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A practical alternative to destructive testing practices in educational programs
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 4780–4780
WCES-2010
A practical alternative to destructive testing practices in educational programs Paul Zachos a* a
Association for the Cooperative Advancement of Science & Education (ACASE), 110 Spring St., Saratoga Springs, NY 12866 Received November 8, 2009; revised December 9, 2009; accepted January 20, 2010
1. Description It is possible to collect information about student learning in a way that is non-threatening, and even motivating and educational. Testing in schools is almost exclusively ‘norm referenced’ and ‘high stakes’. This means simply that information about student performance is used to compare the relative success of students on some task and to use that information to make decisions which effect the student’s lives. Whether we are taking about National examinations, commercial produced tests or teacher made tests makes little difference; these characteristics are constant. We know little else in the domain of testing. Yet it is not generally realized that one of the deepest flaws of these tests is that they have no inherent educational value. The information that they produce serves no useful purpose in supporting or improving educational programs. Thus they are used primarily for social management purposes, passing and failing, access to or denial of privilege. An alternative exists; one in which the information derived is devoted exclusively to helping to improve teaching and learning. It also provides more appropriate information for planning, research, resource allocation, professional development and accountability. This will increasingly be the character of educational assessment in the future. But this new generation of assessment practices already exists and is in use today by innovative educators who use it to obtain deep knowledge of their students. This workshop demonstrates such an alternative assessment and shows how it can provide a rigorous and practical alternative to the harmful testing practices which now dominate our educational settings. Workshop participants will have the opportunity to experience (from the student perspective) such an innovative assessment. The experience will take about ½ hour. It will be followed by a 15 minute explanation of this new paradigm. Remaining time (as much as can be made available within the structure of the conference) will be devoted to questions and answers and participant generated discussion on alternatives to destructive testing practices.
* Paul Zachos. Tel.: 518-583-4645; fax: 518-587-6467 E-mail address: [email protected]
1877-0428 © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.769
Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 4780–4780
WCES-2010
A practical alternative to destructive testing practices in educational programs Paul Zachos a* a
Association for the Cooperative Advancement of Science & Education (ACASE), 110 Spring St., Saratoga Springs, NY 12866 Received November 8, 2009; revised December 9, 2009; accepted January 20, 2010
1. Description It is possible to collect information about student learning in a way that is non-threatening, and even motivating and educational. Testing in schools is almost exclusively ‘norm referenced’ and ‘high stakes’. This means simply that information about student performance is used to compare the relative success of students on some task and to use that information to make decisions which effect the student’s lives. Whether we are taking about National examinations, commercial produced tests or teacher made tests makes little difference; these characteristics are constant. We know little else in the domain of testing. Yet it is not generally realized that one of the deepest flaws of these tests is that they have no inherent educational value. The information that they produce serves no useful purpose in supporting or improving educational programs. Thus they are used primarily for social management purposes, passing and failing, access to or denial of privilege. An alternative exists; one in which the information derived is devoted exclusively to helping to improve teaching and learning. It also provides more appropriate information for planning, research, resource allocation, professional development and accountability. This will increasingly be the character of educational assessment in the future. But this new generation of assessment practices already exists and is in use today by innovative educators who use it to obtain deep knowledge of their students. This workshop demonstrates such an alternative assessment and shows how it can provide a rigorous and practical alternative to the harmful testing practices which now dominate our educational settings. Workshop participants will have the opportunity to experience (from the student perspective) such an innovative assessment. The experience will take about ½ hour. It will be followed by a 15 minute explanation of this new paradigm. Remaining time (as much as can be made available within the structure of the conference) will be devoted to questions and answers and participant generated discussion on alternatives to destructive testing practices.
* Paul Zachos. Tel.: 518-583-4645; fax: 518-587-6467 E-mail address: [email protected]
1877-0428 © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.769