GENERAL DIDACTIC TEACHING METHODS

MARIA CRISTINA DAVINI

CHAPTER 11
Assessment

FIRST STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Evaluation is one of the oldest and most widespread practices in schools, it often occupies a good part of the
actions and time assigned, particularly for the control of the work and performance of the students. Likewise, it is
one of the topics that has been most addressed and questioned in the bibliography, perhaps due to the
importance assigned to it in the practices and in the organizational logic of these educational centers. Schools need
to verify results, which translate into grades, which imply the promotion of students to other courses, ensuring the
continuity of practices.
Teachers always evaluate, not only when taking tests or in exams. They evaluate daily in less formalized ways,
observing their students' expressions, controlling compliance with assigned tasks, monitoring classroom routines,
including the distribution of different forms of implicit or symbolic rewards or failures.
Anti-authoritarian criticism especially questioned evaluation in schools considering that it was governed by the
exercise of power over learners. This criticism is understandable if a historical retrospective is carried out on these
processes in schools, which could also lead to corporal or moral punishment. Evaluation was developed, to a large
extent, as a behavioral disciplinary factor and as a control instrument.
However, it is impossible to suspend evaluation in teaching and in schools, nor is it reasonable to think about or
propose it. Evaluation is inherent to teaching. As in any activity committed to intentions and objectives, teaching
always requires the assessment of progress, achievements and difficulties. Likewise, it is reasonable that students
(and parents) want to understand their achievements and problems, as well as the supports needed to overcome
them.
On the other hand, it is possible to improve and expand their strategies, so that the evaluation contributes to the
development of students and to the improvement of teaching itself. To do this, it is important to understand that
evaluation is a process that assesses the evolution of students towards the objectives of teaching and its most
significant purposes, and that has substantive effects on the development of students. It also implies
understanding that evaluation can be reoriented, making it more authentic and valuable. It is also necessary to
review the strategies, methods and parameters that may be relevant and consistent with these objectives. Finally,
it is about understanding that evaluation is the basis for the improvement of teaching itself.

EVALUATION AS A PROCESS

Evaluation is a component closely integrated into teaching, it accompanies and supports the entire process, and is
not only a specific moment that only occurs at the end, once the programmed teaching sequence has been
completed. First of all, it is necessary to recognize that the evaluation is developed in a continuous process, fulfills
various functions and provides a range of information.
In this process, different "faces" of the evaluation can be differentiated: diagnostic, formative and recapitulating.
These faces should not be understood as successive phases or stages in time, in a linear sense, but as different and
complementary manifestations of the same process, responding to different purposes. Each of them is present in
teaching, with greater or lesser weight, according to the needs of their development.
The diagnostic evaluation is commonly associated with an initial evaluative moment, in the first contacts with the
group of students. But, in truth, teachers do it constantly. At the initial moment, the evaluation allows us to assess:

 the socio-cultural characteristics of the students,

 their capabilities, interests and potentials,
 their prior knowledge and possible difficulties.

This assessment refers both to the group as a whole and to particular individuals. In this sense, evaluation
facilitates the teacher's prior decisions when programming teaching. This also includes the identification of
teaching resources that can be mobilized and the analysis of the context, among other important issues. At this
moment, the evaluation supports us in the very construction of the program
But the diagnostic evaluation is also carried out during teaching and throughout the process. It is aimed at
detecting where the students' difficulties are and why they arise . A good part of these assessments are carried out
informally and are continuous: interpreting the students' responses, their perceptions and difficulties, analyzing
them based on the challenges and the immediate personal context. Given this informality, teachers must be alert
to certain risks. When referring to certain groups of students or individuals, it is important to avoid social
preconceptions or labeling (for example, the student's past performance) and, where possible, seek other
information and substantiate some assessments.
In the development of teaching, formative evaluation accompanies the different learning activities of students and
guides them to make decisions throughout the process. Formative assessment focuses on learning and is aimed at:

 Identify the progressive assimilation of content, its progress, obstacles and "gaps".
 Detect problems in the development of activities.
 Interpret advances and setbacks.
 Recognize errors or deviations and take advantage of them positively in teaching.
 Accompany the interaction and exchanges in the group, their contributions and support in difficulties.
 Provide feedback (feed back) to students as they complete their tasks.
 Reorient scheduled activities.

As a synthesis of teaching, the summative evaluation aims to assess the achievements of the students, once a
complete teaching sequence has been completed. Integrates the assessment of products and processes:

 Interpreting achievements in relation to the starting point and the process followed.
 Carrying out a balanced balance between the homogeneity of the results sought and the differences of
each group or individual.
 Establishing an achieved level of performance.
 Recognizing the effort.
 Identifying the appropriate aids that the student needs.
 Serving as a basis for the reorientation of future teaching proposals.

