LESSON 2 Preliminary

Concepts in Assessment and

Recent Trends

WMSU

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• Assessment plays a vital role in the
teaching learning process. Ralph Tyler, it
was considered as one of the key
elements of the curriculum – objectives
and content, instruction or pedagogy, and
assessment.

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• primary means of • And in a constantly evolving
education landscape,
determining a assessment must also evolve
student’s and adapt to the changes of
achievement. the times, like changes in the
terminologies and teaching-
• It provides teacher learning philosophies and
information on how approaches – from teacher-
well students have centered learning to student-
centered teaching, from rigid
learned their lessons. traditional (physical) classes
to open and flexible learning.

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Basic principles of educational
assessment
• Reliability refers to • Validity refers to the
consistency and stability extent to which the
of measures that is measure gauges the
making sure of yourselves trait, ability, skill or
that the assessment you attitude you intend to
make have an adequate measure. A subtopic on
degree of consistency.
validity is the fairness of
Otherwise, you cannot
depend on the measure to
the assessment. Is the
draw conclusions or make assessment equally
decisions. valid for all the
students?
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• Norm-referenced • Criterion-referenced
methods interpret an methods interpret a
individual student’s student’s performance,
performance in the not in relation to other
context of other students, but in relation
students’ performance to some external
on the same task. criterion or judgment.
This topic will be
elaborated in the
succeeding chapter.

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Typology of educational
assessment
• Assessment FOR Learning
• Provides feedback to both the teacher and the
student of the latter’s progress towards
achieving the learning outcomes.
• The proposition “for” implies that assessment is
done to improve and ensure learning.
• This is referred to as FORmative assessment,
assessment that is given while the teacher is in
the process of student formation (learning).
Includes pre-test and posttest.
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• Assessment AS • It is associated with self-
assessment that leads to
Learning
self-learning. As the term
• Focuses on the role implies, assessment by
of the student as the itself is already a form of
learning for the students. As
critical connector
students assess their own
between assessment work (e.g. a paragraph) and
and learning. or with their peers with the
use of scoring rubrics, they
learn on their own what a
good paragraph is. A

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• Another examples include: 
• Source of motivation 
Practice tests  Reviewing
tests 
• Open-book exams (new
material is learned in the
process) 
• Take-home exams (tap
learning resources outside the
classroom)
•  Collaborative exercises
(students continue to learn
from each other)

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• Assessment OF Learning

• Occurs at the end of the

unit, grading period, course
or a term like a semester or
major part of it. It is
commonly known as
summative assessment. It
is meant to assess learning
for grading purposes, thus
the term assessment OF
learning.

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Assessment in the Classroom

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Formative assessment
• Formative assessment may be seen
as assessment for learning so
teachers can make adjustments in
their instruction. It is also assessment
as learning wherein students reflect
on their own progress. This definition
adheres to the UNESCO Program on
Teaching and Learning for a
Sustainable Future (UNESCO-TLSF)
definition of formative assessment as
“the ongoing forms of assessment that
are closely linked to the learning
process. It is characteristically
informal and is intended to help
students identify strengths and
weaknesses in order to learn from the
assessment experience.”
• Formative assessment must
also provide students with
immediate feedback on how
well they are learning
throughout the teaching-
learning process.
Recommendations on how they
can improve themselves should
also be given by the teachers.
Formative assessment enables
students to take responsibility
for their own learning, and
identify areas where they do
well
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Summative assessment
• Summative assessment, on the
other hand, may be seen as
• Summative
assessment of learning, which assessment
occurs at the end of a particular unit.
This form of assessment usually measures whether
occurs toward the end of a period of learners have met the
learning in order to describe the
standard reached by the learner. content and
Often, this takes place in order for
appropriate decisions about future
performance
learning or job suitability to be standards.
made. Judgments derived from
summative assessment are usually
for the benefit of people other than
the learner.

