Prep to Year 10 Assessment – Assessment Advice

Read the following quote and consider the discussion starter questions

Discussion starter 1

Read the following quote and consider the discussion starter questions

The most important difficulties with assessment revolve around three issues. The first issue is effective learning.

• The tests used by teachers encourage rote and superficial learning even when teachers say they want to develop understanding. Many teachers seem unaware of the inconsistency.
  
  
• The questions and other methods teachers use are not shared with other teachers in the same school. In addition, the questions are not critically reviewed in relation to what they actually assess.
  
  
• For primary teachers in particularly, there is a tendency to emphasise quantity and presentation of work and to neglect its quality in relation to learning.
  
  

The second issue is negative impact

• The giving of marks and the grading function are overemphasised, while the giving of useful advice and the learning function are underemphasised.
  
  
• Approaches are used in which students are compared with one another, the prime purpose of which seems to be competition rather than personal improvement. As a result, feedback on assessment may lead low-achieving students to believe that they lack ‘ability’. This may emphasise some students’ belief that they are not able to learn.
  
  

The third issue is the managerial role of assessments.

• Teachers' feedback to students seems to serve social and managerial functions, often at the expense of the learning function.
  
  
• Teachers are often able to predict students' results on external tests because their own tests imitate them. At the same time teachers are not really familiar with their learning needs.
  
  
• The collection of marks to complete student records is given higher priority than the analysis of students' work to discern learning needs. Furthermore, some teachers pay no attention to the assessment records of their students' previous teachers.
  
  

Black, P. & Wiliam, D. 1998. Inside the Black Box: Raising standards through classroom assessment, King’s College London

Discussion starter questions

• Which of these is an issue in your school, unit or team? Why?
• What effect can and does this have on student learning?
• What can you do to change these issues in your classroom, year level or unit?