EVALUATION RESULTS

Alternative Assessment Methods

Some days ago the Coordinator called for a teachers meeting at school. He wanted to show us some graphics representing the percentage of approval of each area. He presented us first the data of this year (first and second period), where some of the areas achieved the 90% of failure. Then, we saw similar graphics but representing the results of the last year, which were very similar to those shown first. With those indicators, one could conclude that at the end of this academic year, what we know as the level of ‘mortalidad académica’ will reveal again alarming results. 

The coordinator told us about the ‘5 Whys’, a method originally developed in manufacturing, which ‘is an iterative question-asking technique used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a particular problem’. Its purpose is to reveal the root cause of a defect or problem. So, we were asked to do the exercise of asking ourselves what would be the reasons why so many students have had those bad results.The majority of the teachers concluded that the main causes were the lack of family support, the economic situation of the community, and institutional intervention. But, what about the methodology the teachers use? Have we given to the students alternatives when we assess them? And taking into account those conditions, what strategies do we do to encourage the students? 

Consider this public school, which in fact is small but each teacher has 22 hours a week, and work with 250 students on average, divided into groups of 30, 35 or 43 the biggest one.  Now, think of the population, boys and girls who live in the north part of our city, so think about their personalities. With this panoramic, it would be easy to ‘evaluate’ them using quantitate methods once in a while to have data. Those typical techniques that give us a number and that are less time consuming when designing and checking them. However, maybe, using alternatives methods to ‘know’ first, and ‘assess’ then  the students, will provide better results.

If we try to know the students’ likes and dislikes, their background, abilities, and difficulties, we can decide what and how they need to learn. So, it is necessary to adopt different learning and assessment strategies like journals, conferences, portfolios, interviews, questionnaires, among others, that provide opportunities to explore and develop the students’ learning abilities. In this sense, in order to ‘assess’ instead of ‘evaluate’, we should encourage our students’ strengths through a formative process characterize by the validity of its methods.

To conclude, I would like to highlight that we need to commit ourselves in the learning process of our students, considering ways to prevent failure and encourage abilities to avoid those ‘evaluation results’ and transform them into ‘assessment processess’.

'PLANNING EVALUATION'

I would like to make a short reflection on the chapters we have read this week (planning evaluation and collecting information) because they point out an important issue in our practices: “making decisions.”

A great number of the students in our program have had the experience of working on institutes, in which they are a little bit restricted in making decisions on their methodology and their assessment practices. They can decide if they do their job comfortably following a text book, or they can actually make decisions about it. On the other side, in public schools you may say ironically that ‘you are free to do whatever you want’. So, you can be a committed teacher who takes into account the instruction (objectives, plans, practices),  the students (needs, goals, personal background, attitudes, feelings), the teacher (language experiences, language skills, and attitudes), and the school (physical and personnel resources); or you can take to heart this option in other sense, and become a babysitter who at the end of the period take the list and write a grade depending on your personal impressions about each student.

Then, the way we take depend on the decisions we make every day. No matter in what context we are, in which conditions, the number of learners, or even the pay,  language assessment, as it is stated in the chapters, should be an on-going process, that involves the collection of both qualitative and quantitate information’ so it ‘can enhance the reliability of our assessments and the validity of our decision making.’ It means much effort and commitment from our part, but it is ‘just’ because our decisions affect our students’ performance.

I found this exercise 'a long time ago' in an interesting document.

Try to decide wether the following statements are TRUE or FALSE.

1. An expensive test is not practical.
2. One of the sources of unreliability of a test is the school.
3. Students, raters, the test, and the administration of it may affect the test's reliability.
4. In indirect tests, students do not actually perform the task.
5. If students are aware of what is being tested when they take a test, and think that the questions are appropriate, the test has face validity.
6. Face validity can be tested empirically.
7. Diagnosing strengths and weaknesses of students in language learning is a facet of washback.
8. One way of achieving authenticity in testing is to use simplified language.

 

I tried to organize the key concepts of the Principles of Language Assessment. I'm receiving suggetions to make it better.