In all cases, at all times and according to its characteristics, the evaluation makes it possible to formulate a
judgment on the merit of the programmed activities, in order to systematically base the decision-making of
teachers in each context.

FUNCTIONS AND EFFECTS OF EVALUATION

Evaluation in its different faces and phases fulfills a variety of functions and makes it possible to generate different
effects. Broadly speaking, these contributions can be grouped in relation to their effects on students (and learning)
and teachers (and teaching).
In relation to students, evaluation has positive functions and effects to the extent that it allows:

 Increase responsibility for study, tasks and learning.

 Motivate work and effort, even more so when students feel recognized and achieve achievements.
 Provide clues for the development of tasks on a continuous basis.
 Integrate learning, particularly in recapitulating evaluations and in tests or exams, due to the review they
require.
 Promote self-evaluation, to the extent that they can assess their difficulties and progress.
 Facilitate the fulfillment of stages, through qualifications and promotions.
 Holder or qualification, upon completing a level of education or professional training, whether for the
continuity of studies or for job performance.

In relation to teachers and teaching, evaluation provides positive effects for:

 Facilitate student diagnosis.

 Guide decisions in programming and teaching development.
 Control the progress of learning and its results.
 Detect difficulties and positively recover students' errors.
 Modify the progress of scheduled activities, without waiting for them to be completed or late.
 Improve teaching activities and programs.
 Improve teaching and assessment, learning from experience.

EVALUATION, TESTS AND EXAMS

No matter how skilled a teacher is at observing the learning process of his students, evaluating requires collecting
information about the learning achieved by students, recording their achievements or difficulties, and gathering
evidence about the results achieved. The teacher's informal appreciation is not enough.
Gathering and organizing this information allows the evaluation to be public and can be shared with students, their
families and other teachers. Likewise, schools and educational or training centers also need to record this
information, either for the promotion of students from one course to another, or to have evidence of those
students who require support.
To achieve this, it is important that teachers recognize and recover the variety of learning that their teaching
intentionally pursues and the type of information necessary to evaluate their achievements. This recognition will
guide the selection of useful strategies and instruments to gather information. It is not about wasting efforts and
resources in collecting unnecessary information. It is not evaluated better because it accumulates a large amount
of unnecessary data. This occurs, in general, when it is not clear what it is that we are seeking to evaluate.
However, teachers end up making an excessive economy of resources in the evaluation, generally used at the end
of teaching. In traditional and more widespread practices, teachers tend to favor the use of cognitive tests,
whether writing tests (for the development of a topic), questionnaires (lists of questions) or standardized multiple
options (selection of the correct answer), including oral exams on the knowledge of an entire course. These tests
and exams have been widely questioned in pedagogical literature and, in some cases, their elimination has even
been encouraged. Without falling into extremes, some of the arguments in favor of their use indicate that tests
and exams collaborate so that students integrate the different tasks they have been performing, review the
content taught in their entirety, make an effort and commit to their performance. and even overcome some of
their difficulties in the process by reviewing what they have learned as a whole. On the other hand, it is difficult for
these modalities of cognitive evaluation to be suppressed, when they are sufficiently rooted in the institutions and
even in the expectations of students and families.
However, it is important to recognize and avoid negative and harmful effects, particularly in cases where tests or
performance exams are used on a regular basis and as a central modality of evaluations, such as:

 Frustrate and demotivate students with greater difficulties.

 Encourage the competitive use of results, particularly in the highest performing students.
 Encourage the sole instrumental assessment of learning (to promote the course) to the detriment of the
most valuable.
 Generate anxiety, particularly through extensive final exams or tests.
 Strengthen the idea of evaluation as something that happens "at the end" of teaching and not something
that accompanies each of its tasks.
 Strengthen the vision of "good students" as those who achieve high scores (successes) in cognitive tests, to
the detriment of them being better students (more reflective and with more initiative and creativity) and
better people.

Finally, it is necessary to highlight that a large part of the valuable range of learning that is expected to be
promoted through teaching is not possible to evaluate by written tests, exams or academic questionnaires. This
information is collected and recorded through different strategies and instruments and throughout teaching.

