Assessment+in+constructivism

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 * What is assessment? Why do we need it? **

Assessment refers to the process of gathering pieces of information about learners’ skills, abilities and knowledge. It also provides **feedback** on students’ performance to encourage them for further learning. Although this term is used interchangeably with the terms ‘evaluation’ and ‘testing’ we should remember that it might be quite misleading as ‘evaluation’ describes the process of skills and konwledge interpretation and judgement of what learners actually do in order to enable the teacher to, for instance, grade them. ‘Tests’, on the other hand, are referred to as measuring tools in the process of assessing. The essential problem of assessment is how to assess to make it more credible and valid. It is a terrifically difficult task for a teacher, especially when the subjects of assessing are English language learning students. There are many significant reasons for why educators and learners need assessment in the teaching-learning process. Assessment should provide some pieces of information about learners’ knowledge and the way students deal with the material being taught. That is why it is essential for the teachers to be careful with their students in order not to discourage them from exploring the language. O’Malley and Valdez (1996) enumerated some of the most important **purposes of assessment**. These are:

1. Screening and identification: identifying of some learners for particular language learning 2. Placement: identifying the appropriate level of proficiency of particular learners in order to tailor an accurate learning program for them 3. Reclassification (or exit): determining whether the learners already acquired certain language skills so that they could enter another level of proficiency 4. Monitoring student progress: to observe the process of gaining knowledge 5. Program evaluation: to establish to what extent students gained the konwledge of instructional programs 6. Accountability: making sure that students meet the expectations in achieving goals and fulfilling educational standards

All those aforementioned reasons tempted scholars and educators to start investigating and experimenting with different approaches to classroom assessment.


 * Assessment in a constructivist classroom **

There are two major kinds of assessment as far as its function is concerned. The first kind is known as **//summative// assessment**, and it is thought to be a rather traditional approach to assessing. It is used in very often in multiple-choice tests or other receptive ways of evaluation. The main function of such an approach is to measure or summerize the knowledge that a student possesses. The most common use of summative assessment is; for exapmle, during exams at the end of a semester or a school year, but it could also be used in short quizzes and end-of-the-unit tests as well. The second kind of assessment is called **//formative// assessment**. This is the form that is videly accepted in constructivist learning which calls for elimination of grades and standardized tests. Here the learners are evaluated in the process of creating their competences and abilities. The teacher’s role is to deliver the material which should be internalized by the learners. One of the factors that makes this form of assessment so intriguing is the importance of feedback on learners’ perfomance that should allow them to draw conclusions and improve for the future (Brown 2004). In the constructivist theory assessment is viewed as a part of the learning process in which students play a greater role in judging their own progress. The traditional approach to assessment is reduced to minimum in the classroom of construcivism. The teachers then are in favour of alternative approaches which are considered more developing and reliable for the process of learning. According to O’Malley and Valdez (1996) the main characteristic of alternative assessment is that it “consists of any method of finding out what a student knows or can do that is intended to show growth and inform instruction and is an alternative to traditional forms of testing, namely, multiple-choice tests.” It is essential to note that alternative assessment is **criterion-referenced** so it tells the teacher about what the learner can actually do in the given language. Brown (2004) points out that it provides an accurate feedback on specific course objectives. Alternative assessment is also considered very authentic because it puts an emphasis on the tasks which resemble real-life situations. There are many explanations to the term authentic assessment. One of them is provided by Wiggins (1993) who claims that it is “engaging in questions of importance, in which students must use knowledge to fashion performances effectively and creatively. The tasks are either replicas of or analogous to the kinds of problems faced by adult citizens and consumers or professionals in the field.”



