Expository

Essay

Assignment on
EDM 135
Assessment and Evaluation in Mathematics

Submitted by
Asyah K. Ramos
Section A7
 Education is about conceptual change, not just the acquisition of knowledge. This
statement is stated from the article entitled What the Student Does: Teaching for Enhanced
Learning, written by John Biggs in 1999. This statement made an impression on my mind
that makes me contemplate it further for my own understanding. Anyway, education as
conceptual change is a matter of learning that addresses changes in our phenomena
conceptions. As we learn, the existing conceptions we have changes depending on how we
structure that information and think with it. Enhancing learning is thus a big deal for all
teachers around the world, paving the way for fruitful developments on students’ engagement
and teaching and learning process. 
Enhancing learning as to engaging students in classes is one of the things teachers
need to work out. When teachers give students a text to read and then they will ask questions
to them afterwards, it could engage students in two different ways. These ways are known as
Marton and Saljo's study of surface and deep approach to learning. Marton and Saljo describe
the surface approach to learning as "skated along the surface of the text". In other words,
students are not motivated enough to go deeper in their usual way of learning. They just
remembered a list of disjointed facts on a particular subject. They, in fact, need teachers that
teach them to learn more in the aspect of learning in an academic way.  On the other hand,
using a deep approach to learning sets out students to engage academically. They understand
as well as interpret the meaning of the text themselves instead of just stating the facts. They,
specifically, gather the information/knowledge that reflects on their personal significance of
what they are learning. It will be easy for them to learn in that way with, of course, little help
from their teachers. Marton and Saljo's study of surface and deep approach to learning shows
that teachers must apply to students the approach of learning deeply, not just as easy as to
move along the simple meaning of the text, so that they enrich learning. 
As teachers consider this study to be helpful for them in engaging students to
approach learning seriously, this also lets teachers focus their attention precisely on how
learners go about learning formally. This learning in a formal way refers to learning with
institutional contexts, which is now designated as “student learning” research. Student
learning research and other ongoing works in other countries somehow have a common focus
on students being active in a learning context and that having strong implications for
teaching. Well, there are a lot of studies or theories that support teachers in improving their
teaching, reflecting their actions on assessing learners' engagement in class, including
phenomenography and constructivism. There is a lot of commonality between constructivist-
driven and phenomenologically driven teaching, one of these is created by the student’s
learning activities. Student’s learning activities aka “approaches to learning” can be either
surface approach referring to activities resulting in minimal outcomes to the students’
learnings since it only deals with low cognitive level or otherwise deep approach refers to
activities that are appropriate to handling the task so that an appropriate outcome is achieved.
By means of appropriate; it is clear to students what are the objectives that are in line with the
assessment tasks they’re doing. These two main theories of learning within the student
learning paradigm aid reflection to teachers, translating easily and readily apply into practice
for learning to be improved. 
An enhanced learning signifies improvements on students’ engagement to learn and to
teachers' teaching and learning process. It best describes when teachers are applying the deep
approach to learning with activities that are appropriate in a certain subject rather than the
surface approach to learning, acquiring small outcomes on high engagement of students to
classes. Additionally, teachers can improve their teaching skills by using theories that would
help them reflect on what they are doing. Theories especially phenomenography and
constructivism itself can lead teachers to take place an educative conceptual change.