Educational Assessment Reassessed: The Usefulness Of Alternative Assessment For Assessing Student Achievements

We have a long history of striving to focus almost totally on the use of traditional tests (e.g. standardized tests of multiple-choice items, true or false questions) to enhance the effectiveness of student learning. It is argued in this paper that the time has come to fundamentally rethink the relationship between assessment and effective schooling since alternative forms of assessment are also viable tools for the assessment of student progress and achievement.Following a cognitive, and social-constructivism theoretical framework, this paper first traces some of the major developments in the learning society and their implications for educational pratices and then reflects on the future of education within a powerful learning environment where teaching, learning, and assessment are fully integrated. In historical perspectives of curriculum, psychology, and assessment, teaching and assessment are exclusively separate where assessment is viewed as something that follows learning, and that comes after teaching. This historical framework conforms to traditional approaches of assessment, both of which derive from behaviorist learning theory. This theory holds that the focus of teaching should be on observable behaviors and skills, teaching and assessment thus should focus exculsively on these observable outcomes and not on the unobservable cognitive processes that underlie observable changes in behaviors and skills.On the contrary, the integrated model of teaching, learning, and assessment stresses a broader range of assessment tools. The assessment in this model is not used to give grades or to satisfy the accountability demands of an external authority, but rather used to capture important learning goals and processes, and more directly, to be used as a part of instruction to support and enhance learning outcomes for students. This reformed model is based on shared principles of curriculum theories, psychological theories and assessment theories characterizing a cognitive, and social-constructivist paradigm. The most obvious reforms in this new model is that more open-ended performance tasks are devised to ensure that students are able to reason critically, to sovle complex problems, and to apply their knowledge in real-world contexts. By making a distinction between the testing culture and assessment culture, this paper offers a number of explanations for the recent growth in interest and in the practice of alternative assessment. Three major forms of alternative assessment strategies (e.g. performance assessment, portfolio assessment and self-, peer-assessment, etc.) are introduced and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. Some key finding emerge from what has been examined. It is believed that alternative assessments are less threatening to students than traditional testing and are likely to enhance students' intrinsic motivation, although the extrinsic motivation of grades remains present. It is also acknowledged in this paper that there is no single ideal assessment format serving as the basis for assessing and evaluating all aspects of student ability and learning growth. This paper, therefore, is of the opinion that a multilevel system that combines both testing and other forms of alternative assessment should be established.