In today's video Teacher magazine sits down with Australian Council for Educational Research CEO Professor Geoff Masters AO to discuss new ways of thinking about assessment.
Masters says there's a traditional way of thinking of assessment, that is, assessment is the process of judging how well students have learnt what they've been taught.
‘Those assessments can be undertaken during the course of teaching which is helpful for providing feedback, identifying gaps where students may not have mastered what's been taught, things that need to be retaught, or at the end of a teaching period,' he says.
‘But what I'm saying is that another way of thinking about assessment is to think of it as the process of establishing and understanding where students are in their learning. Where are they up to? What do they know? What do they understand? What can they do at this point in time?'
Masters says that if educators think about assessment in that way, they can then use that information to think about what they would teach next and what challenging goals they would set.
‘So it's a different way of thinking about assessment as the tracking of student learning over time,' he says.
WATCH VIDEO
Professor Geoff Masters has written extensively about the topic of assessment in his monthly Teacher column.
ACER is pursuing a new approach to assessment through its ACER Certificates program in Mathematics and Reading. Open to all students in Australia, the certificates recognise excellence and assess knowledge and skills, independent of school year. Visit the website to find out more.
How are you monitoring student progress?
How can you use this information to inform future teaching and learning goals?
