Saturday, July 7, 2012

Assessment of Student

Assessment of Students
(Written by Donna E. Alvermann, The University of Georgia, Athens and
Stephen F. Phelps, State University College at Buffalo)

Summarized by: Sukardi

A.    Introduction
            This chapter discusses about assessment of students, the problems related to it and the alternatives to explore, including authentic, performance-based, and portfolio assessment techniques, as well as the implication to Indonesian context.

B.     Assessing Students
There are two types of assessment based on its purpose. They are :
v  Formative-assessment
It is intended to help “form” or develop, a student. Formative-assessment is also needed by the teacher to draw conclusion on the strengths and weaknesses of the individuals of the students.
v  Summative-assessment
It is used to make a “summarizing” judgment of what the students have learned or done.
            Without caring on the purposes of the assessment, one thing that should be
considered is that good assessment practice should have the following characteristics:
Ø  Good assessment draws on multiple source of information.
No single test can tell a teacher the “true” state of a students’ knowledge.
Ø  Good assessment results in information that is useful to both students and teachers.
Ø  Good assessment gives students optimal condition for showing their capabilities.
Ø  Good assessment involves students in self-assessment.
Ø  Good assessment admits the potential of fallibility.
1.      Test and Testing: A Consumer Advisory
Due to the many stakeholders in education, the emergence of conflicts
often arise because of the different demands. School administrators have their own demand; the culture defenders also have their own sake, as well as politicians give their comments on the assessment. The professed purposes of testing are as varied and contradictory as the stakeholders. Reformers of all political stripes may see tests as a means to drive school reform. Some may look to state or national assessments as a way to raise student achievement, whereas others see alternative assessment procedures as a way to complement curricular reforms and increase students’ participation in their learning.
            The conflicting demands and claims surrounding educational assessment present several very real problems to classroom teachers. They are:
*      Validity
*      Credibility
*      Time
*      Influences on curriculum and teaching
*      Teacher knowledge and training
*      Equity
It also should be noted that there must be limitation of testing. A student
may do well or poorly on a particular test, but the test alone cannot tell definitely why the students perform that way  or why that is typical of the students’ performance. No best decision for the students is given based only on a certain results of tests. The best decisions about students will be made after carefully after considering many source of information.
            Teachers who work with students of diverse cultural backgrounds must especially be aware of cultural biases that can influence tests and testing. There are several sources of cultural bias in standardized tests proposed by some experts, namely:
v  Content and conceptual bias
As the test content as the reflection of the knowledge and values of mainstream society, it may be more or less familiar to members of different culture that may therefore assign different meaning to the same concept.
v  Linguistic bias
It is related to the lack of familiarity with academic English. Certain non standard English may cause bias.
v  Functional bias
The functional bias is caused by the fact that many tests are not flexible enough to fully assess the capability of English Language Learners.
v  Consequential bias
Because of certain conditions, the students undergo different things on the tests.
There are some ways to minimize the cultural bias. It can be done in several ways, some of them are:
a.       You can devise a variety of assessment forms to give all students an opportunity to demonstrate their competence.
b.      Include test and evaluation procedures that reflect diverse cultural content
and values.
c.       Follow up on apparent “wrong” answers by asking students for elaborated explanations or justifications for their responses.

2.      Types of Assessment
Here are common types of assessment used in schools. They are:
a.      Standardized test
Such kind of tests are commercially prepared tests used to assess the achievement of large number of students in reading, math, and other academic areas.
b.      Authentic assessment
It involves a broad range of assessment tasks and data that are based on everyday situations or realistic application of content knowledge and concepts.
c.       Performance assessment
Performance assessment tasks would look identical to what we have
described as authentic assessment. The difference is that performance assessments are graded according to externally established criteria and students usually are expected to achieve some benchmark score as an index of competency in the area being tested.

3.      Learning about Students
To plan effective instruction, we need to learn as much as we can about
students’ norms, values, tradition, language, and beliefs as well as their reading, writing, and study skill. Here is discussed the practical ways of assessing these variables.
a.      Interest and attitude inventories
It is related to the ways to find out what students think about a content area or a specific subject. It is helpful to know not only what the students feel about it but also what they know about it.
b.      Kid-watching
The informed judgments that teachers make by observing students is called kid-watching.
c.       Informal content text inventories
Textbooks can also be used to devise short, informal assessment.

