Evaluation and Assessment

Mike Fleming

Assessment

• can be source of disagreement and tension

• implications for a Framework of reference for Languages of Education

Purposes in relation to

• Classroom teachers

• Policy makers

• Employers

• Parents

• Learners

Tendencies

• the assessment of learning where reliable, objective measures are a high priority

• assessment for learning, implying a more formative approach where there is much more emphasis on feedback to improve performance

Tensions

Broad Narrow

Subjective Objective

Accountability

• ‘policing’ of standards

or

• sharing perceptions and fostering understanding

• role of assessment in helping raise achievement and improve learning

The ‘ideal’

• Reflect full complexity of language as subject

• Motivate learners

• Provide useful and reliable information for employers and policy makers

The challenge

• Complexity of aims and content

• Significance of context

• Potential influence on the curriculum

• Implications of LE and LAC

Possible approaches

• Common ‘standards’ conceived as levels• Minimum statement of desirable level of

achievement, e.g. at school leaving age

Questions

• Should ‘standards’ be inclusive and comprehensive or selective?

• Broad descriptors or atomised statements?

Key consideration

• It may not be so much the framework or system that is the key factor but how the framework or system is actually used in practice that is the key to influencing standards.