❏ Introduction
❏ Student Assessment
❏ Approaches to Student Assessment
❏ Differences and Similarities
❏ Sample Assessments
❏ Best Practices
❏ Role of Teacher self- assessment
❏ Reference list
, Introduction
★ Effective teaching has been argued by researchers and educators on the basis of a teacher’s
ability to make decisions. “Any teaching act is the result of a decision, whether conscious or
unconscious, that the teacher makes after the complex cognitive processing of available
information” (Anderson, 2003).
★ These decisions can be on doing what they have always done or maintaining the status quo,
operating within existing constraints or about the students.
★ According to Anderson. (2003), most importantly, these decisions are driven by assessment
which entails gathering information about students for the purposes of improving teaching and
learning.
★ A teacher who takes up a new group can use different tools to gauge if learners have learnt
what they are supposed to learn at that particular point, to provide an opportunity for learners
to improve or even learn in the process.
★ The teacher then designs tools like interviews and quizzes depending on what kind of
decisions they need to make about their students; these tools are referred to as assessments.
, What is student assessment?
★ Assessment is a measure of growth. It is a vital part of the learning cycle
which is intended to facilitate students’ learning and improving teaching.
★ Assessment is a continuous process of gathering student’s information
rather than an end product.
★ Recently use of assessment to aid students’ learning has gained high
mileage; according to Berry (2008) “different schools of thought on
assessment have been developed regarding the three approaches of
assessment: Assessment of Learning (AoL), Assessment for Learning
(AfL), and Assessment as Learning (AaL)’. (p.46)