Seminar Task 7
Validity and Purpose
List the various types of assessments you have identified in your experiences and within the texts' why is the purpose of an assessment task so important? Why is validity, dependability, reliability and moderating so important to student assessment?
The purpose of the assessment is concerned with using evidence to make judgments about the progress students make in a critical area of learning (Brady and Kennedy 2019). Thereby, assessment plays a fundamental role in teaching and learning. In my experience, assessment has played multiple roles in both teaching and learning and is identified within two broad types: Informal and Formal forms of assessment. As such, the range of assessment processes is wide-ranging and through the specific, designed and pre-determined task, to ongoing informal interactions between teacher and students. Summative and formative forms of assessment have commonly been described as an assessment of learning and assessment for learning(Churchill et al. 2013). I found both these forms, in their respective forms, emphasise the role of the student, and acknowledge the student as a critical contributor to both the assessment and learning process.
Both informal and formal assessment pieces are designed for the benefit of the student or to meet the accountability needs at a system level. Despite their individual purposes, each method should be inherently fair for all learners being assessed. Churchill et al., claim the assessment process is only useful if it is “clear and explicit to all and actually does what it claims to be doing” (Churchill et al. 2013). However, this can be difficult to achieve, as students being assessed have diverse learning needs and capabilities. For this reason, validity, dependability, reliability and moderating are critical factors to measuring student assessment. When designing a successful assessment, a teacher must:
Reliability and Validity
The teacher should ensure they as reliable and free from bias. There should be an adequate amount of evidence accurately represent a student’s knowledge, understanding and skills for the critical learning area being assessed. There is a need to recognise and outline what the assessment is designed to assess (the purpose the assessment) and ensure there is a precise alignment between the stated priorities, the task employed to gain evidence from the students and the assessment process itself. There must be ‘truth in assessment’. For example, if the purpose of a task is to assess students the content knowledge, but the task assesses synthesis of ideas, then it lacks validity.
Dependability and Moderation
Increasing the dependability of evidence for all assessment pieces if fundamental to reaching a valid and robust judgment. Students performance will vary from day to day, depending on:
When teachers experience some degree of inconsistency with assessment information, they should inquire into this further. If the inconsistency is not explained by normal variation in students’ performance, then there may be a need to collect further information to reach sound judgments. One way this can be actioned is through moderation. Moderation can provide the necessary checks and balances on teacher judgement, acting as a form of ‘quality assurance’ for delivering comparability in evidence-based judgements of student achievements. Klenowski et al. reveal that moderation has been shown to build teacher assessment capacity, as well as teacher confidence in the judgement they make of student work
Works Cited:
Brady, Laurie & Kennedy, Kerry J., (author.) 2019, Assessment and reporting : celebrating student achievement, 5th Edition, Pearson Australia, Melbourne, VIC
Klenowski, Val and Wyatt-Smith, Claire. Standards, Teacher Judgement and Moderation in Contexts of National Curriculum and Assessment Reform [online]. Assessment Matters, Vol. 2, 2010: 107-131. Availability: <https://search-informit-com-au.proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/documentSummary;dn=330562838515612;res=IELHSS> ISSN: 1176-7839. [cited 10 Jul 19].