Assess The Importance Of Learning And Assessment In Research
Understanding learning and assessment
To enable and assess learning it is important to understand how individuals learn in different ways and in different speeds. As a teacher it is important to understand the theories of how and why people learn, so that the individual needs of the learners are addressed. There are many learning theories who have studied how and why people learn some examples are Pavlov, skinner, Watson and Thorndike who are behaviourists.Bruner, Gardener, Lewin, Gagne and Piaget who are cognitivists and constructivists.
Behaviorism looked at learning in a scientific way, theorist of the time believed that they could teach anything as they could condition an animal to behave in a particular way. The person was conditioned …show more content…
to their environment. However behaviorism is very limited, due to the need to repeat the process many times. However behaviorism is still important in today’s classroom in systematic reinforcement of each aspect which helps build up here understanding. Also giving praise and giving the person sense of achievement will indicate the benefit of learning. (Avis.2010)
Cognitivists looked at the learning in different way to behaviorists basing their research on how individuals gained their knowledge. The individual did not just receive it but interpreted it in way that meant something to them. The teacher has to be aware in a class of ten there could be slightly ten different understandings. Bruner said that the learner needs to learn the process so that they could apply it. He felt that facts are often forgotten. He sees that teacher role is one who facilitates the students own discovery known as “inquiry training”
(Walker, 2009).
As a teacher it is important to be aware of all of these learning theories, and not just to focus on particular one. Learning happens in many ways so a teacher needs to be able to use different learning theories and adapt those to the need of the learners ensuring that their learning is fulfilled .Throughout a lesson the teacher will praise effort to ensure that learner continues to try. The teacher will reflect on what has taken place and then look for the learners to put that into practice.
In the presentation I talked about Bruner’s theory and how to apply it into adult education. He states that instructions must be appropriate to the level of the learners for example; being aware of the learner’s learning modes (enactive, iconic and symbolic) will help the teacher to plan and prepare appropriate materials for instruction according to the difficulty that matches learner’s level. Bruner sees that grades and competition are not helpful in the learning process. He states that learners must experience success and failure not as reward and punishment, but as information. (Bruner 1961, p.26).
Bruner’s learning theory is very influential and has direct implications on the teaching practices. We can apply Bruner’s five E‘s on learning process. The five E’s are: engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate. Engage :is to engage all learners(inclusiveness) and get them interested in learning through expressing their ideas and give them opportunities for reflection.Explore:is to get learners directly involved in learning approach like: active learning-work in groups also teacher should act as a facilitator and use enquiry or discovery to drive learning process. Explain: explanations come from, students learning together moreover, the teacher introduces concepts and vocabulary and, determine levels of understanding. Teacher should use the learning approaches like brainstorming and dealing with problem solving assignmet.Elaborate: is that learners expand on concepts learned like: filling in the gaps and, to apply understanding to own environment and real world problems. Learners are able to make connections and lead those connections to further enquiry and new understanding.Evaluate: can occur at all points of instructional process like formative assessment, rubrics, teacher observations, student interview and summative assessment.
There are several methods of assessment to help support and monitor whether learning has taken place. Assessment means that the learner is being tested to perform a task, skill or new body of theoretical knowledge.(Tummons,2007)
Assessment comes in various forms: formative, which is carried out
Throughout the course assessing what learning has taken place.
Summative assessment is carried out near the end of a course or unit to establish what knowledge has been learned. Initial assessment is carried out in the form of interviews, application forms and, qualifications.
The information gathered from these would identify the level of functional skills and identify the learner’s needs.
As a teacher I would use initial assessment, formative assessment and summative assessment. I would use the initial assessment to help me formulate my teaching plan to cover learning styles: visual, auditory and kinesthetic .It is important that the lesson has plenty of variety across those styles to help enforce and reinforce the learning. I would carry out the formative assessment in forms: open and closed questions, practical tasks, and learner observations. I could use games, quizzes, demonstrations and role plays to assess learners.