Giving the fact that this approach underlines the importance of involving learners in the process of learning and self-judgement we may notice why it was valued by constructivist advocates. Another definition is provided by O’Malley and Valdez (1996:4) who state that “we use it to describe the multiple forms of assessment that reflect student learning, achievement, motivation and attitudes on instructionally-relevant classroom activities”. Authentic assessment convinces students to explore while working on solving particular problems or making projects that tend to motivate them to engage in gaining new experiences, and it allows the teachers to investigate learners’ integrative language and content knowledge. Constructivist learning fosters active participation of the students in critical thinking and problem solving activities. The learners are encouraged to deal with authentic problems to help them overcome difficulties in the future situations. The video below explains how the authentic assessment works in education:

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Authentic assessment is also referred to as **//performance assessment//** which calls a student to demonstrate specific competencies in an oral or a written way. This kind of assessment requires learners to be creative in acomplishing and dealing with different authentic activities with the use of relevant abilities (O’Malley and Valdez). An authentic or performance assessment usually provides a task for the learners in which they need to perform. The results of their performance is evaluated with the use of a rubric which is a kind of a table with specially prepared criteria for students’ performance allocated to the accurate levels of proficiency.




 * Authentic assessment tools **

There are many tools to implement authentic assessment in a classroom. It can be done with the use of such things as individual or group projects, portfolios, journals, observation, essays, self-assessment or even peer-assessment. All of those methods may require a lot of work, especially teacher-work, but the effects of such systems are much more rewarding and productive than in the traditional approach. I will characterise some of the tools of authentic assessment to point out the advantages of introducing them in constructivism.

One of the most challenging and interesting tools of authentic assessment is self-assessment which encourages a student to be directly involved in the lerning process. It underlines the feeling of being autonomous and intrinsicaly motivated. The learner is asked to set some goals and make their own choices which he may later evaluate and regulate. These students feel proud of themselves and they are capable of determining their strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, self-assessment helps students to learn how to monitor their own process of learning. According to O’Malley and Valdez (1996) self-assessment and self-management are one of the most important tools of learning with the use of authentic assessment, and it should be implemented as the regular instruction in the classroom.

Another intriguing way of evaluating that is characteristic to authentic assessment is so called peer-assessment which is connected with cooperative learning. The most important value of such approach is that learners can teach each other new things. Students learn how to be critical and how to draw conclusions from what others consider good or bad. Peer-assessment helps learners to work in groups, and it improves skills for socializing and cooperation. A teacher must be very careful in designing a task requiring peer-assessment in order not to discourage or even block students from participation in the lessons.

A very interesting form of assessing students’ performance is portfolio assessment. It requires a collection of different students’ works which are gathered for a longer period of time and analysed according to some objectives and criteria established earlier by the teacher. A portfolio is supposed to present certain progress in the process of learning, and it may include drawings, written compositions, video recordings and self-made test samples.

Other tools of assessment are journals which are a set of thoughts, ideas or reactions written freely by the students and later assessed by the teacher. The form of this tool is quite specific as there is no particular attention to the correctness or the style of the written samples (Brown 2004). The main idea is to pool the thoughts, play with words and analogies, experiment. There are many subjects dedicated to the journals in a constructivist classroom e.g. grammar journals, diaries of attitudes and feelings, self-assessment reflections etc. Each type concentrates on different aspects, and each kind of journals require different criteria of evaluation.




 * The role of the teacher in a constructivist classroom **

In a constructivist classroom the teacher is perceived as one of the learners who is more experienced and acts like a ‘**guide**’ to enable the students to explore some new fields of knowledge. She or he may imply some cognitive strategies to make the lessons more appealing and interesting. The teacher teaches the students how to make accurate analogies, how to make appropriate conclusions or solve different problems. According to Brooks and Brooks (1993) the teacher tries to understand the way learners’ brains work, and she or he leads them to construct and combine the newly-gained knowledge with what students already know from the previous experience.


 * REFERENCES **

Brooks, J. G., & Brooks, M. G. (1993). In Search of Understanding: The Case for Constructivist Classrooms. Alexandria, Va.: ASCD. Brown, H. D. (2004). //Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices.// White Plains, NY: Longman. O’Malley, M., & Valdez Pierce, L. (1996). //Authentic// //Assessment for English// //Language Learners. Practical Approaches for Teachers//. New York: Addison Wesley. Wiggins, G. P. (1993). //Assessing Student Performance//. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Williams M., & Burden, R. (1997). //Psychology for Language Teachers: a social// //constructivist approach//. Cambridge: CUP.