"For me context is the key - from that comes the understanding of everything."
Kenneth Noland
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Assessment becomes meaningful only when situated within a clearly understood context. Learners' needs, curriculum expectations, and institutional standards collectively shape how evidence of learning is gathered, interpreted, and acted upon.
Context defines purpose. Standards define direction. Together, they ensure assessment is coherent, equitable, and instructionally aligned.
1. Context Alignment
A. Learner Context: Mathematics assessment is situated within the cognitive, linguistic, and socio-cultural realities of learners. Learners come into the classroom with varied backgrounds that affect their levels of numeracy fluency, conceptual understanding, and problem-solving confidence.
In this context:
Learners may demonstrate procedural familiarity but conceptual gaps.
Mathematical language may pose comprehension challenges.
Higher-order thinking skills require deliberate scaffolding.
Assessment design, therefore, prioritizes:
Conceptual understanding over rote execution.
Opportunities for reasoning and justification
Multiple representations (symbolic, visual, verbal)
Structured scaffolding toward abstraction.
Assessment tasks are designed to surface students' mathematical thinking, not merely their final answers. Emphasis is placed on reasoning, modeling, and conceptual.
This should include the following.
Grade level and subject area.
Learning gaps or prior knowledge considerations.
Diversity of learners (reading levels, engagement levels, access to technology).
Socio-cultural realities (e.g., public school setting, resource constraints)
The assessment design responds to learners who require structured learners who require structured scaffolding and multimodal support.
Assessment tools were contextualized to address foundational skill gaps while progressively building higher-order thinking.
Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory describes human development as shaped by various layers of interconnected environments. These range from the immediate surroundings, such as family and school (microsystem), to the wider cultural setting (macrosystem), and include the aspect of time (chronosystem). The theory highlights the mutual influence between individuals and their environments, showing how they affect and shape one another. (Bronfenbrenner, 1977)
The five systems are interconnected; the influence of one system on a child’s development depends on its relationships with the others (Guy-Evans, 2024).
B. Instructional Context:
Mathematics instruction operates within defined curricular timelines and structured learning standards. Time constraints, classroom diversity, and resource availability influence the format and frequency of assessments. Assessment is integrated as a continuous feedback mechanism that informs instructional adjustments and targeted interventions -feedback loops.
Should ask:
Curriculum framework (e.g., K-12 curriculum, Matatag framework)
Time constraints (e.g., 40 minutes)
Mode of delivery - face to face. The need for blended learning. This is where the context of student agency comes in. If students were not given a responsibilitya nd accountability in the first place, how can they practice their agency in the learning process?
K to 12 Framework, DepEd 2015
The goal of this Framework is to produce learners who are scientifically, technologically, and environmentally literate.
The goal of this Framework is to produce learners who are scientifically, technologically, and environmentally literate.
Below the framework is a set of strategies of approaches to be used to achieve the vision of this framework. This inform instructional context of the teachers in the Philippines as these are part of the teacher assessment. PPST. Below is a sample NCOI standards.
K to 12 Framework, DepEd 2015
Mathematics Education has an elaborate framework. The center of the framework is to produce a learner that critically think and problem solve.
Mathematics assessment is anchored on this idea--established educational principles--including:
Constructivist views of knowledge development (that learners construct their own knowledge), standard-based assessment practices (which are set by the schools which is dependent on National Standards of learning competency and the Progressive cognitive demand aligned with Bloom's taxonomy.
Shown are adjectives used in making lesson plan as learning targets. Assessment is linked to lesson objectives. Making assessment should be able to target these objectives.
In this sample lesson plan, the learning objectives is from the unpacked learning competencies which is the standard of lesson planning and assessment in public schools systems (DepEd no.8, s. 2015)
C. Institutional/Policy Context
All assessment artifacts align with national curriculum standards and professional teaching standards to ensure compliance and instructional quality as implemented in the classroom, as assessed by the Department of Education (D.O, no 8, s. 2015).
This tool serves as a standard for classroom observations, highlighting key indicators that should be evaluated in classroom teaching practices (PPST).
2. Standards Alignment
Assessment in Mathematics must demonstrate vertical and horizontal alignment. This section should demonstrate coherence between:
Content Standards
Performance Standards
Learning Competencies
Assessment Methods
Let us discuss each one of the standards and learning competencies in Mathematics Education as stated in the K to 12 Curriculum.
