Nowadays many of the teachers that have been educating for years have a wrong concept of what evaluation and assessment is. They just think that both involve grades and mean the same thing but these concepts are more than grading students and deciding whether they should pass or not.
Assessment is a continuous process that involves many aspects that affect student´s learning directly. Genesee & Upshur (1996) explains that assessment consists of three essential components; the first one is information that may be gathered through observation of students´ behavior in the classroom, by students´ comments during individual conferences or from entries in students´ journals. After gathering this information, the second component is interpretation, and the last one is decision making in order to decide what actions to take or what changes to make to instruction.
Talking about the last component of assessment, relevant aspects about educational decision making are the strategies used by the teacher at the moment students would be assessed. According to Brissenden and Slater, teachers should manipulate the kinds of learning that takes place, it means if they used assessment strategies that focus only on recall knowledge the result would be superficial learning, but if they choose assessment strategies that demand critical thinking or problem solving the result would be completely different, the level of students´ performance or achievement would be higher. To sum up assessment is a process that takes place everywhere and takes into account important factors that affect students a such as attitude, behavior, needs, learning style and strategies.
I never thought about the difference between evaluation and assessment until I read these articles, and of course the professor explained the corresponding meanings. This changed my perspective of what we are doing in our classrooms. Good analysis from the text Pao... :)
ResponderEliminarAssessment implies a decision making; every single assessment produce a decision in order to improve students’ learning. As teachers, we should collect info from many sources in order to make better decisions. We have to take into account that we will never be completely objective, but we must be sure that our subjectivity does not influence negatively students’ learning process.
ResponderEliminarI consider that you have mentioned a very important aspect about assessment and it is that we need to go beyond the result of a test (which, as we have discussed, it is not the only way to asess students).Taking into account what is behind the results, would lead us to a much better learning and teaching process. If we try to know the reasons why students got certain results, we will be able to provide a better guidance for them to improve.
ResponderEliminarOn the other hand, I would like to mention that I agree with Manuel's comment about teachers' subjectivity. It is very important to consider all our students' efforts; however,we need to be consistent with the rules we set since the beggining. Special cases should be considered, but not every case can be considered special.
It is very important that we have the concepts of assessment and evaluation clear; and i also think that it is useful to know the three components in which assessment consists.
ResponderEliminarLizeth's conclusion is very important since she highlights that assessment takes place everywhere and should take into account the different factors that affect students' learning process.I think that is something that we, as teachers, should take into account when teaching and assessing students' performance.
Yes, you highlighted the most important component of assessment,decision making. This is a critical point, because one we got there, there are not steps back, I mean, even though we have had searched and re-read in order to make the best decision, we must be consious that not always we are gonna give it a good shot. Sometimes, our subjectivity is stronger than what is really happennig, and our analisys can be biased. tha's why I think that after making a decicison and facing expected or unexpected changes, the reflection about what we did must be a fourth step. In conclusion this is a never ending process.
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