2 How can assessment be integrated into teaching and learning?
This section considers how a range of purposes determines the focus and implementation of assessment and how you might plan to integrate assessment into learning sequences. The following activity will help you to consider your own experiences of, and ideas about, assessment.
Activity 3 Your personal views of assessment
Part 1
Note down what comes to mind when you think about assessment. The following questions will help to prompt your thinking:
- What constitutes assessment?
- What experiences of assessment have you had?
- What were the purposes of different types of assessment?
- What feelings do you associate with assessment?
- Which experiences of assessment have been most helpful to you as a learner and in what ways?
Part 2
Make lists of what you think assessment should achieve from the perspective of the:
- learner
- parent/carer
- teacher
- school
- government, employers and wider society.
Part 3
Which do you think are the most important purposes of assessment and why?
Comment
You may have thought of timed, written tests that were intended to sum up whatever you had learned over a course, the results of which determined setting and further study paths. Associated with these memories there may be feelings of anxiety or elation. As a successful learner you will have learned to cope with such assessments. You may have found them motivational. For those who find learning more difficult, or who had an off-day, however, assessment may impact on their self-confidence and self-worth, as well as their attitude towards geography and towards school.
The purposes of assessment are discussed on the next page.