Evaluation and assessment is for everyone

by Deborah Nusche and Claire Shewbridge
Analysts, Directorate for Education and Skills

Some may ask if all the time, money and effort invested in evaluation and assessment is worth it. The terms evaluation and assessment may strike fear into the hearts of some students, teachers and parents. Are they not just a way to control and constrain what goes in the classroom? Is this just not more unnecessary work for us? What on earth do they have to do with student learning?

A three-year comprehensive review of evaluation and assessment approaches around the world was brought to its grand finale in Oslo last week. The idea of the international meeting was for the OECD to put its own advice into practice: after conducting a major review of policies, do not put the results on a shelf but put them to good use. Bring stakeholders together, discuss the results of the evaluation exercise, and identify strategies to go forward. Already, over the past three years, countries that were reviewed by the OECD have done this on a national level and the results have been pretty impressive.

The main purpose of the OECD’s review was to investigate how these could be embedded in teaching and learning processes themselves, to improve student learning and give helpful information for all those involved:

Students need to be clear about what they are aiming to learn and how they can evaluate their own progress. Engaging students as active participants in assessment will help them develop capabilities in analysing their own learning and becoming self-directed learners. The representative of the European School Student Unions said it very clearly at the conference: Students do not want to be ‘passive objects’ of evaluation and assessment, they want to be actively involved, not just in their own assessment, but also in the evaluation of their teachers and schools.

Teachers also need assessment information that is reliable and consistent across schools in order to understand student strengths and weaknesses in relation to expected standards, to target future teaching and improve classroom instruction. They need feedback on their own performance to guide their professional and career development, and they should contribute to the self-evaluation of their schools.

School leaders can use school self-evaluation processes to steer whole-school improvement and provide accountability information to their communities, employers and the educational administration.

Parents typically want to know how their children are doing and how schools are helping them achieve. Providing evaluation and assessment information to parents is key to building strong school-home partnerships and can facilitate school choice.

Policy makers need aggregated information to monitor the performance of schools and education systems and ensure that national education goals are met and society at large also needs credentials about the quality of education and the achievement of standards in the education system.

Bringing the pieces together 
But if so many actors within the education system are involved in designing and using assessment and evaluation, is there not a risk that too many cooks spoil the broth? Most countries have a whole range of provisions for student assessment, teacher appraisal and school evaluation that have developed quite independently of each other. A key concern is to bring all these pieces together in a coherent framework to create synergies for learning. The OECD Review gives some ideas on how to do so:

• Take a comprehensive approach: All the components of assessment and evaluation – student assessment, teacher appraisal, school evaluation, school leader appraisal and education system evaluation - should form a coherent whole. This will generate synergies, avoid duplication and prevent inconsistency of objectives.
• Align evaluation and assessment with educational goals: Evaluation and assessment should align with the principles embedded in educational goals. 
• Focus on improving classroom practices: To optimise the potential of evaluation and assessment to improve what is at the heart of education – student learning – policy makers should promote the regular use of evaluation and assessment results for improvements in the classroom.
• Build consensus: Ensure that all the stakeholders are involved early and understand the benefits. 
• Place students at the centre: Students should be fully engaged with their learning and empowered to assess their own progress. The development of critical thinking and social competencies should also be monitored.

Links:
OECD Review on Evaluation and Assessment Frameworks for Improving School Outcomes
Synergies for Better Learning: An International Perspective on Evaluation and Assessment
Photo credit: © AKS - Fotolia.com

The language of dissent

Language matters to Lea Rosenberg.

The former English teacher and high school principal who is now Deputy Director General of International Relations and UNESCO at Israel’s Ministry of Education recently made an impassioned appeal to fellow education policy makers that they, essentially, watch their language when talking about education. Using the terminology of other disciplines to discuss education policy, Rosenberg argues, does a disservice to education. Rosenberg was speaking at a high-level meeting of representatives of education ministries held at the OECD’s Paris headquarters in mid-October.
Marilyn Achiron, Editor at the OECD’s Directorate for Education, spoke with her after the meeting.

Lea Rosenberg: Throughout the years, when different paradigms from different worlds were introduced into the world of education, people were fascinated by the opportunities that these paradigms gave to education. They enabled larger and deeper views into what education is all about. At the same time, the status of education, compared to other professions, is usually low. So take these two things together and you arrive at where we are now.

We have talked about education through the sociological paradigm, where students are not people, but parts of populations. Of course, teachers should take note of the populations to which students belong and understand them, but that should not be the leading language of education. It is a “foreign language”. Understanding how students and teachers function is fine, but when we used the paradigm of psychology to discuss education – another “foreign language” – teachers started understanding students better, but they lost the notion of demanding something from students. If you don’t demand something from students, you cripple them; you treat them as though they are incapable.

Now we are using management language – talking of “inputs” and “outputs” – and we’re disappointed that the results are not what we expect. Principals and teachers should know and understand this language, but it is not education’s work. The same is true with the language of economics. We depend on economics: it is crucial, elementary to our existence. But this is not the language that should lead the world of education. For example, the word “accountability”: it deals with accounts. I would prefer that our teachers are “responsible” and not only “accountable”. Responsibility covers the range of human emotions, behaviours and activities – elements, such as caring, that are not covered by “accountability”. Students might do well in mathematics, but their morals and values might be terrible.

That is what we should be concerned about: What kind of person comes out of our education systems? The language of education focuses on being responsible for students as whole beings. Of course achievement is important, but students are human beings. The language of education is one of helping students overcome difficulties, taking differences into account, steering students through their mistakes so that they learn something and can then move on. Terminology affects the way we see the world. It affects the way we see students and the way we act towards them. This is especially true in education, where language is the only tool we have.

Links: 
Languages in a Global World: Learning for Better Cultural Understanding
Preparing Teachers and Developing School Leaders for the 21st Century - Lessons from around the world
Photo credit: Dictionary entry for "education"/Shutterstock