Types of Assessment in Education: A Comprehensive Guide
Assessment in Education
The term assessment has been widely used and has developed a variety of meanings since it was first applied to exams as the evaluation of educational performance. The term, in its present definition, includes not only the evaluation of school performance but also its comparison with the area objectives and the general objectives of the educational institution. Assessment is also a stimulus for the pupil, provides a means of communicating information to parents, constitutes feedback, revision and correction of contents in the curriculum undertaken by the teaching staff and, finally, it is the process of accountability, when social investment is examined.
Types of Assessment
Self-Assessment
According to the guidelines laid down by the educational authorities, pupils should learn to evaluate their own learning processes. Self-assessment is not only encouraged but recommended. This way pupils cease to be passive “subjects” in the evaluation process, since they participate constantly in the assessing of their learning progress. At its best, the use of self-assessment will motivate students, encourage them to participate in all the activities of the classroom, and provoke stimulating discussions on the progress of the course, types of materials and activities proposed, etc. However, we cannot deny that some problems may have to be solved:
- Students are sometimes felt to have “falsified” reality, and others seem to be excessively severe with their own performance, not giving themselves due credit.
- At the primary stage we should remember that students have practically never had the opportunity to undertake self-assessment, thus it is difficult for them to develop reliable criteria.
- Self-assessment in groups or individually may be very time-consuming.
- Weaker students may not be keen on self-assessment.
Formative Assessment
This type of evaluation is the assessment which teaching staff carries out through the analysis of the student’s performance in periodical sessions, and which provides for the readjustment of curriculum contents to the true possibilities of students.
The stage of thinking about the daily activity, can be considered as a self-evaluation stage whose aim is to achieve better results, in continuous feedback, and which, nonetheless, needs to be formally planned and included in the regular timing of the academic year.
Continuous Assessment
This is the educational process of each of the students, taking notes about their development, their difficulties, etc. It is an informal type of assessment which mainly consists in making observations, taking notes, assessing spontaneous and reflexive answers from the student, and is one which allows the teacher to accumulate data to be used later when marking the students’ progress over a long period of time or at the end of an academic cycle, and to promote or demote the student according to this data.
This continuous assessment has to be registered in such a way that the learning process is adequately shown. For example, we should consider the following tasks: evaluate the students’ work and school activity in general; assess their ability to transfer knowledge and to apply it to new, original or creative situations; check the student’s linguistic competence in the four skills, as well as the other competences. This can be done by using double-entry tables where the names of the students are written along the vertical axis and the linguistic structure contents (codified) as well as the degree of command over the linguistic skills are shown along the horizontal axis. And among the methods of gaining this information we have: use of dialogues, informal conversations, short class tests, notes on daily participation in class, interviews, participation in debates, games, etc.
Formal Assessment and Testing
However, the study of the students’ learning process in the above mentioned terms is not sufficient for the purpose of evaluation. There are academic situations in the student’s daily life which need, as it were, a “formal register,” in such a way that data from daily activities can be checked against the results in exams and other written tasks. This will happen at those stages pre-determined by the educational authorities and they usually coincide with the stages when a decision has to be reached at the end of a cycle, year or course, depending on the educational progress of the student.
Formal assessment will take into account those contents defined in the syllabus which have been taught up to that moment, and will propose these tests to the students. The results of these exams should be consistent with data extracted from the continuous assessment undertaken during the school life of each of the students. There is a positive effect to these formal tests and that includes the activities of revision, systematization and knowledge settlement which the students must undertake when they have to show their own learning process.
In English language teaching, formal evaluation will include graphic material (photos, cards, drawings), oral material (fully recorded tapes or with black spaces to complete) and interactive audio-visual material (videos which ask for individual answer or which contain scenes where the voice needs to be added). In this sense, it is important to bear in mind that these communicative resources contain other voices apart from that of the teacher’s and that the aim is to measure the degree of comprehension (written, oral) as well as that of communication (written, oral).