Pre-Assessment or Diagnostic Assessment
Pre-Assessment or Diagnostic Assessment
Pre-Assessment or Diagnostic Assessment
Portfolio assessment is a term with many meanings, and it is a process that can serve a variety of
purposes. A portfolio is a collection of student work that can exhibit a student's efforts, progress,
and achievements in various areas of the curriculum. A portfolio assessment can be an
examination of student-selected samples of work experiences and documents related to outcomes
being assessed, and it can address and support progress toward achieving academic goals,
including student efficacy. Portfolio assessments have been used for large-scale assessment and
accountability purposes (e.g., the Vermont and Kentucky statewide assessment systems), for
purposes of school-to-work transitions, and for purposes of certification. For example, portfolio
assessments are used as part of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards
assessment of expert teachers. While portfolios have broad potential and can be useful for the
assessments of students' performance for a variety of purposes in core curriculum areas, the
contents and criteria used to assess portfolios must be designed to serve those purposes. For
example, showcase portfolios exhibit the best of student performance, while working
portfolios may contain drafts that students and teachers use to reflect on process. Progress
portfolios contain multiple examples of the same type of work done over time and are used to
assess progress. If cognitive processes are intended for assessment, content and rubrics must be
designed to capture those processes.
Portfolio assessments can provide both formative and summative opportunities for monitoring
progress toward reaching identified outcomes. By setting criteria for content and outcomes,
portfolios can communicate concrete information about what is expected of students in terms of
the content and quality of performance in specific curriculum areas, while also providing a way
of assessing their progress along the way. Depending on content and criteria, portfolios can
provide teachers and researchers with information relevant to the cognitive processes that
students use to achieve academic outcomes.
As more and more educators use portfolios, they increasingly recognize that the process has the
power to transform instruction. Some teachers, however, are confused by the many types of
portfolios, their different uses, and the practical issues surrounding storage, ownership, and the
like.
The three major types of portfolios are: working portfolios, display portfolios, and assessment
portfolios. Although the types are distinct in theory, they tend to overlap in practice.
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Consequently, a district's program may include several different types of portfolios, serving
several different purposes. As a result, it is important for educators to be clear about their goals,
the reasons they are engaging in a portfolio project, and the intended audience for the portfolios.
Working Portfolios
A working portfolio is so named because it is a project “in the works,” containing work in
progress as well as finished samples of work. It serves as a holding tank for work that may be
selected later for a more permanent assessment or display portfolio.
A working portfolio is different from a work folder, which is simply a receptacle for all work,
with no purpose to the collection. A working portfolio is an intentional collection of work guided
by learning objectives.
Purpose
The major purpose of a working portfolio is to serve as a holding tank for student work. The
pieces related to a specific topic are collected here until they move to an assessment portfolio or
a display portfolio, or go home with the student. In addition, the working portfolio may be used
to diagnose student needs. Here both student and teacher have evidence of student strengths and
weaknesses in achieving learning objectives, information extremely useful in designing future
instruction.
Audience
Given its use in diagnosis, the primary audience for a working portfolio is the student, with
guidance from the teacher. By working on the portfolio and reflecting on the quality of work
contained there, the student becomes more reflective and self-directed. With very young
children, however, the primary audience is the teacher, with the participation of the student.
Parents may be another important audience of a working portfolio, since it can help inform
parent/teacher conferences. The portfolio is particularly useful for those parents who do not
accept the limitations of their child's current skills or do not have a realistic picture of the way
their child is progressing compared with other children. In such situations, evidence from a
portfolio can truly “speak a thousand words.” In addition, a portfolio can serve to document the
progress a student has made, progress of which a parent may be unaware.
Process
A working portfolio is typically structured around a specific content area; pieces collected relate
to the objectives of that unit and document student progress toward mastery of those objectives.
Therefore, sufficient work must be collected to provide ample evidence of student achievement.
Because diagnosis is a major purpose of the working portfolio, some of the pieces included will
show less than complete understanding and will help shape future instruction.
