First Week Assignment

Summary: ASSESSMENT, EVALUATION, TESTING AND GRADING

Although many people including teachers and students limit the meaning of assessment to giving tests and assigning grades, Scanland (2012) defines assessment as the process of making a judgment or measurement of worth of an entity. That could be a person, a process, or a program.  According to Brissenden and Slater n.d. as cited by Scanlan (2012), learner assessment is designed to serve several purposes. They are “motivating and directing learning”, “providing feedback to students on their performance”, “providing feedback on instruction and/or the curriculum”, and “ensuring standards of progression are met”. Besides, learner assessment involves communication to teachers who will be able to get feedback on teaching, students on their own learning, curriculum designers on the curriculum, and administrators on the use of resources.

Regarding the importance of assessment, they explain that it drives students learning. It means that depending on the strategies used, different kinds of learning will take place. In that case, assessment strategies that focus on recall of knowledge will likely promote superficial learning. On the other hand, if assessment strategies that demand critical thinking or creative problem-solving are chosen, students will have a higher level of achievement.

According to McAlpine (2002) as cited by Scanlan (2012) there exist dichotomies poles to explain the different types of assessment: “Formative vs. Summative”, “Informal vs. Formal”, “Continuous vs. Final”, “Process vs. Product”, and “Divergent vs. Convergent”. The Formative aims to provide feedback to the learner, which can be used to identify strengths and weakness and hence improve future performance. The summative on the other hand, is used primarily to make decisions for grading or determine readiness for progression and communicate students’ abilities to external entities such as administrators or employees.

In the Informal assessment, the judgments are integrated with other tasks often used to provide formative feedback. It tends to be less threatening for the students and for that reason less stressful to them.  In the case of Formal assessment, students are aware that the task they are doing is for assessment purpose. They are summative in nature and tend to have greater motivation impact as they are associated with increased stress.

Continuous assessment happens throughout a learning experience. Even though it involves increased effort for teacher and student, it provides with the information needed to improve teaching and learning in process. Different from the one previously presented, The Final assessment takes place at the end of a learning activity, so it cannot be used for formative purposes.

Process and Product assessments differ in that the first one focusses on the steps or procedures underlying a particular ability or task; but the second one takes into account the result or outcome of a process. It means it focuses on the answer, not on the steps to get that result.  

The last types of assessments are Divergent and Convergent. Divergent refers to those for which a range of answers or solutions might be considered correct like in essay texts. Contrary to Divergent, the Convergent has only one correct response per question, and it values the assessment of real knowledge.

Last but not least, Scanlan (2012) states the distinction between assessment vs. evaluation, and assessment vs. grading. The most important aspect highlighted is that assessment is for students while evaluation is for instruction. In the same way, assessment is contrasted with grading and it is stated that the last one is considered a component of assessment although many think they are totally different because assessment is to measure student growth and process. Whichever conception is taken anyway, will depend on the teacher’s own philosophy.