The summative assessment would be the completed portfolio
From the learner. Assessment is a tool which must give information that is valid and reliable. Valid is ensuring that the correct assessment takes place to what has been learned. Reliable is ensuring that the assessment tasks and process of making judgments and giving feedback are consistent.
Learning and assessment in practice
Since I’m not in placement yet so I assume that I teach ESOL for a group of six learners with different abilities. At the beginning I will ask the organisation to provide me the learners’ profile. The profile allows me to ascertain what qualification they have and their work experience. Differentiation is the process by which differences between learners are accommodated so that all students have the best possible chance of learning. (Petty, 2009)
I develop my lesson plans ensuring that I have a wide variety of learning styles and assessment.
My scheme of work covers the four skills of teaching a language (reading-writing-speaking-listening).
We select the assessment which allowed us to measure student skills in terms of fluency, accuracy, appropriateness, and complexity. Each of the skills areas have criteria features designed to act assessment indicators for the analyzing of students abilities in reading ,writing, listening and speaking. We analyse the usefulness of task according to validity, reliability, fairness, authenticity and practicality.
Summative assessment is the formal testing of what has been learned in order to produce marks or grades. This is different from formative assessment; in which emphasis on on going assessments of different types used to judge how best to help students learn further. The diagnostic assessment is important because it gives the teacher valuable information on how to remediate students and adjust the curriculum to meet each student unique need.
Therefore it is crucial to decide what you want to test in each area of listening, speaking, writing and reading. An example of this is the listening task which assessed word, phrase and sentence recognition skills, scanning skills, and skills relating to understanding cohesive features of spoken …show more content…
tests.
Teachers need to use tests and assessment sensitively. They need to be aware of their limitation and possible biases, and be clear about what they will and won’t reveal. They need to involve learners in the process and to ensure that when testing and assessment is done, it enables learners to perform their best. And, of course, formal testing should work alongside other more informal means of assessment, tutorials, or one to one interviews in relaxed and friendly settings, class discussions, and ongoing coursework and, a focus on what the learners themselves say they want or need to learn. Opportunities for learners to self-assess or at least reflect on their own language, needs, abilities and skills should also play a role.
Keeping track of assessment:
It is important that we keep good records this takes time, but can save time and problems in the long run. The following suggestions may help teachers to organize the record-keeping:
1-Be meticulous: however tired you are at the end of making session, record all the marks immediately. Then put the marks in a different place to the scripts.
2-Be systematic: use class list, when available, as the basis of your records. Otherwise make your own class lists as you go along. File all records of assessment in places where you can find them again. it is possible to spend as much time looking for missing mark sheets as it took to do the original assessment.
3-Use technology to produce assessment records: keep marks as databases on computer, and save by date as a new file every time you add to it, so you are always confident that you are working with the most recent version.Remeber to keep paper copies of each list an an insurance against disaster.
4-Make sure you use the college support team: many colleges require course administration records to be stored in secure. Work with your course administration colleagues to keep the necessary records of students’ progress.
5-Keep your own copies of all assessment data: this applies whether the data are on paper or on disk. Simply photocopying a handwritten list of marks is a valuable precaution. Remind yourself how serious it would be if some of your records of assessments were lost. Never trust anyone, even your dearest colleague, with the only copy of your marks.
6-Keep files, not piles: Consider keeping a progress file for each student as well as a file showing all the data for each assignment by hand in date. Make use of pre-printed marking grids multiple assessment sheets, and so on, where such materials are available to you. If such devices are not available, consider designing your own.
7-post on-going assessment grids on your office door or on a student notice board: This not only helps you keep up your records, but spurs on students who are late submitting work when they see gaps alongside their names.
8-Deal effectively with late assignment: It is particularly important to have a system for dealing with students who habitually miss hand-in dates, and ensuring that such students are treated similarly across all of the courses or modules they may be taking.
9-Keep to turn-round schedules: it is important that students know when their work will be marked and returned to them, and that these schedules are seen to be adhered to by all of the staff who assess their work.
