Principles of assessment (part 1)

Basic assessment concepts

Best practices in assessing student learning have undergone dramatic changes in the last 30 years. In the past teachers often did not assess students'learning, they tested them on the knowledge and skills taught during the previous weeks. The tests varied little in format and students always did themindividually with pencil and paper. Many teachers now use a wide variety of methods to determine what their students have learned and also use thisassessment information to modify their instruction. In this module the focus is on the basic principles of assessments.

Assessment is an integrated process of gaining information about students' learning and making value judgments about their progress (Linn&Miller, 2005). Information about students' progress can be obtained from a variety ofsources including projects, portfolios, performances, observations, and tests. The information about students' learning is often assigned specific numbers orgrades and this involves measurement. Measurement answers the question, “How much?” and is used most commonly when the teacher scores a test or product and assigns numbers (e.g. 28 /30 on thebiology test; 90/100 on the science project). Evaluation is the process of making judgments about the assessment information (Airasian, 2005). These judgments may be about individual students (e.g. should Jacob'scourse grade take into account his significant improvement over the grading period?), the assessment method used (e.g. is the multiple choice test a usefulway to obtain information about problem solving), or one's own teaching (e.g. most of the students this year did much better on the essay assignment thanlast year so my new teaching methods seem effective).

The primary focus in this module is on assessment for learning , where the priority is designing and using assessment strategies to enhance student learning and development. Assessment for learning is often formative assessment , i.e. it takes place during the course of instruction by providing information that teachers can use to revise their teaching and students can use to improvetheir learning (Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall&Wiliam, 2004). Formative assessment includes both informal assessment involving spontaneous unsystematic observations of students' behaviors (e.g. during a question and answer session or while the students are working on anassignment) and formal assessment involving pre-planned, systematic gathering of data. Assessment of learning is formal assessment that involves assessing students in order to certify their competence and fulfill accountability mandates. Assessment of learning istypically summative , that is, administered after the instruction is completed (e.g. a final examination in an educational psychology course). Summative assessments provideinformation about how well students mastered the material, whether students are ready for the next unit, and what grades should be given (Airasian, 2005).