THE AUTHENTIC EVALUATION

AND NEW EVALUATION STRATEGIES

Evaluation involves a comprehensive and integrated assessment of the variety and richness of learning proposed
by teaching. Reducing it to knowledge tests ends up devaluing or simply eliminating those purposes. Even from a
cognitive perspective, these classic forms of evaluation often only provoke the recall of data or the answers
expected by the teacher. In this sense, it is important to highlight that, used regularly and constantly, students end
up learning according to the way in which they are then usually evaluated, feeding routines or the search to "take
advantage" of what is already known and expected. This distorts the value that evaluation could have for
improving the education and training of students.
Looking beyond schools, in the changing and complex contemporary world (and also in the world of work) there is
a tendency today to value other attributes, such as the ability to solve problems and formulate an action plan,
responsibility, self-esteem, honesty, initiative and the ability to face changes, respect for diversity, and the ability
to work with others, among other relevant dispositions.
Many times these group and personal dispositions are formulated as educational intentions in schools and
universities. But, then, they are not effectively considered when evaluating.
Starting from these problems, a movement has emerged aimed at reformulating educational evaluation, known as
authentic evaluation, through two major strategies:
  Use other evaluation tools and instruments that, in general, are either not used or are relegated to the
background.
 Bring the evaluation closer to the teaching process and not just to a final closing moment.

This movement supports the need for authentic assessment, defined as ways of working that reflect real-life
situations, challenging students to test what they have learned (Archibald and Newman, 1988; Sheppard, 1989;
Hargreaves, Earl and Ryan (2000, p. 208 et seq.) summarize the central features of the authentic evaluation
movement's proposals. Among them, we highlight:

 Evaluation through real productions or demonstrations of what we want students to know and be able to
do well. For example, reading and interpreting what they read, writing expressing their ideas and using
language well, expressing themselves orally and maintaining a clear and organized speech, making their
creativity known, showing their research capacity, solving problems, etc.
 Propose in these evaluations more complex and stimulating mental processes than simply answering
questionnaires.
 Incorporate the evaluation of a wide range of learning and capacity development (expressive, creative,
practical, social) and not only the sphere of knowledge.
 Recognize and facilitate the existence of more than one approach or response in the students' production,
avoiding the homogeneous and standardized solution.
 Pay special importance to unguided personal expressions and the real products they develop.
 Use clear, transparent and appropriate evaluation criteria and standards for those productions or
demonstrations.

With these principles, authentic assessment is based on four main assessment strategies: performance
assessment, portfolios, personal records, and achievement records.
a) Performance evaluation involves evaluating students in the learning process itself and in the context of the
tasks, either by writing down their ideas, knowledge and appreciations, or in a practical way, or in
interaction and work together with other students. These productions allow us to evaluate, in addition to
cognitive learning, autonomous thinking, problem solving, skills, teamwork, the development of work plans,
interpretation, communication skills, among other relevant learning, during development. of the activities.
In this way, the evaluation is not a moment different from the tasks themselves that have to be carried out
throughout the teaching and is part of the learning process. In other words, there is a close relationship
between the tasks and the evaluation itself and countless opportunities to evaluate personal and group
performance in their implementation.

a) Portfolios involve the collection and archiving (in a folding folder, with internal classification dividers) of
significant work, experiences and productions, as documented samples of personal achievements. Each
student puts together their portfolio, but shares it with the teacher and they discuss their work. The
student can select materials that, perhaps, would not be included by the teacher, but this also makes it
easier to evaluate the student's perception of their productions. Each division brings together materials
classified into different achievements: knowledge reports, collaborative teamwork, development of work
plans, problem solving, expression and creativity, etc., exemplifying a range of experiences and learning.
b) Personal records constitute a book of notes for the student, with emphasis on significant stories and
experiences valued by the student in learning and personal development. These records refer to
experiences carried out both within school time and outside of it, linked to teaching. The notebook
expresses a personal memory with experiences, values, challenges, difficulties and achievements. The
records are developed by the students, but they share them with the teachers and take them with them
when they finish the course or when they leave school. Personal records are valuable in supporting
students' self-knowledge.
c) Achievement records are prepared by teachers on the abilities, skills and results achieved by the student. It
includes not only academic achievements, but also those personal qualities developed in teaching. It
constitutes a succinct compilation of student achievements in different spheres, recorded progressively and
not only at the end of a teaching sequence. Materially, it can be organized in a notebook or in a file. The
teacher's notes are shared with the students and they take them with them when they leave school.
Records of achievement contribute to strengthening students' self-worth.

These different tools collaborate with comprehensive evaluation, since they record a wide range of student
learning and achievements, and not only academic or cognitive ones. Likewise, they integrate evaluation into the
teaching process itself, favoring dialogue between students and teachers, and the communication of clear and
transparent criteria for assessing learning. In doing so, authentic assessment helps students become more aware
and supports motivation for their participation in identifying and recording their experiences, productions and
achievements.

