Tzuriel, 1992, p.3). However, what needs to be understood is that even though inherent qualities seem to be fixed, they can be enhance or discouraged by the environmental factors. The standardized assessment test was designed to screen the children, diagnose the areas in which they find learning difficult and to find if they are eligible for special education. However, the professionals in the field of testing are misusing the standardized assessment. They are using the standardized assessment tests not only to diagnose the problem, but also to design the goals and the procedures of intervention (Gargiulo & Kilgo, 2005,p.99). The standardized assessment were designed to be used with other assessment tests to reach the conclusion about the needs of children who are in need of special education. By using the standardized assessment in isolation, the professionals in the testing have abused its existence. This not only hampers the reliability of the testing, but also hampers the future of a child who is being tested. Moreover, the standardized assessment tests give more importance to the intelligence of a child than is necessary. The fact that the standardized assessment tests considers a child slow in learning if he does not attain certain skill at certain age, shows its incapability to understand the effect of his family and his environment on the child (Gargiulo & Kilgo, 2005,p.99). A child who is helped by his mother to take tiny steps everyday will learn to walk earlier than a child who is not encouraged to do so. For the assessment to do justice to the child’s ability, it is necessary to give appropriate importance to the environment in which he lives. Children who have difficulty in learning are not born unintelligent. They are the victim of the undernourishment of their skills and abilities. The lack of the positive environment makes it difficult for children to learn. The purpose of the assessment will be fulfilled only when the appropriate importance is given to environment of a child . References Brown-Chidsey, R. & Cummins, J. (Eds).(2005). Assessment for Intervention: A Problem- Solving Approach. New York: The Gulford Press Cline, t. (Ed).(1992). THE Assessment of special educational needs: international perspective. New York: Routledge Gargiulo, R. & Kilgo, J. (2005). Young Children with Special Needs. New York: Thomson Delmar Learning Haywood, C. H. & Tzuriel, D. (Eds).( (1992). Interactive Assessment. New York: Springer-Verlag Read More