4.      Grades and Grading
Though it causes dilemma whether a teacher should gives grade either using letters or number, in fact it has been applied for a long time. However, teachers also want to encourage all students and give each one a chance to show his or her capabilities.
Objectivity or teacher judgment?
Though it is a hard work to a good and objective assessment not the
teacher judgment but there are some strategies that might help you avoid
some of the pitfall of assigning grades to students.
a.      Tough but fair
It is needed to have a good assessment. There are five guidelines to develop “tough but fair” grading system:
Ø  Select assignment, tests or projects that reflect and measure what you value most as a teacher.
Ø  Provide a variety of opportunities to earn credit.
Ø  Be clear about your grading system and standards.
Ø  Be clear about how you will assess specific assignments and tests.
Ø  Collaborate with students to set and achieve goals and to deconstruct the language of both official and teacher-devised
standard.
b.      Grading system
By having a good grading system will be fair to students. We can apply the followings, namely giving credit, contracting, weighted average system, a straight point system.
c.       Rubrics
By having a rubric, the students may be able to know “what the teacher is looking for.”
d.      Content-area quizzes and tests
It is usually used in simply space at the end of an objective test where students can qualify their answer.

5.      Portfolio assessment
The compilation of the results of the work usually refers to portfolio.
There are three portfolio models, with each purpose:
v  Ownership portfolios
It is the collection of the students’ work which emphasize on the student choice, reflection, and self assessment. The purpose is to allow the students to display and reflect on their accomplishments.
v  Feedback portfolios
These are co-constructed by the teacher and the students, the purpose of which is to guide students learning and to communicate with parents.
v  Accountability portfolios
This a kind of portfolios which are used as performance assessments.
The purpose of such kind of portfolios is to demonstrate student achievement for accountability or program evaluation.
            The results of researches show some advantages of using portfolios, such as the use of portfolio assessment can be more effective than single, static measure of student achievement. Another advantage of portfolios is their potential to inform and improve interaction. However, the followings are some issues related to portfolios.
a.      Student involvement
Portfolios allow students to be active participant-observers of their own growth and development.
b.      Implementing portfolios
Due to the much advantages of using portfolios, we should know and realize that to make the implementation of portfolios surely successful
you provide  guidance and modeling for students as they put them together.
c.       Portfolio pros and cons
Those who are in pro to portfolios say that there is much advantageous of using it. It increases the students’ awareness and involvement in their own learning. Portfolios can also provide detailed, authentic representations of what students have learned and what has taken place in a classroom for parents , colleagues, and administrators. The last but not least, portfolios can give us an opportunity to reflect on our practice as teachers.
To those who are in cons to portfolios tend to say that there also failure of the teacher implementing it. The following negative potential of portfolios is the possible infringement of students’ personal privacy.
Finally, it is believed that the potential benefits of portfolio assessment far outweigh any potential harm.

C.    Conclusion
Many variables require many decision about students, teaching methods, materials , and assessment. The more information a teacher has, the better quality of the decisions will be. There is no right “way” to assign grades,
no “best” test of reading ability, no “perfect” text for any subject, but good teachers keep looking and experimenting. Everything is right or wrong in its own time and place.

