Over the past two decades there has been a lot written, and
much discussion, around the use effective use of assessment in the
classroom. Unfortunately many
educators, particularly at the secondary school level, continue to cling
tenaciously to “traditional” practices which are, at best ineffective and at
worst, counterproductive to the goals of modern education. Here are six common misconceptions
about assessment and evaluation that we need to abolish.
1. “Assessment and evaluation are the same.” No they’re not! Too many people,
particularly those not employed in the field of education, conflate these two
and too often within the field we evaluate student work and tell ourselves that
what we’ve done is assessment.
Assessment involves timely,
detailed feedback based around
clearly defined learning outcomes.
Evaluation is “giving a grade” to a piece of work, usually based on
normative criteria, but too often in comparison to the work of other students.
2. “Most assessment is summative.” Well, unfortunately that may still be
true in many quarters, but it should not
be. As we’ve learned over the past
two decades or so assessment can be a very powerful learning tool in and of
itself. As Dylan
Wiliam has been saying for years, we need to constantly assess both student work and our own teaching, adjusting
as we go, such that by the time we get to the end of a unit of study students
have already had an opportunity to
rethink and revise their work.
There are still far too many teachers who rely too heavily on one single
summative assessment at the end of each unit and then move onto another topic
no matter the outcomes.
3. “Assessment is one way communication, the
teacher gives feedback on student work”. Well, yes that’s true, but the most productive assessment
should be a dialogue. In traditional assessment and
evaluation models students complete a task, the teacher assesses the work and tells the student how they’ve done and,
in formative cases, how to improve the work. But when students engage with the teacher to discuss work,
talk about what they’ve done and why, both student and teacher stand to gain
far more from the experience.
Modern technology makes two way communication between teacher and
student much easier and far more ubiquitous, let’s start using it more
effectively.
4. “Assessment is for grading purposes.” This is one of the most pervasive and
potentially damaging holdovers from bygone eras in education. Yes, final grades should reflect some
of what has gone on between student and teacher regarding assessment. But the “collecting of marks” to arrive
at the final grade is counterproductive in many ways, here are just two. First, the collation marks too often
includes work which was done before
students had mastered the material.
As has been said by others, when we redo things like driving tests we
don’t “average” the results, why do we do this with school work. Secondly, every teacher, especially in
secondary schools, is aware of how the pursuit of ‘marks’ often distracts
students’ focus from the work at hand.
This is doubly damaging because neuroscience is telling us that brains under
stress from external stimuli can have significantly diminished learning
capacity.
5. “Student work should be given a mark”. In summative situations, or where marks
are necessary, this assertion is true.
But too often we put a mark on student work when we’re hoping to use the
work formatively, which is a mistake.
As soon as students see a grade on a piece of work, be it a letter or
number grade, the focus is immediately taken off of any meaningful feedback
and, in the student’s mind, that piece of work is complete. It’s time to move on. No matter what the teacher intends
grades imply a finality that’s hard to overcome in students’ minds.
6. “If assignments are late I deduct marks.” There is no pedagogically defensible
reason for doing this. This is
simply trying to modify behaviour
using coercion through grades.
There is nothing wrong with having some
consequence for late work, but the assignment of grades (when necessary)
should reflect student learning, nothing more. Put another way, if a student hands in work worthy of an A
today, is that work somehow different if it were handed in tomorrow?
My experience has been that when
teachers rethink and reform their views about what assessment is about, and
what its primary purposes are, their feedback is invariably positive. When we pry the “mark book” out of the
collective hand of those in the teaching profession, and allow individual
teachers the freedom to use assessment in more productive ways, we find that
assessment becomes far more authentic and fruitful and far less about the
drudgery (and judgment) of marking.
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