A. Content Standards
This standard shows what learners are expected to understand, it must state the big ideas, which are central to learning mathematics. This include:
Numbers, Measures, Shapes, Space, and Graphs, Patterns, Relations, and Functions, etc., (Matatag Curriculum, 2023)
Assessment tasks are anchored on clearly defined content standards that articulate the essential concepts students must master.
A screenshot taken from the Matatag Curriculum, launched last SY 2024-2025 to grade 7 learners. Shows big ideas as critical learning areas that must be taught and mastered by students across grade levels, showing coherent understanding in a spiral curriculum.
A sample screenshot of the curriculum standards of the Matatag curriculum. Standards for creating assessment.
B. Performance Standards
Performance standards define as what learners should be able to demonstrate.
In mathematics, this includes Solving non-routine problems, explaining reasoning, constructing mathematical arguments, and modeling real-world situations, as shown in the example above. This was given to students to apply in a real-world scenario, the topic of Arithmetic Series and Sequence.
Performance standards guided the development of authentic tasks that require students to apply knowledge in meaningful contexts.
Sample DBOW (Definitive Budget of Work) for Mathematics. This sample is taken from grade 10 MELCS (Most Essential Learning Competencies).
C. Learning Competency Mapping
Each assessment instrument is deliberately mapped to specific learning competencies to ensure measurable and observable outcomes. In a school setting, teachers create lessons and weave it according to the list of learning competency presented by the national level standards. Each school has different ways to implement this in their specific context. Currently, in public school setting. A DBOW (Definitive Budget of Work) is assigned to each teacher per grade level. The alignment of lesson and mapping of the competency in the lesson plan creating shall be indicative of the understanding of these competencies and the unpacking of big ideas.
Yet, as what this teacher thinks, instead of lesson planning. We should be focusing on the systemic wherein we will be looking at the curriculum as a whole an compare it to the national level standards or international standards for global alignments.
The lack of collaboration of teachers in a school level incapacitates the function of what school is for. As a result, teachers plan and check horizontal and vertical alignment of curriculum.
Vertical alignment shows consistency of learning competencies of subject matter across grade level, whereas horizontal alignment is the harmony of competencies from one subject to another within grade level standards.
This figure shows the structural alignment of one's practices in the teaching-learning process. The structural alignment is affected by many other forms of alignment, such as Vertical (within subject matter), Horizontal (across subject matters), Cultural (of which students bring to the classroom), and environmental (of which the teacher shapes classroom practices, including the values and conduciveness of the physical aspect of the learning. Heneman and Milanowski (2007)
The image below shows curriculum mapping for AP subject. It presented the unit. In one lesson, the activity and assessment is aligned with the content and performance standards (goal of the curriculum) and the Most Essential Learning competencies as presented:
This shows the alignment of the Goals (Content and Performance Standards, MELCs, objectives) to Teaching and Learning Activities (Process upon which the students receive and acquire skills and knowledge and values), and Feedback and Assessment (comes in many forms upon which the teacher).
E. Data-Informed Decision Making
Assessment is the essential part of the tripartite figure of alignment in curriculum design. The importance of assessment in education depends on the function in the teaching-learning process. Teachers used diagnostic assessment to gauge students level of understanding for certain topic in a specific grade level. Formative assessment, on the other hand, is used for the purpose of monitoring student learning during the teaching-learning process. Teachers used this as a sign to tweak lessons and focus on essential competencies or skills learners need to master. Lastly, summative assessment is used to evaluate (judge) students' learning and put value on the learner's output and cognitive abilities.
Frequency of Correct Response
Frequency of Correct Response
This is a tool used to analyze students (per class) understanding of the concept. Higher mps means students achieved mastery, lower mps score mean students achieved no mastery or low mastery and informed instructional practice of the teacher to reteach.
Assessment is used for instructional refinement (Boston et.al, 2018; Murnane, et.al, 2024; Van der Kleij, et. L, 2015; Bambrick-Santoyo, 2010; Ole, et.al, 2023; Stitt-Bergh, et.al, 2019). This allows the teacher to propose specific assessment forms that align the teaching approach with students' cognitive and learning styles, thereby improving student learning (Saracho, 2003). Creating an appropriate assessment form for each student's cognitive level allows scaffolding to work and guide students to reach their highest potential (Doolittle, 1995; van Kuyk,2011; Chaiklin,2003).
Understanding context enables meaningful assessment; adhering to standards ensures accountability and excellence.
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