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More on Users and Uses of
Educational Assessment

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Common Terminologies
• Assessment is a systematic
process of gathering,
analyzing, interpreting and
using this information about
student learning. It is an
ongoing process of
identifying, gathering and
analyzing information about
students’ learning stages
towards achieving the
relevant learning outcomes
from the syllabus/curriculum.
• Measurement is a process
of quantifying or obtaining a
numerical description of the
degree to which an individual
possesses a particular
characteristic (e.g.
intelligence, personality,
attitudes, values,
achievement, competence,
etc.). Measurement answers
the questions “How much?”
or “To what extent or
degree?”
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• Test is an instrument or
systematic procedure
designed to measure
the quality, ability, skill
or knowledge of
students by giving a set
of questions in a
uniform manner. Tests
are the primary tools
used of measurement.
• Testing is one of the
methods or processes used
to measure the level of
achievement or performance
of the learners. It also refers
to the administration, scoring
and interpretation of an
instrument (procedure)
designed to elicit information
about performance in a
sample of particular
behavior.
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• Evaluation refers to the
process of examining the
performance of the student. It
also determines whether or
not the student has met the
lesson instructional
objectives. It also refers to
consideration of evidence in
the light of value standard
and in terms of the particulars
situations and the goals which
the group of individuals are
striving to attain (Good,1945)

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High Quality Assessment
Standards
• Focused and clear purpose.
The “why” of assessment. Is the
purpose for assessment clear?
Does the developer understand
the intended uses and has the
developer taken user’s needs
into account in developing and
implementing the assessment?
There is no singe assessment
capable of meeting all of these
different needs. Thus, the
developer must start with a
clear sense of whose needs the
assessment will meet.
• Clear and appropriate
targets. The “what” of
assessment. Is the target clear
and appropriate? Assessment
quality standard number one
asks that those who develop
or select classroom
assessments begin that
process with a refined sense
of specific knowledge,
reasoning, skill, product and
disposition expectations they
hold for their students.
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High Quality Assessment
Standards
• Proper method. This is the
“how” of assessment. Is the
method used capable of
accurately reflecting the
kinds of outcome the user
wishes to assess? A sound
assessment examines
student achievement
through the use of method
that is, in fact, capable of
reflecting the valued target.
• . Sound and appropriate
sampling. Addresses the
question “how many” or “how
much”. Have we gathered
enough information of the right
kind, so we can draw confident
conclusions about student
achievement? A sound
assessment offers a
representative sample that is
large enough to yield confident
inferences about how the
respondent would have done
given all possible exercises.
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• Accurate assessment.
Addresses the question “how
reliable” is the assessment.
Have the important sources
of bias been accounted for
during development and use.
Developers and users of
assessment should control
sources of bias and
distortion that can cause
result to be misrepresent
real student achievement.

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Recent Trends and Focus of
Assessment
• Probably the most important trend
currently affecting educational
assessment is Standards-Based
Education (SBE). SBE represents
a highly generalized approach to
education, with a heavy dose of
assessment built into it. It
incorporates five notions. First,
there should be a very clear,
explicit identification of learning
goals or objectives or these are
usually express as “content
standards”. Second, there should
be clearly established performance
standardsfor these goals.
• Another recent trends and focus of
assessment is on accountability and
fairness. Accountability means that schools
must demonstrate their outcomes, often
defined in terms of student learning. The
measurement of student learning was to be
explicit and it was to be made public. School
personnel should not hold test results of the
learners and had to show the public exactly
what the product was. Fairness refers to
whether a test or an assessment technique
is equally fair to all students. This has
something to do with validity. Since fairness
is one of the aspects of validity. It answers
the question like; Does the test have equal
validity for all students? Fairness is currently
one of the major emphases in the
educational assessment.
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• Beginning in the 1960’s, a new theory of
testing emerged; Item Response Theory
(IRT). It is sometimes called latent trait
theory. IRT is a highly technical, very
mathematical approach to the analysis of
test items and the construction of tests.
IRT has become the major influence in
the world of educational assessment. IRT
methods are also at the root of many of
the newer computer-based tests.
However, IRT methods have little
applicability to teachermade test
development since this method is usually
encountered in externally prepared tests
such as; statewide tests, standardized
achievement batteries, commercially
available computerized tests and the like.
• In recent years, Performance–
Based Assessment (PBA) or
Outcome–Based Assessment
(OBA) has increased considerably
within the field of educational
assessment. Performance or
Outcome assessment refers to an
assessment that requires the student
to “perform” that is, to produce an
outcomes or do something.
Performance assessment usually
implies something about nature of
the task as well as something about
the mode of responding.
performance assessment are called
authentic assessments.
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