7. Planning, assessing and reporting
7.5 Use assessment methods that are appropriate, valid and reliable; in reporting students’ achievements and areas for improvement, they employ a variety of procedures, ensuring they use clear and accurate language that is suitable for the intended audience.
- How does your assessment and reporting practice contribute to students’ learning?
- How do you ensure that the assessment you use is fair and reliable?
- If alternative assessment methods were to be used, what might influence such a decision?
- How would you undertake an evaluation of the method’s success or failure?
Further links and resources
Description of assessment for learning:
“Assessment for learning is thus intimately founded in the curriculum and in teaching and learning, rather than focused on collecting numbers to feed into schools’ performance and target setting systems: repeated measurement on its own will not bring about improvement. Two key principles are that assessment for learning practices give, feedback to teachers and their (students), so helping modify their teaching and learning activities to promote improvement, and importantly also let (students) in on their learning. For both these reasons they help to motivate (students) and give them the opportunity to take more responsibility for their learning. They are particularly useful for less successful learners, in contrast to repeated summative assessments. Whilst level descriptions are useful in providing guidance on progression, they do not readily provide the fine-grained information that answers the question, for teachers and (students), what next?”Hopkin J., for Geographical Association (GA) Education Committee, (2006) Level descriptions and assessment in geography: a GA discussion paper; 2006. pp 3-4
Accessed on:http://www.geography.org.uk/download/GA_LevelAssessmentsInGeography.doc (Accessed March 2010)