Assessment for , as and of Learning

 

Assessment for, as and of learning:

Assessment is really at the heart of teaching and learning where teacher assesses their learners’ performance and takes feedback to improve their teaching and learning. The purpose of formative assessment is to assess the learning of learners, it works with any activity for creating motivation, provide learning opportunities, and giving feedback to both learners and teachers. Feedback helps teachers to reflect and improves their future practices assessment without feedback is nothing. (Hattie, 2013). I believe that formative assessments greatly improve the achievement of learners and helps identify the areas where the teachers and learners need improvement (Dylan, 2011). Assessment for, assessment as and assessment of learning are approaches that enable teachers to gather evidence and make judgments about student achievement. These are not necessarily discrete approaches and may be used individually or together and formally or informally. The word ‘assessment’ often leads to confusion, because it is usually used to refer to summative testing. AFL mainly focuses on the use of non-formal formative assessment to improve learning. Sometimes teachers are judged solely on their ability to get good results in high-stakes summative assessments. Teachers may feel that they do not have time to do activities that do not seem directly linked to final examination grades. However, using feedback to modify instruction and help learners to better understand assessment objectives, which will improve exam results. In classrooms, teachers are using assessment for learning strategies but unaware of their effective use and how to utilize that collected information to improve learners learning and their teaching. In this situation, both learners and teachers required further training to improve their learning, for this very reason we decided to support teachers for further improvement

 

Lots of reference study, observation and testing was done to further strengthen the assessment policy in school. Establishing AFL in a school or classroom takes time. It sometimes requires additional professional training, and it changes the ways that teachers interact with their learners. Lead teachers and facilitators were supporting teachers to develop their lesson plans focused on the given guidelines and observations were conducted to check their performance against the given criteria. Peer observation was also used to share good practices and understandings and to have critical feedback. Learners were also introduced with those strategies and approaches to make them understand the specific assessment criteria, their application, and their performance concerning this.

 

The primary purpose of assessment is to improve students’ learning and teachers’ teaching as both respond to the information it provides. Assessment for learning is an ongoing process that arises out of the interaction between teaching and learning. What assesses learning effectiveness is how well the information is used. School leaders can use the information to support their teachers and determine professional development needs. Learners and teachers can use the information gained from the assessment to determine the next teaching and learning steps.

 

By:

 Ms. Kashfia Latafat