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Glosary of Terms, Bill Atweh
Glosary of Terms, Bill Atweh
Glossary of Terms
Compiled by Bill Atweh
Approaches to Assessment
Criterion-referenced assessment, typically using a criterion-referenced test, as the name
implies, occurs when candidates are measured against defined (and objective) criteria. Criterion-
referenced assessment is often, but not always, used to establish a person’s competence (whether s/he
can do something). The best known example of criterion-referenced assessment is the driving test,
when learner drivers are measured against a range of explicit criteria (such as “Not endangering other
road users”). (Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assessments#Formative_and_summative).
Norm-referencing is that students are awarded their grades on the basis of their ranking within a
particular cohort. Norm-referencing involves fitting a ranked list of students’ ‘raw scores’ to a pre-
determined distribution for awarding grades. Usually, grades are spread to fit a ‘bell curve’ (a ‘normal
distribution’ in statistical terminology), either by qualitative, informal rough-reckoning or by statistical
techniques of varying complexity. For large student cohorts (such as in senior secondary education),
statistical moderation processes are used to adjust or standardise student scores to fit a normal
distribution. This adjustment is necessary when comparability of scores across different subjects is
required (such as when subject scores are added to create an aggregate ENTER score for making
university selection decisions). (Source: James, R., McInnis, C. and Devlin, M. (2002) Assessing
Learning in Australian Universities. This section was prepared by Richard James.)
Performance evaluation is a term from the field of language testing and psychometrics. This
variety of language testing is the most common kind of language assessment. It is used in high stakes
tests such as the SAT, ACT, MCAT, TOEFL and other language proficiency tests. In the terminology
of the field, it stands in contrast to competency evaluation.
Ideally, performance evaluation considers aspects of reliability (psychometric), validity and
authenticity.
Lyle Bachman at UCLA is one of the leading experts in performance evaluation research and language
testing in general.
While performance evaluation has been successful in evaluating reading comprehension performance,
difficulties arise in evaluating speaking, listening and writing skills which are weightier aspects of the
goal of language learning, communicative competence. As a result, a balance of performance
evaluation and competency evaluation is often called for by language teachers. (Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_evaluation_%28education%29).
Competency evaluation is a means for teachers to determine the ability of their students in other
ways besides the standardized test.
Usually this includes portfolio assessment. In language testing, it may also include student interviews
and checklists (e.g., on a scale from 1 to 5 the student or teacher rates his or her ability to do such tasks
as introducing one's family).
While various governments in Europe and Canada often employ competency evaluation to evaluate
bilingual abilities of public employees, it has only recently begun to receive attention from the United
States where large testing corporations have dominated language evaluation with financially lucrative
performance tests such as the TOEFL, MCAT and SAT tests.
Fred Genesee at McGill University is one of the leading researchers in competency evaluation.
In regards to psychology and the law, a competency evaluation is an assessment of whether a defendant
is of sound mind to stand trial. The Dusky Standard is the current U.S. Standard of competence, which
states that a person must be able to work with their defending council, and have rational as well as
factual understanding of the trial and the charges brought against them. (Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competency_evaluation ).
Competency based assessment is a form of assessment that is derived from the specification of a
set of outcomes; that so clearly states both the outcomes – general and specific – that assessors,
students and interested third parties can all make reasonably objective judgments with respect to
student achievement or nonachievement of these outcomes; and that certifies student progress on the
basis of demonstrated achievement of these outcomes. Assessments are not tied to time served in
formal educational settings. (Source: Wolf, 1995).
Outcome-based education (OBE) is an education reform model largely aimed primary and
secondary education ("K-12" in the United States and Australia) which is intended to objectively
measure student performance. Measurement may be used to determine whether or not the education
system is performing adequately, and in some cases whether or not students will be certified as
educated by the system.
OBE (now widely understood as standards-based education) is definition of education that shifts from
the traditional focus on what students should be taught (content) and how much time they should be
taught it for, to a focus on setting universal standards of what students are expected to demonstrate they
"know and are able to do". The traditional model that some students would be tracked for success while
most others would be tracked elsewhere is rejected in favor of continuous improvement, and success
"for all" students, a "shift in paradigm" as radical as the comparison between free-market governments,
and those that promise economic success for all and an end to privileged classes.
