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“The mere implementation of student-centered teaching models and strategies cannot be considered the only guarantee of educational quality.”
What is a learning assessment? If we ask a student, he or she will probably respond “exams.” However, if we ask a teacher, he or she could answer something like, “It’s one of the most challenging aspects of teaching for which I have received very little training and for which I don’t receive overtime pay for the time required!” (Sánchez Mendiola, 2018). Usually, when a higher education institution hires a teacher, hopefully, it receives teacher training courses to integrate disciplinary knowledge with fundamental teaching skills. It is often done in a cursory way with little integration.
As if this were inconsequential, we teachers usually live in a cloud of false expectations and premises where we believe that students learn everything we teach. Unfortunately, it is not like that. Therefore, the only way to be more explicit about education and its impact on students is to carry out an appropriate assessment that provides interpretable and useful results for the various stakeholders in the educational systems and aligns with the curricula and teaching methods.
“The quality of teaching work depends mainly on the teachers’ willingness and competencies to evaluate their students’ knowledge during classroom work and make decisions that promote learning.”
Higher education teachers who conduct learning assessments need the theory and guidance to improve their evaluative functions’ quality. In this article, teachers will find information to strengthen their evaluation competencies in educational settings through a theoretical discussion and a synthetic presentation of some tools and evaluation strategies of and for learning. The relevant concepts addressed include evaluation for learning, evaluation of learning, sustainable assessment, and formative evaluation. Download the full version of this article at this link.
Renewal
The substantive change is to orient the pedagogy towards everyone’s learning, broadly recognizing and valuing students’ diversity. For a diverse pedagogy, one must work on a formative assessment founded on students’ previous learnings and the competencies they seek to develop. From this perspective, pedagogy and evaluation are integrated. The assessment acquires an essential role, not just the sanction at the end of the training process but as the information provider that guides the training.
It is not enough to review the prescribed curricula; students’ curricula must be deconstructed and reconstructed, which involves modifying methodological and evaluative practices rooted in the schools.
Teachers are familiar with several types of evaluation: a) according to the time when they perform the assessment (start, middle, and end); (b) by the actors involved (self-assessment, co-assessment, and hetero-assessment), and c) according to the purpose pursued (summative and formative) (Casanova, 1998; García, Aguilera, Pérez y Muñoz, 2011; Martínez-Rizo, 2012; Ravela, Picaroni, and Loureiro, 2017). Concerning the last point, it should be noted that the summary assessment is limited to evaluating the levels of learning achieved by students. At the same time, the formative assessment also seeks to improve those levels. Teachers use various types of assessment; however, in classroom interactions involving the teacher, students, and content, the teacher may not, in reality, see the assessment as a tool that promotes student learning (Martínez-Rizo, 2012; Ravela et al., 2017).
Then, what is evaluation for learning? It is the one performed during the learning process and not at the end of it, i.e., when educational decisions can be made to adjust the teaching according to the students’ needs and give them feedback during their learning process.
The evaluation of learning is a process of interpersonal communication with all the characteristics and complexities of human communication. The roles of the evaluator and the one evaluated can be alternated and even be simultaneous. Understanding that assessment of learning is communication is vital. Its results depend on the characteristics of the “object” being evaluated, the person’s peculiarities performing the evaluation, the connections they establish, the characteristics of the mediators of those relationships, and the assessment conditions.
An essential feature of the evaluation of learning is the interrelationship between the action subjects: the evaluator and the one evaluated. The assessment object is the other person – individual or group – who stands as the subject of the action and co-participates, to a greater or lesser extent, in the evaluation. Furthermore, in evaluating learning, the intention should be that the assessed can become his or her evaluator (González Pérez, 2001).
Sustainable evaluation and formative assessment
There are other novel proposals, such as that made by Boud (2000, pp. 151-167), an Australian researcher who coined “sustainable evaluation.” In his publications, Boud connects sustainable evaluation to another vogue concept in recent years, lifelong learning. He highlights the importance of evaluation in promoting lifelong learning, drawing attention to the strategic role that evaluation can play in the individual’s current learning and their learning in the future (Boud and Falchikov, 2006, pp. 399-413).
