Cherishing The Unmeasurable

Basic education has fundamental influence on the development of mankind and personal life, so it is widely concerned about and criticized by people from every walk of life. Student assessment which directs students' development is especially criticized. Currently student assessment in China is mainly a kind of measurement about knowledge students have learned, among which logic intelligence and linguistic intelligence are emphasized. But this kind of student assessment pays too much attention to test score and entrance ratio into college and thus students' spiritual life is almost reduced to learning such as homework, lessons, test scores and so on.Treating student as a whole person, descriptive student assessment this dissertation put forward is a powerful complement of quantitative assessment and pays attention to unmeasurable things that are important for students' growth but are often neglected. During daily communication between students and teachers, teachers observe, listen to, describe and interpret students' thoughts and behaviors attentively, and they understand students' individual character and existential situation better so that they can give students more helpful and powerful support. The subject of descriptive student assessment can be teachers, parents, students themselves and their classmates. In this dissertation's framework the subject mainly refers to teachers.The first chapter differentiates and analyses some conceptions about descriptive student assessment, interprets it from the angle of philosophy, psychology and sociology, and demonstrates its components, value and meaning.The second chapter discusses the theoretical foundation of descriptive student assessment and demonstrates the philosophical meaning and implications of phenomenology, hermeneutic and existentialism for descriptive student assessment.The third chapter examines and describes the historical evolvement of descriptive student assessment in western countries and China.The fourth chapter reviews the main thoughts of contemporary scholars who propose descriptive student assessment from the level of autobiography curriculum theory, aesthetic curriculum theory and phenomenological curriculum theory.The fifth chapter demonstrates the contents of descriptive student assessment, i.e. students' thinking habits, interests, character, self-concept, relations with others, physical situation. It is designed to give prominence to rich human nature which is usually obscured by test scores and pay more attention to multiple components of human existence.The sixth chapter proposes that teachers can do descriptive student assessment through observation, description, understanding of and listening to students. A practical sample of descriptive assessment is discussed and six descriptive student assessment cases cooperatively written by teachers and I are presented and interpreted.The seventh chapter discusses the difficulties in reality and possible breakthrough of descriptive student assessment.