ASSESSMENT AND STUDENTS FEARS

By Fredy Alonso Roa

The traditional way of evaluating

Assess and evaluate are totally different concepts, but as it is the same term in Spanish “evaluar” it seems that for decades we did not really understand the importance of differentiate the two concepts, and we assumed that giving a grade for a task was the only way of “evaluar”. The old-fashioned evaluation system imposed from the high-schools remained in so many people that even the ones who became teachers, years after, kept that in their minds and still use it. The traditional test and the oral presentations (lecturing) are useful tools, but unfortunately have been over used in the last decades. And in times when the learning processes are different, the evaluation and the assessment need to be different too.

The student’s fears

The question “teacher, what was my grade? Did I pass?” is commonly heard in our classrooms, but the question “what do I need to know to be better?” causes fear in students. Their background information tells them that they are there to pass or fail, and they feel out of place when you tell them that they are there to learn and become competent. It is so hard to understand that they even ask again “but did I pass?”

The assessment is understood as the tools used to evaluate the learning progress and the process of a student, and a process is something that needs to be carefully seen in all its stages, step by step, testing is only one tool, but it seems that our apprentices consider it like the only and most important.

Changing a paradigm

But if it is difficult for our students imagine how difficult can it be for some teachers who have always count on testing as their primary tool, how to convince our colleagues that the final product is not the most important, that the finish line is not the objective but the path to get there, convince them that assessing the process and supporting your apprentices with permanent guidance and counseling is even more important than handing in the final paper or product. We need to create a new consciousness where the mistakes can be seen as opportunities and the people are not taken as mere numbers but as beings able to learn and change constantly. The hardest task is that we need to make the instructors believe, believe in their students, believe in the abilities of transformation and adjustment of our apprentices, but is our responsibility to show them the correct way.

But why is it so hard to do that, as it is mentioned by Edna Lucena Acosta in her Book “Modelo de evaluación del aprendizaje” the grading is used for teaches as a tool for control and power, and some teachers might feel that there are losing their control over the class. If we want to have a successful assessment in our courses, the first thing we need to change is the perception of their own role, making clear that the instructor role is as a guide, and putting the student in the center of the process as it should be done from the beginning.