Importance Of Assessment In Teaching And Learning

Part 3 (60%): General Essay

What are considered to be the key purposes of assessment and how might these purposes support or impede pupils learning?

The role of assessment in teaching and learning

Introduction

Studies over many years have shown that assessment is a main ingredient for teachers to improve their practice and enhance the learners’ achievements. For most of the teachers and learners, the term “assessment” is often correlated with “testing”. Testing is a method to determine a student’s ability to complete certain tasks or demonstrate the understanding of a skill or knowledge of content. On the other hand, Lambert and Lines (2000) go further to suggest that assessment is a constant ongoing process rather than a onetime thing and

Teachers typically conducts a summative assessment at the end of a project, unit or school year. One can argue that certain methods of formative assessment are no different than certain of summative assessment. Being a class teacher of Year 6, I have conducted many types of assessments and at times the first impression that I deliver to my students are ‘summative’, however if the results of this measurement are to be used to redeliver that material to ensure students are on track, then it can be concluded as a formative assessment. This is exactly what Crooks (1988) referred as “the formative impact of summative assessment”. Besides that, a set of standards or expectations can be used for summative assessment. Grades play a major role in assessment. However, grades often fail to tell teachers the precise learning outcomes. It is difficult to extract critical thinking skills, problem solving skills and communication skills from role of grading in assessment. Instead, rubrics are provided to be more objective when deriving a final summative grade. Through my teaching experiences, I find rubrics are very useful in marking essays as it is clearly differentiated. On the flip side, rubrics helps to give a precise feedback to students. Therefore, this rubric can help students to improve on the area that has been highlighted for their next assessment. Therefore, rubric can be used for summative assessment or formative assessment. Gipps & James, (1998) stated “we need to consider not only the teaching and learning activities, but also the assessment tasks”. Moreover, summative assessment are beneficial to many group of people such as teachers, school, parents and students. Teachers or schools can use these assessments to identify strengths and weaknesses of the curriculum and evaluate the standard of students.