The Use and Misuse of Assessment
What should we assess? What shouldn’t we assess?
A teachers’ primary concern is whether their students are learning or not, which places assessment as a critical part of teaching. What should I assess? How do I assess? Prof. Geoffrey Hinchliffe and Prof. Heinz Dieter-Meyer respond to these questions in the context of a classroom and with large-scale assessments respectively.
Prof. Geoffrey Hinchliffe
University of East Anglia, UK
Schools should be “a space of reasons”, where everyone is expected to give reasons for judgments they make and actions they do.
When we assess, we should focus on the child’s ability to give reasons for what they think, and their ability to make judgments in particular situations.
15 Minute Synopsis of Schools as Space of Reason by Geoffrey Hinchliffe
Prof. Heinz Dieter-Meyer
State University of New York, USA
Multiple choice questions and large scale assessments do violence to the idea of teaching and learning. It reduces learning to coercive recitation and drill.
Teaching is essentially contextual and it can only be understood in the particular communication between a teacher and group of students.