All definitions and names for standards based reforms share an emphasis on setting clear (though more
difficult in practice than theory) higher standards, and observable, measurable outcomes. Crucial is the
belief that all students can learn, which means students of all abilities, all social racial and ethnic
groups, and genders, sometimes disabilities as well. (quote from McNeir 1993 - which can be found at
[14]). "Standards" as they are now called are the key to curriculum frameworks of nearly every state
and school district in the United States. Even opponents of reform or standards-based mathematics
advocate standards, though they reflect the goals of traditional education rather than the newest
reforms.
By contrast, the goal of traditional education was to transmit the knowledge and skills of the old
generation to the new, and provide students with an environment to learn.[2]. Outcomes, equal, high or
otherwise, were neither required, nor promised. It was not required that every student leave prepared
for college, or that every student receive an education that prepares them for a job. Most traditional
education in the 20th century prepared different students for different tracks, typically vocational,
academic, or arts. Most traditional comprehensive school education different kinds of students, and
typically students from high income groups achieved at higher levels that those from communities with
less economic advantages or education, which brought charges of discrimination and limiting
opportunities for minorities and women. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcome-
based_Education).
Types of Assessment
Informal and formal. Assessment can be either formal or informal. Formal assessment usually a
written document, such as a test, quiz, or paper. Formal assessment is given a numerical score or grade
based on student performance. Whereas, informal assessment does not contribute to a student's final
grade. It usually occurs in a more casual manner, including observation, inventories, checklists, rating
scales, rubrics, performance and portfolio assessments, participation, peer and self evaluation, and
discussion. (Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assessments#Formative_and_summative).
Summative assessment refers to the assessment of the learning and summarises the development
of learners at a particular time. After a period of work, e.g. a unit for two weeks, the learner would sit a
test and then the teacher would mark the test and assign a score. This test would summarise learning up
to that point. The test may also be used for diagnostic assessment to identify any weaknesses and then
build on that using formative assessment. (Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summative_assessment).
Self-assessment in an educational setting involves students making judgements about their own
work. Assessment decisions can be made by students on their own essays, reports, projects,
presentations, performances, dissertations, and even exam scripts. Self-assessment can be extremely
valuable in helping students to critique their own work, and form judgements about its strengths and
weaknesses. For obvious reasons, self-assessment is more usually used as part of a formative
assessment process, rather than a summative one, where it requires certification by others. (Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-assessment).
A standardized test is a test administered and scored in a standard manner. The tests are designed
in such a way that the "questions, conditions for administering, scoring procedures, and interpretations
are consistent" [1] and are "administered and scored in a predetermined, standard manner" [2].
In practice, standardized tests can be composed of multiple-choice and true-false questions. Such items
can be tested inexpensively and quickly by scoring special answer sheets by computer or via computer-
adaptive testing. Some tests also have short-answer or essay writing components that are assigned a
score by independent evaluators. These can be graded by evaluators who use rubrics (rules or
guidelines) and anchor papers (examples of papers for each possible score) to determine the grade to be
given to a response. A number of assessments, however, are not scored by people. For example, the
Graduate Record Exam is a computer-adaptive assessment that requires no scoring by people (except
for the writing portion). (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardized_test).
In education, grading on a bell curve (or simply known as curving) is a method of assigning
grades designed to yield a desired distribution of grades among the students in a class. Strictly
speaking, grading "on a bell curve" refers to the assigning of grades according to the frequency
distribution known as the Normal distribution (also called the Gaussian distribution), whose graphical
representation is referred to as the Normal curve or the bell curve. Because bell curve grading assigns
grades to students based on their relative performance in comparison to classmates' performance, the
term "bell curve grading" came, by extension, to be more loosely applied to any method of assigning
grades that makes use of comparison between students' performances, though this type of grading does
not necessarily actually make use of any frequency distribution such as the bell-shaped Normal
distribution.
In true use of bell curve grading, students' scores are scaled according to the frequency distribution
represented by the Normal curve. The instructor can decide what grade occupies the center of the
distribution. This is the grade an average score will earn, and will be the most common. Traditionally,
in the ABCDF system this is the 'C' grade. The instructor can also decide what portion of the frequency
distribution each grade occupies and whether or not high and low grades are symmetrically assigned
area under the curve (i.e. if the top 15% of students earn an 'A,' do the bottom 15% fail or might only
the bottom 5% fail?). In a system of pure curve grading, the number of students who will receive each
grade is already determined at the beginning of a course.
Other forms of "curved" grading vary, but one of the most common is to add to all students' absolute
scores the difference between the top student's score and the maximum possible score. For example, if
the top score on an exam is 55 out of 60, all students' absolute scores (meaning they have not been
adjusted relative to other students' scores in any way) will be increased by 5 before being compared to
a pre-determined set of grading benchmarks (for example the common A>90%>B>80% etc. system).