10-Involve students: give students a full print-out of the mark sheet after each piece of work has been returned to a class, and let them check their own script against the master copy. When working with large groups ,it is only too easy to transpose marks accidentally. Students will let you know very quickly if the mark on your records is less than the mark you wrote on their script.
11-Give students responsibility: many colleges expect students to keep their own assessed work and to provide it on demand for external moderators and examiners. You do not have to stack all the files in your office for safe keeping.
My lesson was about the simple past tense. I illustrated the use the simple past tense. Moreover the learners knew the indicators of the past tense like: yesterday, last (week, month, year, and
century)-ago…etc.
I embedded numeracy in using years and dates to talk about the past tense.
Furthermore I embedded literacy in using the regular and irregular verbs and ask learners to read aloud. Learners wrote four sentences in a poster using irregular and regular verbs.
I explained when we use the past tense and give examples in the power point presentation. I implemented Bruner’s theory in teaching and (scaffolding) and I found it very useful .In addition I included all learners to produce a poster and all of them involved in VAK.
At the end of the session learners listen to a song and found out the past tense in that song and whether the verbs are regular or irregular and I operated the four skills (reading-writing-speaking-listening) through different activities. I used formative assessment in posing questions and playing games and the summative assessment in the end of the session to know if the learners understood the lesson
References:
Petty, G. (2009). Evidence Based Teaching: A Practical Approach (2nd Edition ed.). Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes.
Tummons, J. (2007). Assessing Learning in the Lifelong Learning Sector (Second edition ed.). Exeter: Learning Matters.
Ian Reece, Stephen Walker (2009). Teaching, Training and Learning: A practical Guide (6th Edition ed.). Tyne and Wear: Business Education Publishers.
ILM Team leading Specification 2005
Edschool.csueastbay.edu/chapter3behavioural
Geoffpetty.com/differntiation.html
Innovative Learning On line. Available from Innovativelearnng.com/teaching styles
David, A.Sally, B.and Phil(1997)500 tips for further and continuing education lecturers,Kogan PageLimited,London
. .
To enable and assess learning it is important to understand how individuals learn in different ways and in different speeds. As a teacher it is important to understand the theories of how and why people learn, so that the individual needs of the learners are addressed. There are many learning theories who have studied how and why people learn some examples are Pavlov, skinner, Watson and Thorndike who are behaviourists.Bruner, Gardener, Lewin, Gagne and Piaget who are cognitivists and constructivists.
Behaviorism looked at learning in a scientific way, theorist of the time believed that they could teach anything as they could condition an animal to behave in a particular way. The person was conditioned …show more content…
to their environment. However behaviorism is very limited, due to the need to repeat the process many times. However behaviorism is still important in today’s classroom in systematic reinforcement of each aspect which helps build up here understanding. Also giving praise and giving the person sense of achievement will indicate the benefit of learning. (Avis.2010)
Cognitivists looked at the learning in different way to behaviorists basing their research on how individuals gained their knowledge. The individual did not just receive it but interpreted it in way that meant something to them. The teacher has to be aware in a class of ten there could be slightly ten different understandings. Bruner said that the learner needs to learn the process so that they could apply it. He felt that facts are often forgotten. He sees that teacher role is one who facilitates the students own discovery known as “inquiry training”
(Walker, 2009).
As a teacher it is important to be aware of all of these learning theories, and not just to focus on particular one. Learning happens in many ways so a teacher needs to be able to use different learning theories and adapt those to the need of the learners ensuring that their learning is fulfilled .Throughout a lesson the teacher will praise effort to ensure that learner continues to try. The teacher will reflect on what has taken place and then look for the learners to put that into practice.
In the presentation I talked about Bruner’s theory and how to apply it into adult education. He states that instructions must be appropriate to the level of the learners for example; being aware of the learner’s learning modes (enactive, iconic and symbolic) will help the teacher to plan and prepare appropriate materials for instruction according to the difficulty that matches learner’s level. Bruner sees that grades and competition are not helpful in the learning process. He states that learners must experience success and failure not as reward and punishment, but as information. (Bruner 1961, p.26).
