Most compulsory education systems, i.e. primary & secondary schools, purport to value similar outcomes. In Queensland, Australia they are called Attributes of a life long learner, which speaks for itself, and Common Curriculum Elements, which are a list of cognitive skills, such as critical thinking. My question is: Does what & how we actually assess and report on, and hence what & how we teach in our schools, actually conflict with these professed aims? I personally value these purported outcomes and work very hard to keep them at the forefront of my teaching and assessing processes, but feel constrained, especially when I consider reporting as A, B, C etc which feeds back to my teaching and assessing and pushes me away from what I believe in. If I could report differently, I feel that I could teach and assess in a way that truly valued the long term outcomes of compulsory schooling.
Mr. Gould. I think this situation of yours is more common than we imagine, and I beleive that such a conflict is permantent. My explanation of such a permanency of the conflict lies on the fact that the individual person is not completely measurable with the standards proposed by policies and curriculum, i. e., school is a technical plan aimed to control and manage both the knowledge and the education of children through litteracy, in a way that the children become experts in thinking by reading and writing mainly, but children normally present barriers against such a social purpose, these barriers are too subtle, and sometimes too evident, hence the development of the habilities got by the children in the process result no to be completely measured by the standards. One who learns is the individual person, and indiviality is not assessable, in fact what we assess is not properly the indivual person as such but a certain average in her behaviour.
Thank you German. I would hate to think of this as permanent. I prefer to think that we haven't yet conceived of a solution as yet. Perhaps separating the control processes from the dy to day assessment and reporting processes may yield a new paradigm.
Dear Mark, in my opinion reporting is the final step of the qualification process likely to make categorisation as A,B, C etc. In this case, individual (-based) evaluation should be applied by teachers because this method let the abilities and character of a student be taken into consideration.
Using standards for assessment forces us to compare student to student and we always have some pupils who cannot reach the minimum level of knowledge or behavior.
Hi Agnes, my problem is not that we do this, but the way we do it. In other words, how we define an A, B, C etc, at younger ages anyway. I think that the way we define or use assessment conflicts with wha we say we value in education, ie thinking skills and attributes of a life long learner.
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