This method prevents unusually hard assignments (usually exams) from unfairly reducing students'
grades but relies on the assumption that the top student's performance is a good measure of an
assignment's difficulty.
In the U.S., strict bell-curve grading is rare at the primary and secondary school levels (elementary to
high school) but is common at the university level.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_curve_grading).
A valid assessment is one which measures what it is intended to measure. For example, it would not
be valid to assess driving skills through a written test alone. A more valid way of assessing driving
skills would be through a combination of tests that help determine what a driver knows, such as
through a written test of driving knowledge, and what a driver is able to do, such as through a
performance assessment of actual driving. Teachers frequently complain that some examinations do not
properly assess the syllabus upon which the examination is based; they are, effectively, questioning the
validity of the exam. (Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assessments#Formative_and_summative).
Reliability relates to the consistency of an assessment. A reliable assessment is one which consistently
achieves the same results with the same (or similar) cohort of students. Various factors affect reliability
– including ambiguous questions, too many options within a question paper, vague marking
instructions and poorly trained markers. (Source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assessments#Formative_and_summative).
In statistics, reliability is the consistency of a set of measurements or measuring instrument. Reliability
does not imply validity. That is, a reliable measure is measuring something consistently, but not
necessarily what it is supposed to be measuring. For example, while there are many reliable tests of
specific abilities, not all of them would be valid for predicting, say, job performance.
In experimental sciences, reliability is the extent to which the measurements of a test remain consistent
over repeated tests of the same subject under identical conditions. An experiment is reliable if it yields
consistent results of the same measure. It is unreliable if repeated measurements give different results.
(Source, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_%28statistics%29 ).
Curriculum In the first published textbook on “Curriculum” in 1918, John Franklin Bobbitt noted
that the idea of curriculum has its roots in the Latin word for a race-course, and explained curriculum
as the course of deeds and experiences in which children become the adults that they should be, for
success in adult society. He explained, further, that curriculum must be understood as encompassing
not only those experiences that take place within schools, but the entire scope of formative experience
both within and outside of schools. Further, this includes experiences that are not planned or directed,
as well as experiences that are intentionally directed (in or out of school) for the purposeful formation
of adult members of society. (See image at right.)
Bobbitt saw curriculum as an arena for social engineering. His formulation suffers from at least two
serious problems: 1) He assumed that "scientific" experts would be qualified and justified in designing
curricula based on expert knowledge of what qualities are desirable in adult members of society, and
what experiences would produce those qualities; and (2) in his definition of curriculum as the
experiences that someone ought to have in order to become the kind of adult that they ought to become,
he was defining curriculum as an ideal, rather than as the reality of whatever course of experience in
actuality forms people as they do actually take form.
Contemporary views of curriculum would reject these features of Bobbitt's material, but they retain the
basic notion of curriculum as the course of experience in which human being takes form. The
formation of human being through curriculum is studied not only at the level of the individual person,
but also at the level of groups, cultures, and societies (as, for example, in the formation of a profession
or an academic discipline through the course of its historical experience). The formation of a group is
seen as taking place reciprocally with the formation of its individual participants.
Although it appeared formally in Bobbitt's definition, the notion of curriculum as the course of
formative experience is also pervasive in the work of John Dewey (who seriously disagreed with
Bobbitt on important issues), in Dewey's work on education spanning decades before and after
Bobbitt's work. Although this understanding of "curriculum" may be different from some common uses
of the word, it continues to be shared as a common understanding among curriculum professionals and
researchers who take conflicting positions on a variety of other issues. (Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum).
Core curriculum is a curriculum, or course of study, which is deemed central and usually made
mandatory for all students of a school or school system. Core curricula are often instituted, at the
primary and secondary levels, by school boards, Departments of Education, or other administrative
agencies charged with overseeing education. At the undergraduate level, individual college and
university administrations and faculties sometimes mandate core curricula, especially in the liberal arts.
But because of increasing specialization and depth in the student's major field of study, a typical core
curriculum in higher education mandates a far smaller proportion of a student's course work than a high
school or elementary school core curriculum prescribes.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_curriculum).
The concept hidden curriculum expresses the idea that schools do more than simply transmit
knowledge, as laid down in the official curricula. Behind it lies criticism of the social implications,
political underpinnings, and cultural outcomes of modern educative activities. While early
examinations were concerned with identifying the anti-democratic nature of schooling, later studies
have taken various tones, including those concerned with socialism, capitalism, and anarchism in
education.