The concept of sustainable evaluation is that it “satisfies the present’s needs without compromising the students’ ability to satisfy their own future learning needs” (Boud, 2000, p. 151). Sustainable assessment is not a new type of evaluation practice but a way to build on formative and summary assessments to promote long-term learning goals.
On the other hand, formative evaluation is a concept that emerged in the last two decades of the last century and has been little disclosed. The theoretical contributions come from two French researchers, Bonniol and Nunziati. The central conception of these authors is interpreted by Spanish researchers who have conducted some experiential practices in “train the trainers” in the teaching of natural sciences. Among the reported investigations, the work of Jorba and Sanmartí (1992) and Hugo and Sanmartí (2003) stand out.
Educational assessment depends on the methodology used, the quality of the process, and the use of the results. Several international organizations have proposed criteria for acceptable practices in evaluation, including those enunciated by the Consensus Group of the Ottawa Conference, an educational event dedicated to the evaluation of clinical competencies in health sciences, which has been highlighted for promoting the academic aspects of educational assessment (Norcini, Anderson, Bollela, Burch, Costa, Duvivier, 2011).
These criteria are validity, reliability, justice, equivalence, feasibility, educational and catalytical effect, and acceptability.
All people, regardless of age, should have opportunities to develop their learning, proposed by UNESCO’s Education 2030. It focuses on inclusivity, equitability, and life-long learning. Throughout life, the notion of learning incorporates multiple and diverse trajectories in a person’s development, during all ages, but with a present link between formal and non-formal training structures and the recognition of competencies, skills, and acquired knowledge in various formal and non-formal means of education.
Recognizing the importance of actively engaging students in the learning process has motivated multiple works and discussions about teaching models and strategies that teachers must implement in the classroom. For example, the instructional model known as the “learning cycle,” in its three-stage version (exploration, the introduction of concepts, and application) or five-stage (coupling, exploration, explanation, elaboration, and evaluation), has become a prototype of learning sequence organization in classes (Lawson, 1995). Teaching strategies such as collaborative work, project teaching, peer instruction, predict-observe-explain sequences, and research work are often used to measure the level at which teachers have transformed their classrooms into student-centered learning spaces (AAAS, 2012).
The evaluation should be an analysis and deep pondering object if we intend to welcome education remnants into the 21st century.
Reflection
Creating opportunities for students to be actively involved in the teaching-learning process should be a priority for all teachers interested in promoting meaningful learning. However, the mere implementation of student-centered teaching models and strategies cannot be considered the only guarantee of educational quality.
The quality of teaching work depends mainly on the teachers’ willingness and competencies to evaluate their students’ knowledge during classroom work and make decisions that promote learning. From this perspective, teacher preparation in evaluation can be seen as one of the most powerful tools to improve educational quality at all levels (Black and William, 1998, 2009; NRC, 2000, 2001, 2015). Teachers’ judgments about their students’ learning difficulties play a central role in important decisions, such as the type of educational activities that teachers select, the type of questions they ask in the classroom, the explanations they generate, and the comments they make about students’ work (Stiggins and Conklin, 1992). What teachers observe and tell their students and their interpretations based on what they see and hear affects what students consider essential to learn and the knowledge they develop (Ruiz-Primo and Furtak, 2007). It also affects their attitudes, motivation, and effort (Shepard, 2000; Stiggins and Chappuis, 2005). Therefore, teachers’ professional development in evaluations is critical in any process of educational or curricular reform (Abell and Siegel, 2011; Siegel and Wissehr, 2011; Stiggins, 2002).
The contemporary vision of learning as an active, constructive, and flexible, student-centered process and the contextual diversity of learning experiences require teachers to design assessment tools that correspond to these needs. Identifying the knowledge students must acquire, and the most appropriate evaluation methodologies and instruments will help teachers implement best-assessment-practices, based on a training approach that provides students with frequent feedback on their learning. From this, they can actively build their knowledge and critically judge their training.
About the Author
Galo Adán Clavijo Clavijo (gaclavijo95@gmail.com) holds a Ph.D. in Pedagogical Sciences, Republic of Cuba, University of the Orient. He is the Pegasso research group leader, with four curricular lines: pedagogy and learning, teacher training, new pedagogies, and power and government in the university.
References
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Edited by Rubí Román (rubi.roman@tec.mx) – Observatory of Educational Innovation.
Translation by Daniel Wetta.
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