The working portfolio is reviewed as a whole and its pieces evaluated—either periodically or at
the end of the learning unit. Some pieces may be shifted to an assessment portfolio to document
student acquisition of instructional objectives. Other pieces may be moved to a student's own
display (or best works) portfolio or celebration of individual learning. Still other pieces are sent
home with the student.
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As students move pieces from a working portfolio into either an assessment or display portfolio,
they describe the reasons for their choices. In this process of selection and description, students
must reflect seriously on their work and what it demonstrates about them as learners. As students
and their teachers look through the portfolio, they set short-term objectives for achieving certain
curriculum goals. The portfolio thus provides evidence of strengths and weaknesses and serves to
define the next steps in learning.
Display, Showcase, or Best Works Portfolios
Probably the most rewarding use of student portfolios is the display of the students' best work,
the work that makes them proud. Students, as well as their teachers, become most committed to
the process when they experience the joy of exhibiting their best work and interpreting its
meaning. Many educators who do not use portfolios for any other purpose engage their students
in the creation of display portfolios. The pride and sense of accomplishment that students feel
make the effort well worthwhile and contribute to a culture for learning in the classroom.
Purpose
The purpose of a display portfolio is to demonstrate the highest level of achievement attained by
the student. Collecting items for this portfolio is a student's way of saying “Here's who I am.
Here is what I can do.”
A display portfolio may be maintained from year to year, with new pieces added each year,
documenting growth over time. And while a best works portfolio may document student efforts
with respect to curriculum objectives, it may also include evidence of student activities beyond
school (a story written at home, for example).
There are many possibilities for the contents of a display portfolio. The benefits of portfolios
were first recognized in the area of language arts, specifically in writing. Therefore, writing
portfolios are the most widely known and used. But students may elect to put many types of
items in their portfolio of best works—a drawing they like, a poem they have written, a list of
books they have read, or a difficult problem they have solved.
Audience
Since the student selects her or his own best works, the audience for a display portfolio is that
student and the other important individuals, such as parents and older siblings, to whom the
student chooses to show the portfolio. Other audiences include a current teacher or next year's
teacher, who may learn a lot about the student by studying the portfolio.
In addition, a student may submit portfolios of best works to colleges or potential employers to
supplement other information; art students have always used this approach. The contents of these
portfolios are determined by the interests of the audience and may include videos, written work,
projects, resumés, and testimonials. The act of assembling a display portfolio for such a practical
purpose can motivate high school students to produce work of high quality.
Process
Most pieces for a display portfolio are collected in a working portfolio of school projects.
Sometimes, however, a student will include a piece of work from outside the classroom, such as
a project from scouts or a poem written at home. Students select the items to be included in a
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display portfolio. Their choices define them as students and as learners. In making their
selections, students illustrate what they believe to be important about their learning, what they
value and want to show to others.
Assessment Portfolios
The primary function of an assessment portfolio is to document what a student has learned. The
content of the curriculum, then, will determine what students select for their portfolios. Their
reflective comments will focus on the extent to which they believe the portfolio entries
demonstrate their mastery of the curriculum objectives. For example, if the curriculum specifies
persuasive, narrative, and descriptive writing, an assessment portfolio should include examples
of each type of writing. Similarly, if the curriculum calls for mathematical problem solving and
mathematical communication, then the display portfolio will include entries documenting both
problem solving and communication, possibly in the same entry.
Purpose
The primary purpose of an assessment portfolio is to document student learning on specific
curriculum outcomes. As such, the items in the portfolio must be designed to elicit the
knowledge and skill specified in the outcomes. It is the assessment tasks that bring the
curriculum outcomes to life; only by specifying precisely what students must do and how well
they must do it do these statements of learning have meaning.
Assessment portfolios may be used to demonstrate mastery in any curricular area. They may
span any period of time, from one unit to the entire year. And they may be dedicated to one
subject or many subjects. For example, a teacher may wish to have evidence that a child has
sufficient skills in a content area to move to the next level or grade. The criteria for moving on
and the types of necessary evidence must be established. Then the portfolio is compiled and
assessed.
