Quality assessment information provides accurate estimates of student
performance and enables teachers or other decision makers to make appropriate
decisions. The concept of assessment validity captures these essential
characteristics and the extent that an assessment actually measures what it is
intended to measure, and permits appropriate generalizations about students'
skills and abilities. If the assessment is
valid, we can safely generalize that the student will likely do as well on
similar items not included on the assessment. The results of quality assessment,
in short, represent something beyond how students perform on a certain task or
a particular set of items; they represent how a student performs on the
objective which those items were intended to assess.
Characteristics of quality assessment for classroom purposes:
*The content of the assessments (the knowledge and skills assessed) should match
the teacher's educational objectives and instructional emphases.
*The items should represent the full range of knowledge and skills that
are the primary targets of instruction.
*Expectations for student performance should be clear.
*The assessment should be free of extraneous factors which unnecessarily confuse or inadvertently cue student responses.
Analysis of Traditional Views
Methods of assessment are determined by our beliefs about learning. According to early theories of
learning, complex higher-order skills had to be acquired bit-by-bit by breaking
learning down into a series of prerequisite skill, a
building-blocks-of-knowledge approach. It was assumed incorrectly that
after basic skills had been learned by rote, they could be assembled into
complex understandings and insight. However, evidence from contemporary cognitive psychology indicates that
all learning requires that the learner think and actively construct evolving
mental models.
From today's cognitive
perspective, meaningful learning is reflective, constructive, and
self-regulated. People are seen not as mere recorders of factual
information but as creators of their own unique knowledge structures. To know
something is not just to have received information but to have interpreted it
and related it to other knowledge one already has. In addition, we now recognize the importance of
knowing not just how to perform, but also when to perform and how to adapt that
performance to new situations. Thus, the presence or absence of discrete
bits of information-which is typically the focus of traditional multiple-choice
assessments-is not of primary importance in the assessment of meaningful learning.
Rather, what is important is how and whether students organize, structure, and
use that information in context to solve complex problems.
Cognitive Psychology
Contrary to past views
of learning, cognitive psychology suggests that learning is not linear, but
that it proceeds in many directions at once and at an uneven pace.
Conceptual learning is not something to be delayed until a particular age or
until all the basic facts have been mastered. People of all ages and ability
levels constantly use and refine concepts. Furthermore, there is tremendous
variety in the modes and speed with which people acquire knowledge, in the
attention and memory capabilities they can apply to knowledge acquisition and
performance, and in the ways in which they can demonstrate the personal meaning
they have created.
Current evidence about
the nature of learning makes it apparent that instruction which strongly
emphasizes structured drill and practice on discrete, factual knowledge does
students a major disservice. Learning isolated facts and skills is more
difficult without meaningful ways to organize the information and make it easy
to remember. Also, applying those skills later to solve real-world problems
becomes a separate and more difficult task. Because some students have had such
trouble mastering decontextualized "basics," they are rarely given
the opportunity to use and develop higher-order thinking skills.
Recent studies of the
integration of learning and motivation also have highlighted the importance of
affective and metacognitive skills in learning. For example, recent
research suggests that poor thinkers and problem solvers differ from good ones
not so much in the particular skills they possess as in their failure to use
them in certain tasks. Acquisition
of knowledge skills is not sufficient to make one into a competent thinker or
problem solver. People also need to acquire the disposition to use the skills
and strategies, as well as the knowledge of when and how to apply them. These
are appropriate targets of assessment.
The role of the social context of learning in shaping higher-order cognitive
abilities and dispositions has also received attention over the past several
years. It has been noted that real-life problems often require people to work
together as a group in problem-solving situations, yet most traditional
instruction and assessment have involved independent rather than small group
work. Now, however, it is postulated that groups facilitate learning in several
ways: modeling effective thinking strategies, scaffolding complicated
performances, providing mutual constructive feedback, and valuing the elements
of critical thought. Group assessments, thus, can be important.
Since the influence of
assessment on curriculum and instruction is now widely acknowledged, educators,
policymakers, and others are turning to alternative assessment methods as a
tool for educational reform. The movement away from traditional,
multiple-choice assessments to alternative assessments-variously called authentic
assessment or performance assessment-has included a wide variety of strategies
such as open-ended questions, exhibits, demonstrations, hands-on execution of
experiments, computer simulations, writing in many disciplines, and portfolios
of student work over time. These
terms and assessment strategies have led the quest for more meaningful
assessments which better capture the significant outcomes we want students to
achieve and better match the kinds of tasks which they will need to accomplish
in order to assure their future success.