John Dewey explored the hidden curriculum of education in his early 20th century works, particularly
his classic, Democracy and Education. Dewey saw patterns evolving and trends developing in public
schools which lent themselves to his pro-democratic perspectives. His work was quickly rebutted by
educational theorist George Counts, whose 1929 book, Dare the School Build a New Social Order
challenged the presumptive nature of Dewey's works. Where Dewey (and other child development
theorists including Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson and Maria Montessori) hypothesized a singular path
through which all young people travelled in order to become adults, Counts recognized the reactive,
adaptive, and multifaceted nature of learning. This nature caused many educators to slant their
perspectives, practices, and assessments of student performance in particular directions which affected
their students drastically. Counts' examinations were expanded on by Charles Beard, and later, Myles
Horton as he created what became the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee.
The phrase "hidden curriculum" was reportedly coined by the sociologist Phillip Jackson (Life In
Classrooms, 1968). He argued that we need to understand "education" as a socialization process.
Shortly after Jackson's coinage, MIT's Benson Snyder published The Hidden Curriculum, which
addresses the question of why students—even or especially the most gifted—turn away from
education. Snyder advocates the thesis that much of campus conflict and students' personal anxiety is
caused by a mass of unstated academic and social norms, which thwart the students' ability to develop
independently or think creatively.
The hidden curriculum has been further explored by a number of educators. Starting with Pedagogy of
the Oppressed, published in 1972, through the late 1990s, Brazilian educator Paulo Freire explored
various effects of presumptive teaching on students, schools, and society as a whole. Freire's
explorations were in sync with those of John Holt and Ivan Illich, each of whom were quickly
identified as radical educators.
More recent definitions were given by Meighan ("A Sociology of Educating", 1981):
The hidden curriculum is taught by the school, not by any teacher...something is coming
across to the pupils which may never be spoken in the English lesson or prayed about in
assembly. They are picking-up an approach to living and an attitude to learning.
and Michael Haralambos ("Sociology: Themes and Perspectives", 1991):
The hidden curriculum consists of those things pupils learn through the experience of
attending school rather than the stated educational objectives of such institutions.
Recently a variety of scholar/author/researchers, including Neil Postman, Henry Giroux, bell hooks,
and Jonathan Kozol have examined the effects of hidden curriculum. One increasingly popular
proponent, John Taylor Gatto, radically criticizes compulsory education in his book Dumbing Us
Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992).
As more is popularly learned about the sociological effects of educational institutional and curricular
design and how it can design and perpetuate particular forms of power, knowledge, and ignorance, it is
important to historically analyze the origins and choices of basic models and assumptions upon which
they are formed, seeking out motivations of the founders. (Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_curriculum).
Pedagogy (IPA: [ˈpɛdəˌgoʊdʒi]) , the art or science of being a teacher, generally refers to strategies
of instruction, or a style of instruction[1]. The word comes from the Ancient Greek παιδαγωγέω
(paidagōgeō; from παῖς (child) and ἄγω (lead)): literally, "to lead the child”. In Ancient Greece,
παιδαγωγός was (usually) a slave who supervised the education of his master’s son (girls were not
publicly educated). This involved taking him to school (διδασκαλεῖον) or a gym (γυμνάσιον), looking
after him and carrying his equipment (e.g. musical instruments).[2]
The Latin-derived word for pedagogy, education[3], is nowadays used in the English-speaking world to
refer to the whole context of instruction, learning, and the actual operations involved with that,
although both words have roughly the same original meaning. In the English-speaking world the term
pedagogy refers to the science or theory of educating.[4]
Pedagogy is also sometimes referred to as the correct use of teaching strategies (see instructional
theory). For example, Paulo Freire referred to his method of teaching adults as "critical pedagogy". In
correlation with those teaching strategies the instructor's own philosophical beliefs of teaching are
harbored and governed by the pupil's background knowledge and experiences, personal situations and
environment as well as learning goals set by the student as well as the teacher. One example would be
the Socratic schools of thought.[5]
An academic degree, Ped.D., Doctor of Pedagogy, is awarded honorarily by some American
universities to distinguished educators (in the US and UK earned degrees within the education field are
classified as an Ed.D., Doctor of Education or a Ph.D. Doctor of Philosophy). The term is also used to
denote an emphasis in education as a specialty in a field (for instance, a Doctor of Music degree "in
piano pedagogy"). (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy).