Purpose of Assessment: Alignment

I have a poor sense of physical or spatial direction. That is the reason why I often rely on maps or instructions from residents when travelling to unfamiliar places. I sometimes find myself lost when when I could not align my understanding with the description of landmarks in the instructions given to me. Oftentimes, I misread the map when I could not successfully align where North is.

When we become unsuccessful in aligning North in a map, we risk losing our way or arriving in our destination later than expected. This could be likened to when our assessment is not aligned with the purpose and learning objectives.

I am already very familiar with summative assessments in the form of “assessments OF learning”. The feedback that this kind of assessment gives reminds me of laboratory results requested by the physician. It typically shows gained knowledge from the lessons. In the case of a blood chemistry, it shows red blood cells, white blood cells, plasma, and platelet counts. They show how much of the results compare to the prescribed normal value. As to grades, parents or students are often concerned with the passing grade or the performance in comparison with other students. These learning evaluations are important, but we have to go beyond what it warrants.

For a doctor to give a good diagnosis and prescribe good health practices and medicines for better health, they need to gather additional information or feedback from the patients. Educators would also want to gather evidences from assessments FOR learning. Like doctors, educators are concerned about the reason for arriving with the test results, what is the problem, how to address the root causes, and how to maintain or improve health. The next teaching instruction and planned experiences are based on the assessment. No solution comes before a diagnosis. I learned that educators need to adjust and readjust their next steps to suit the learning objectives based on proper measures.

Of course, learning is a two-way street. Students should view assessments AS learning. Educators could only help them as much as they help themselves. We should therefore strive to make them own their assessments by providing mechanisms for them to monitor their own learning. Diaries, checklists, and blogs such as this one would help the students actively monitor their progress based on learning objectives.

When we decide to choose assessment OF, FOR, or AS learning, we should strive to align these to the learning objectives for them to be meaningful.