Bruner’s learning theory is very influential and has direct implications on the teaching practices. We can apply Bruner’s five E‘s on learning process. The five E’s are: engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate. Engage :is to engage all learners(inclusiveness) and get them interested in learning through expressing their ideas and give them opportunities for reflection.Explore:is to get learners directly involved in learning approach like: active learning-work in groups also teacher should act as a facilitator and use enquiry or discovery to drive learning process. Explain: explanations come from, students learning together moreover, the teacher introduces concepts and vocabulary and, determine levels of understanding. Teacher should use the learning approaches like brainstorming and dealing with problem solving assignmet.Elaborate: is that learners expand on concepts learned like: filling in the gaps and, to apply understanding to own environment and real world problems. Learners are able to make connections and lead those connections to further enquiry and new understanding.Evaluate: can occur at all points of instructional process like formative assessment, rubrics, teacher observations, student interview and summative assessment.
There are several methods of assessment to help support and monitor whether learning has taken place. Assessment means that the learner is being tested to perform a task, skill or new body of theoretical knowledge.(Tummons,2007)
Assessment comes in various forms: formative, which is carried out
Throughout the course assessing what learning has taken place.
Summative assessment is carried out near the end of a course or unit to establish what knowledge has been learned. Initial assessment is carried out in the form of interviews, application forms and, qualifications.
The information gathered from these would identify the level of functional skills and identify the learner’s needs.
As a teacher I would use initial assessment, formative assessment and summative assessment. I would use the initial assessment to help me formulate my teaching plan to cover learning styles: visual, auditory and kinesthetic .It is important that the lesson has plenty of variety across those styles to help enforce and reinforce the learning. I would carry out the formative assessment in forms: open and closed questions, practical tasks, and learner observations. I could use games, quizzes, demonstrations and role plays to assess learners.
The summative assessment would be the completed portfolio
From the learner. Assessment is a tool which must give information that is valid and reliable. Valid is ensuring that the correct assessment takes place to what has been learned. Reliable is ensuring that the assessment tasks and process of making judgments and giving feedback are consistent.
Learning and assessment in practice
Since I’m not in placement yet so I assume that I teach ESOL for a group of six learners with different abilities. At the beginning I will ask the organisation to provide me the learners’ profile. The profile allows me to ascertain what qualification they have and their work experience. Differentiation is the process by which differences between learners are accommodated so that all students have the best possible chance of learning. (Petty, 2009)
I develop my lesson plans ensuring that I have a wide variety of learning styles and assessment.
My scheme of work covers the four skills of teaching a language (reading-writing-speaking-listening).
We select the assessment which allowed us to measure student skills in terms of fluency, accuracy, appropriateness, and complexity. Each of the skills areas have criteria features designed to act assessment indicators for the analyzing of students abilities in reading ,writing, listening and speaking. We analyse the usefulness of task according to validity, reliability, fairness, authenticity and practicality.
Summative assessment is the formal testing of what has been learned in order to produce marks or grades. This is different from formative assessment; in which emphasis on on going assessments of different types used to judge how best to help students learn further. The diagnostic assessment is important because it gives the teacher valuable information on how to remediate students and adjust the curriculum to meet each student unique need.
Therefore it is crucial to decide what you want to test in each area of listening, speaking, writing and reading. An example of this is the listening task which assessed word, phrase and sentence recognition skills, scanning skills, and skills relating to understanding cohesive features of spoken …show more content…
tests.
Teachers need to use tests and assessment sensitively. They need to be aware of their limitation and possible biases, and be clear about what they will and won’t reveal. They need to involve learners in the process and to ensure that when testing and assessment is done, it enables learners to perform their best. And, of course, formal testing should work alongside other more informal means of assessment, tutorials, or one to one interviews in relaxed and friendly settings, class discussions, and ongoing coursework and, a focus on what the learners themselves say they want or need to learn. Opportunities for learners to self-assess or at least reflect on their own language, needs, abilities and skills should also play a role.