EVALUATION AND RATINGS

Assessments are complete when they are shared and communicated, and when they are translated into grades.
Academic grades represent a conventional scale of assessment and measurement, widely used in schools,
universities and, in general, in the school system. Like any formal system of valuation and measurement (metric,
weight, coins, etc.), it represents an arbitrary convention and is translated into scales. However, nothing is more
difficult to measure than human behavior and, in particular, learning.
Among the scales of use, we can distinguish:

 Qualitative scales, which assess the level of achievement in a process, generally in four or five levels, for
example: "Very good. Good, Fair, Unsatisfactory or Incomplete"; "A, B, C and D", with A being the highest
level and D being the level of performance that requires support for learning.
 Quantitative scales, which attempt to measure performance on base 5 (1-5), base 10 (1-10), or base 100 (1-
100) numerical scales.

Whatever the type of grading scales used in school and academic settings, their widespread use seeks to give unity
and coherence to the information resulting from the evaluation carried out by different teachers, facilitate
expanded communication, through tacit consensus on the grading, and grouping students into performance levels.
However, these purposes are largely fictions, because:

 It is extremely difficult for teachers to have univocal criteria to judge performance. What for some teachers
represents a grade of 10 (ten) points, for others it would not reach a 7 (seven) (there are even greater
margins of variation).
 Tacit consensus is sustained by usage and ambiguity. In other words, it is not known if we think about the
same thing when we define "Fair" or "Good" performance, and what their limits or boundaries are.
 The students' performances at equivalent levels hide the differences. Each performance is the result of
diverse processes, involves different efforts and varied levels of commitment, potential and merits.
Abandoning rating scales is a vain and unproductive undertaking.

On the other hand, it is advisable to warn about the risks and define criteria for their improvement. Among them:
 Avoid the temptation of using grades as a resource for teachers' power.
 Agree together (teachers and students) on transparent criteria for evaluating achievements and efforts.
 Inform and explain the reasons for the results, promoting real understanding.
 Avoid using the lowest grades as failures and instead facilitate that they imply the diagnostic identification
of additional supports or particular efforts.

EVALUATION AND SELF-EVALUATION

In general terms, teachers evaluate the learning process and results, in their different spheres of educational
intentions, and students self-evaluate their understanding, ability, effort and commitment, as well as their
difficulties and possibilities.
In educational debates, both processes have often been presented as antinomies and the
role and responsibility of teachers (and adults) to make assessment decisions and guide those who learn. In these
cases, it would seem to be proposed that teachers suspend or evade evaluation and that students evaluate
themselves.
In reality, this opposition is arbitrary and the result of an abstraction. A good evaluation, carried out by the teacher,
should collaborate for the progressive and systematic development of the students' self-assessment.
Self-assessment is a fundamental element of the educational process since it involves the student's commitment to
their learning process and their achievements. In this way, the students' self-assessment:

 It is essential to strengthen, review or reorient your goals and needs.

 Develops meta-cognitive skills, students understand the process followed and the effects of their decisions,
which enables them to learn to learn in other situations.
 It contributes to the development of self-knowledge and self-confidence, necessary to learn.
The participation of students in the evaluation process, according to their abilities and possibilities, organizing their
records, discussing their achievements, detecting their difficulties, analyzing their efforts, reviewing their process
and assuming their responsibilities in the construction of their learning, They represent valuable components of an
authentic evaluation.

EVALUATION AND IMPROVEMENT OF TEACHING

The evaluation is primarily considered from the angle of assessing the students' learning, in its process and in its
results. Perhaps this is what worries teachers the most and what occupies schools the most.
However, it has been highlighted that evaluation has significant functions for the assessment of the teaching
proposal itself. In other words, the learning process developed and its results are not only a consequence of the
students, but a product of the teaching itself. This implies promoting evaluation as a permanent strategy for
improving and perfecting teaching proposals.
Experience and reflective evaluation of teaching experience are always sources of learning and knowledge, as well
as a basis for the production of new alternatives for action.
During teaching, process evaluation, like a compass, allows teachers to make decisions on the fly, reorient tasks
and modify the course of actions. Thus, the evaluation constitutes support for the dynamics and management of
the class.
After teaching, the recapitulating evaluation will allow you to weigh the value and relevance of your programming
and its adaptation to the context, the students and the teaching environment. In particular, it facilitates the
analysis of the methodical sequence, the teaching strategy developed, as well as the activities proposed for
learning.
Following the tradition founded by Dewey and continued by Stcnhouse, Schón, Carr, among others, it is good that a
teacher can teach well and obtain educational achievements from his actions. But even more valuable is that you
can reflect on what you do and what you did, on your props. ios educational commitments and research on
practice as a basis for the development of teaching.