Thoughts on The Appropriacy of Assessment

For the past 22 years it (assessment) has been a constant issue and challenge in my work with English language learners. The truth is, and it is an accepted truth in my profession, that there is no better form of assessment or assessor than the skilled language teacher, we work closely and for extended periods of time with our learners and therefore get to know their abilities, capabilities and aptitudes and are therefore able to make far more detailed accurate judgements than any summative test ever could. However, this 'subjective' form of assessment has not and could not be recognised as entirely valid as none of the recognised criteria for the creation of  a valid test could be applied and ultimately the subjectivity could always be questioned.

Discussion of assessment in the form of formal examination has been an educational strategy driving theme ever since practical examinations to widen access to state employment were introduced in Imperial China approximately 2000 years ago. In the UK formal qualifying examinations were first introduced in the early nineteenth century, industrialisation had led to an ever expanding middle class who now realised that education was a means to improving social status and so encouraged their children to aim for the professions who, in tun, desired to control membership.  Formal examinations were subsequently introduced into the university system, and the educational system in general, as a major part of the selection process.

Historically assessment can be seen as a tool of social control and eduction is required to serve the particular values of the society in which it is placed.

What has always interested me is to what extent culture, both social and academic, affects the development of a particular form of assessment, we know that students are educated differently in different cultures and are also assessed differently; we regularly deal with students who have been accused of plagiarising or committing 'Unfair Practice' for activities which in their culture are acceptable, even required academic performance.

At ELTS we have been doing some ground breaking work over the last 18 months looking, especially, at how we can assess students in a way which provides them with a method with which they can engage, in terms of their reflection on the learning process, providing detailed feedback that offers clearly defined stepping stones to their progress and which allows a great deal of formative and self assessment take place along the way to summative final assessment, and at the same time meeting the requirements of the academic culture in which they have chosen to study.

While engaged in some background reading on this subject I came across the following quotation which I think perfectly supports my introduction and now has a place on my office wall as a constant reminder of the potential pitfalls that need to be reviewed as we meet the ambitions of the direction we are moving in.

A response from the Indians of the Six Nations, 1744, to a suggestion that their send boys to an American College.

“But you, who are wise, must know, that different Nations have different Conceptions of things and you will therefore not take it amiss, if our ideas of this Kind of education happen to not be the same as yours. We have had some Experience of it. Several of our young people were formerly brought up at the Colleges of the Northern Provinces: they were instructed in all your Sciences; but when they came back to us, they were Bad Runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods....neither fit for Hunters, Warriors, nor Counsellors, they were totally good for nothing.

We are, however, not the less oblig’d by your kind Offer, tho we decline accepting it: and, to show our Grateful Sense of it, if the Gentlemen of Virginia will send us a Dozen of their Sons, we will take Care of their Education, instruct them in all we know, and Make Men of them.” 

(Clark.J 1987. Curriculum Renewal in School Foreign Language Learning. Preface)