The Purposes of ssessment Sunday, February 13, 2011 Quality Education & Training: Towards a Better Future 1
Jun 10, 2015
The Purposes of
ssessment
Sunday, February 13, 2011 Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future 1
It’s the economy, stupid (Clinton campaign slogan, 1992)
James Callaghan, Ruskin College speech, 18 Oct 1976
I am concerned on my journeys to find complaints from industry that new recruits from the schools sometimes do not have the basic tools to do the job that is required….to the teacher, I would say that you must satisfy the parents and industry that what you are doing meets their requirements and the needs of our children.
Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future
Three questions to ask of any assessment:
1. What is the principal purpose of this
assessment?
2. Is the form of the assessment fit for
purpose?
3. Does it achieve its purpose?
Three broad groupings:
1. Selection and certification
2. Determining and raising standards
3. Formative assessment – assessment for
learning
3 Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future
Assessment = the process of firstly gathering evidence, and secondly interpreting that evidence in the light of some defined criterion in order to form a judgement (Harlen, 1994)
Why do we assess? (P. Black et al, 1987):
• Diagnostic assessment to identify students’ learning needs
• Formative assessment to support and encourage learning
• Summative assessment to identify learning outcomes
• Evaluative assessment which is directed at assessing the quality of provision in institutions and in the system as a whole
Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future
• Certification of achievement (competence)
• Selection (competition)
• The evaluation of provision (content)
• The control of both individual aspirations and systemic
functioning (control)
Importance of the relationship between curriculum and assessment
Who assesses (teachers, students themselves, government)?
What is assessed (knowledge, practical skills, social/emotional
skills)?
When to assess (for formative purposes, as summative use)?
How to assess (norm-referenced, criterion-referenced, ipsative)?
Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future
Chinese civil service selection tests 1st century
A.D. – early 20th century
• High point during Ming dynasty (1368 – 1662)
• Relied on rote knowledge
• Extremely low pass rate
• Despite extraordinary security, people still found
ways to cheat
• Still, ‘it is estimated that up to 60 percent of the
successful candidates came from families that were
not part of the administrative elite’ (Stobart 2008)
Quality Education & Training:
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19th Century enthusiasm for testing
• Antithesis of corruption and patronage
• Testing of basic abilities as well as attainments and
skills
• Ability = merit
• Talent = virtue
7 Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future
Diagnostic assessment
• Origins in ascertaining who would profit from specialist schooling
• Alfred Binet 1905 – 1908, one to one diagnostics, spatial, verbal and numerical sub-tests
• US and Great Britain change to written IQ tests – assumption that intelligence is fixed
Assessment to set and raise standards
• Entrance examinations to universities
• Backwash effect on curriculum
Assessment as accountability
• Payment by results
Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future
The children … were drilled in the contents of those books until they knew them almost by heart. In arithmetic they worked abstract sums, in obedience to formal rules, day after day, and month after month; and they were put up to various tricks and dodges which would, it was hoped, enable them to know by what precise rules the various questions on the arithmetic card were to be answered. Not a thought was given, except in a small minority of schools, to the real training of the child, to the fostering of his mental (and other) growth. To get him through the yearly examination by hook or by crook was the one concern of the teacher. As profound distrust of the teacher was the basis of the policy of the department, so profound distrust of the child was the basis of the policy of the teachers. To leave the child to find anything out for himself, to think out anything for himself, would have been regarded as proof of incapacity, no to say insanity, on the part of the teacher, and would have led to results which, from the ‘percentage’ point of view, would probably have been disastrous.
Quality Education & Training:
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• The term ‘assessment purpose’ can be interpreted in
a variety of different ways: judgement level;
decision level; impact level
• The uses to which assessment results are put are
often categorized misleadingly
Purposes/uses
Where assessment systems are supposed to
support more than one purpose, the purposes
must be prioritized
•
Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future
• Distinction between formative and summative
assessment is spurious
• Summative characterises a type of assessment
judgement = summing up appraisal of
performance
• Formative characterises a type of use to which
assessment judgements are put = using
assessment to achieve a formative purpose,
which can include summative assessment
Quality Education & Training:
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student monitoring
to decide whether students are making sufficient progress in attainment in relation to expectations or targets; and, potentially, to allocate rewards or sanctions
formative
to identify students’ proximal learning needs, guiding subsequent teaching
social evaluation
to judge the social or personal value of students’ achievements
diagnosis
to clarify the type and extent of students’ learning difficulties in light of well-established criteria, for intervention
Quality Education & Training:
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provision eligibility
to determine whether students meet eligibility criteria for special educational provision
screening
to identify students who differ significantly from their peers, for further assessment
segregation
to segregate students into homogeneous groups, on the basis of aptitudes or attainments, to make the instructional process more straightforward
guidance to identify the most suitable courses, or vocations for
students to pursue, given their aptitudes
Quality Education & Training:
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transfer to identify the general educational needs of students who
transfer to new schools placement to locate students with respect to their position in a
specified learning sequence, to identify the level of course which most closely reflects it
qualification to decide whether students are sufficiently qualified for a
job, course or role in life – that is, whether they are equipped to succeed in it – and whether to enrol them or to appoint them to it
selection to predict which students – all of whom might, in principle,
be sufficiently qualified – will be the most successful in a job, course or role in life, and to select between them
Quality Education & Training:
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licensing to provide legal evidence – the licence – of minimum
competence to practice a specialist activity, to warrant stakeholder trust in the practitioner
certification to provide evidence – the certificate – of higher
competence to practice a specialist activity, or subset thereof, to warrant stakeholder trust in the practitioner
school choice
to identify the most desirable school for a child to attend
institution monitoring
to decide whether institutional performance – relating to individual teachers, classes or schools – is rising or falling in relation to expectations or targets; and, potentially, to allocate rewards or sanctions
15 Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future
resource allocation to identify institutional needs and, consequently, to allocate
resources organizational intervention to identify institutional failure and, consequently, to justify
intervention programme evaluation to evaluate the success of educational programmes or
initiatives, nationally or locally system monitoring to decide whether system performance – relating to
individual regions or the nation – is rising or falling in relation to expectations or targets; and, potentially, to allocate rewards or sanctions
comparability to guide decisions on comparability of examination standards
for later assessments on the basis of cohort performance in earlier ones
national accounting to ‘quality adjust’ education output indicators
Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future