Keeping track of assessment:
It is important that we keep good records this takes time, but can save time and problems in the long run. The following suggestions may help teachers to organize the record-keeping:
1-Be meticulous: however tired you are at the end of making session, record all the marks immediately. Then put the marks in a different place to the scripts.
2-Be systematic: use class list, when available, as the basis of your records. Otherwise make your own class lists as you go along. File all records of assessment in places where you can find them again. it is possible to spend as much time looking for missing mark sheets as it took to do the original assessment.
3-Use technology to produce assessment records: keep marks as databases on computer, and save by date as a new file every time you add to it, so you are always confident that you are working with the most recent version.Remeber to keep paper copies of each list an an insurance against disaster.
4-Make sure you use the college support team: many colleges require course administration records to be stored in secure. Work with your course administration colleagues to keep the necessary records of students’ progress.
5-Keep your own copies of all assessment data: this applies whether the data are on paper or on disk. Simply photocopying a handwritten list of marks is a valuable precaution. Remind yourself how serious it would be if some of your records of assessments were lost. Never trust anyone, even your dearest colleague, with the only copy of your marks.
6-Keep files, not piles: Consider keeping a progress file for each student as well as a file showing all the data for each assignment by hand in date. Make use of pre-printed marking grids multiple assessment sheets, and so on, where such materials are available to you. If such devices are not available, consider designing your own.
7-post on-going assessment grids on your office door or on a student notice board: This not only helps you keep up your records, but spurs on students who are late submitting work when they see gaps alongside their names.
8-Deal effectively with late assignment: It is particularly important to have a system for dealing with students who habitually miss hand-in dates, and ensuring that such students are treated similarly across all of the courses or modules they may be taking.
9-Keep to turn-round schedules: it is important that students know when their work will be marked and returned to them, and that these schedules are seen to be adhered to by all of the staff who assess their work.
10-Involve students: give students a full print-out of the mark sheet after each piece of work has been returned to a class, and let them check their own script against the master copy. When working with large groups ,it is only too easy to transpose marks accidentally. Students will let you know very quickly if the mark on your records is less than the mark you wrote on their script.
11-Give students responsibility: many colleges expect students to keep their own assessed work and to provide it on demand for external moderators and examiners. You do not have to stack all the files in your office for safe keeping.
My lesson was about the simple past tense. I illustrated the use the simple past tense. Moreover the learners knew the indicators of the past tense like: yesterday, last (week, month, year, and
century)-ago…etc.
I embedded numeracy in using years and dates to talk about the past tense.
Furthermore I embedded literacy in using the regular and irregular verbs and ask learners to read aloud. Learners wrote four sentences in a poster using irregular and regular verbs.
I explained when we use the past tense and give examples in the power point presentation. I implemented Bruner’s theory in teaching and (scaffolding) and I found it very useful .In addition I included all learners to produce a poster and all of them involved in VAK.
At the end of the session learners listen to a song and found out the past tense in that song and whether the verbs are regular or irregular and I operated the four skills (reading-writing-speaking-listening) through different activities. I used formative assessment in posing questions and playing games and the summative assessment in the end of the session to know if the learners understood the lesson
References:
Petty, G. (2009). Evidence Based Teaching: A Practical Approach (2nd Edition ed.). Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes.
Tummons, J. (2007). Assessing Learning in the Lifelong Learning Sector (Second edition ed.). Exeter: Learning Matters.
Ian Reece, Stephen Walker (2009). Teaching, Training and Learning: A practical Guide (6th Edition ed.). Tyne and Wear: Business Education Publishers.
ILM Team leading Specification 2005
Edschool.csueastbay.edu/chapter3behavioural
Geoffpetty.com/differntiation.html
Innovative Learning On line. Available from Innovativelearnng.com/teaching styles
David, A.Sally, B.and Phil(1997)500 tips for further and continuing education lecturers,Kogan PageLimited,London
. .