Assessment/Evaluation Instrument(s) am I familiar with

 

Assessment/Evaluation Instrument(s) am I familiar with

Author: Santosh Kumar Biswa, Sr. Teacher, Damphu CS, Tsirang, Bhutan

 

Education requires assessment and evaluation since the main goal of both is to enhance student learning. Evaluation is summative and judgmental in nature, whereas assessment is formative and diagnostic. Evaluation focuses on the product based on its degree of quality following the established standard, while assessment focuses on the process, where observations are made to provide feedback (Surbhi, 2017).

Which assessment and evaluation instruments and their purposes am I familiar with?

At my school, I teach English language and literature to 12th-grade students. Oral questioning, reading and writing portfolios, listening and speaking tests, peer evaluations, demonstrations or observations rubrics, writing assignments, group assignments and presentations, role-playing, and unit tests are some of the assessment and evaluation tools I utilize in my classroom. Since gathering data on my students' performance and competency is the major goal of having them in my classroom, they are employed in the formative assessment mode. Moreover, its purpose is to help me decide how to train students and gather data on their behavior or performance so that I can diagnose problems with students, track their progress, or provide them with the right kind of feedback for growth (Butler & McMunn, 2009). Additionally, it would enable me to assess the success of my teaching efforts and the objectives my pupils have learned. Finally, it will demonstrate to me the steps I need to take to instruct students effectively in the lessons I teach in my classroom.

Was I the assessor or the assessed? My personal experience

I am both the assessor and the assessed, to the best of my knowledge. While I was taking the initiative to assess my students by making observations and learning more about them, I was also becoming aware that my classroom management was being evaluated since I could see where my lesson went well and where it didn't. For example, when I asked my students to swap notebooks with at least three classmates and review their peers' work to provide the appropriate feedback and comments during one of my peer assessment exercises in the classroom, I discovered that many of them were struggling with their learning. When they finished their assignment and came to me for a final evaluation, I was made aware of it. I became aware that many of the students in my class did not comprehend the ideas I had tried to teach them, which compelled me to alter my lesson plan and re-teach.

Was this an assessment or an evaluation? Why?

When I think about the approach I took in my classroom, I think I was using assessment rather than evaluation because the whole procedure I used was continuous and progressive to raise the standard of the student's learning through suggestions and feedback. As opposed to evaluation, which focuses on grades and may reflect classroom factors other than course content and mastery level, assessment is the systematic process of recording and analyzing empirical data to measure knowledge, abilities, attitudes, and beliefs in education (Knowly, 2020). In the entire process that I described above for my students and that I followed, I was trying to improve the student's path toward learning. But, when I talked about improving my instruction based on the findings on students' performance in the classroom, I was also evaluating myself according to Knowly (2020). As per Butler and McMunn (2009), evaluation is mostly a summative process because summative assessments include teacher-made tests or large-scale assessments.

References

Butler, S. and McMunn, N. (2009). A teacher’s guide to classroom assessment: Understanding and using assessment to improve student learning. Jossey-Bass. Retrieved from https://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/1657011/mod_book/chapter/397410/5440Teachers%20Guide.pdf

Knowly. (2020, July 22).  Assessment vs evaluation: what's the difference? EasyLMS. https://www.onlineassessmenttool.com/knowledge-center/assessment-knowledge-center/assessment-vs-evaluation/item10642

Surbhi, S. (2017). Difference Between Assessment and Evaluation. Retrieved from https://keydifferences.com/difference-between-assessment-and-evaluation.html