D.    The Implementation to Indonesian Context
Based on the discussion on the Assessments of Students above, there are
some points can be drawn, namely:
1.      There is so called formative and summative assessment terms. The formative assessment is carried out after some basic competences are learned. As its purpose discussed, this assessment is intended to develop students, to know the strengths and weaknesses of the individuals. It is often known as daily test. Whereas, the summative assessment is carried out at the end of the semester. It is to make judgment of what has the students have done. However, the is still one term of assessment, so called mid-test which is carried out in the middle of the semester. The results of the formative test, mid-test and the results of summative one are combined used to give the final grade of the students in the form of the grade in the report book at the end of the semester.
2.      In the national scope, there is also a kind of assessment called the national examination which is undergone by the last year students. As we know that in testing there are many stakeholders involved, the national examination often becomes debate. Some reject it whereas others accept it.
Those who accept it say that it is needed to have nationally mapping on the education standardized quality. The side who rejects it says that the assessment should be done by schools independently. It is no use to have national examination. In addition, such activities need very much fund to spend. However, up to now the national examination is still our national program that must be done regularly once in a year regardless the existence of cons.
3.      Due to the diverse cultural background, there may happens so called the cultural biases that affects tests and testing. There may be content and conceptual bias, linguistic bias, functional bias, and consequential bias.
4.      Some ways of reducing the bias are always developed for the sake of the national needs, namely devising variety of assessment forms, including test and evaluation procedures that reflect diverse cultural content and values, and asking students for elaborated explanations or justifications for
their responses.
5.      In relation to the types of the assessment, it is noted that either standardized tests, authentic assessment, or performance assessment are all applied in Indonesia to meet the need of certain conditions.
6.      The role of interest and attitude inventories is taken into account in constructing and applying the assessment.
7.      Teachers tend to give grade to the students hoping that it will give spirit to do better. The range of the score is usually 00—100. This one may be the most popular among teachers of English as it is easy to do. This is also what usually done in Indonesia.
8.      To complete the sixth point above is carried out the grading system. The implementation using rubrics, quiz, and tests are basically a must in order to meet the requirements. Such kinds of ways to do assessment are easily found out among the teachers of English in our environment.
9.      It is not something new that portfolio is also used in assessment program. Portfolio assessment is applied almost in all level of education. Even recently the use of portfolio is also applied in the teacher’s assessment and evaluation, such as in the certification program.
10.  Although they may be some cons on the use of portfolio is considered the better one. So, there is no reason to avoid portfolio assessment.

Concept of Language Learning

Concept of Language Learning

            There are five main issues to discuss concerning about the concept of language learning. They are psychological approach to language and learning,
development of psychological perspective in language teaching: a selective review, methods of second language learning and the concept of proficiency, learner factors, and conditions of learning and the learning process.
14.       Psychological approaches to language and learning
            The approach of language learning is discussed much in psychology because it talks much the relationship between the language learner and the process of language learning. The process what happens in one’s mind and brain when he/she learns a language is the concern of psychology in language learning.

Language in psychology
            The discussion of language in psychology is elaborated in the followings:
·         Before World War I
·         The interwar period
·         After world War II
·         Skinner and Chomsky
·         The study of language comprehension and production
·         Language acquisition in childhood
In short, studying the language in psychology, psycholinguistics, later on dealing with two main questions: What does it mean to know a language ?
How does a child acquire a language?

The psychology of learning
            The psychological events to one who is doing learning are approached in two main ways:
1.      The theoretical and experimental study of learning
Theories are studied and applied in the forms of experimental study. A popular experiment was done by Skinner with pigeon. It was well known as Skinner operant conditioning and  the  teaching machine.
2.      The empirical study of learning in individual setting
It studied what happened with one who learned a language and what were the obstacle an difficulties faced by them.

Concept of learning in educational psychology
            The psychology of learning commonly refers to formal educational activities, mainly characteristics of  the learner and individual differences among learners (abilities, personality, attitudes, and motivation), different kinds of learning, the learning process, and outcomes of learning.
Ø  In terms of the learner characteristics, the frequent factors presented are the influence of age and maturity on mental development and learning, the effect of heredity and environment on abilities and achievement, specific aptitudes for particular learning task, and the influence of home and community on motivation and attitude.
Ø  The different kinds of learning have been usually expressed in to three major categories, they are:
·         Conceptual and verbal learning
·         Skill learning
·         Affective and social learning
All the three categories above are used in defining the educational objectives. They are more commonly known in term of the three categories: cognition, skill, and affect.
Ø  To understand the how the learning and the learning process, distinctions have been introduced. One of them is the time-scale of learning. It may be different the learning of infancy and adult. It may also be different the first learning the first language and the second learning the second language.
Ø  The needs of assessing the outcome of learning results in the development of tests of achievement and proficiency.

The main emphasized discussion on the language learning and psychology are the psychology of language and the psychology of learning. However, still there are many areas of psychology have very close relationship to study. Some of the are child psychology, social psychology, etc. It is obvious that in descriptive study of language, the making of pedagogical grammars, curriculum development, the expression of objectives, teaching procedures, and the organization of language teaching in educational systems all need psychological aspects.