The Role Of Assessment In A Learning Culture

This article, The Role Of Assessment In A Learning Culture by Lorrie A Shepard is a great article on using differnet assessment tools to capture important learning goals and processes and to connect assessment to ongoing instruction.

My Take Aways

• Assessment practices should change to be consistent with and support social constructivist pedaegogy. This new paradigm is that both development and learning are primarily social processes. Cognitive activites are " developed" through socially supported interactions.
• There are 2 kinds of assessment, the " evil" and the " good". I suppose National examinations are the "evil" assessment. Its main purpose is for accountability. It does not prepare the pupils the skills require when they come out to work. " good' assessment will be the authentic assessments when pupils have to use a number of skills. On-going assessments which can be used as part of the learning processes are also " good' assessment. This leads me to realise that multiple choice questions are not authentic assessments. As educators, we need to strike a balance between teaching for " evil" assessment and " good" assessments .
• Once we are ready,  we have to make changes in our classroom practices to make assessment as art of the learning process. Here are some strategies that the article recommend, They are dynamic, on-going assessment, techniques for prior knowledge activitation, providing feedback, transfer of knowledge, be explicit in the criteria, self assessment and lastly evaluation of our teaching.

I am not good at summarising article. Do spend some time reading this enriching article.