Audience
There are many possible audiences for an assessment portfolio, depending on its specific
purpose. One audience may be the classroom teacher, who may become convinced that the
objectives of an instructional unit have been mastered or who may decide to place a student in
advanced classes or special sections. Alternatively, the audience may be the school district or
even the state, seeking documentation of student learning, and permitting a student to move to
the high school or receive a diploma. A secondary, though very important, audience is always the
student, who provides evidence of significant learning.
Process
There are eight basic steps in developing an assessment portfolio system. Since portfolio entries
represent a type of performance, these steps resemble the principles for developing good
performance assessments.
1. Determine the curricular objectives to be addressed through the portfolio.
2. Determine the decisions that will be made based on the portfolio assessments. Will the
assessments be used for high-stakes assessment at certain levels of schooling (for example, to
enable students to make the transition from middle school to high school)?
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3. Design assessment tasks for the curricular objectives. Ensure that the task matches
instructional intentions and adequately represents the content and skills (including the
appropriate level of difficulty) students are expected to attain. These considerations will
ensure the validity of the assessment tasks.
4. Define the criteria for each assessment task and establish performance standards for each
criterion.
5. Determine who will evaluate the portfolio entries. Will they be teachers from the students'
own school? Teachers from another school? Or does the state identify and train evaluators?
6. Train teachers or other evaluators to score the assessments. This will ensure the reliability of
the assessments.
7. Teach the curriculum, administer assessments, collect them in portfolios, score assessments.
8. As determined in Step 2, make decisions based on the assessments in the portfolios.
Challenges
Assessment portfolios raise many important practical and technical issues, particularly if they are
used for high-stakes decisions. Portfolios can be used to establish that students have mastered the
essential elements of the curriculum, and high school graduation can be contingent on
demonstrating this mastery. In cases like this, it is essential that the procedures used to evaluate
student work in the portfolio meet standards of validity and reliability.
How will student products be evaluated if student writing or mathematical problem solving is
included in the portfolio? How will practitioners be sure that the products are good enough, that
the work is of high quality? By what criteria will student work be judged? To answer these
questions, educators develop scoring guides, or rubrics, with clear criteria and descriptions of
different levels of performance. And to ensure inter-rater agreement, they collect samples of
student work at the different levels (called anchor papers) and conduct training sessions for
assessors.
But even in a classroom environment where the stakes are lower, assessment portfolios are more
formal affairs than those designed to diagnose learning needs (working portfolios) or to celebrate
learning (best works portfolios). In an assessment portfolio, the content matters and it must
demonstrate and document what students have learned. The origin of an assessment portfolio
may be quite external to the student and his world. The mandate may come from outside the
classroom—for instance, via curriculum committees and board action, or directly from the state
department of education. Moreover, the eventual owner of the portfolio's contents may be
someone other than the student. In addition, the selection process is more controlled and dictated,
since the portfolio entries must document particular learning outcomes. And there may be no
opportunity for the student to “show off” his or her portfolio.
Assessment in Early Childhood Education
THE USE OF TESTS AND ASSESSMENTS as instruments of education policy and practice is
growing. Throughout the school years, tests are used to make decisions about tracking,
promotion or retention, placement, and graduation. Many teachers use tests or assessments to
identify learning differences among students or to inform instructional planning. Widespread
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public concern to raise education standards has led states increasingly to use large-scale
achievement tests as instruments of accountability (National Research Council, 1999a). Given
their prevalence in the education system as a whole, it is not entirely surprising that the use of
tests
1
Although the terms are not mutually exclusive, the word “test” tends to be used to refer to
standardized instruments, formally administered, and designed to minimize all
differences in the conditions of testing presented to test takers. There are both
individually administered and group-administered standardized tests. The group-
administered multiple-choice format is what people often have in mind when the term is
used. Assessments embrace a wide array of formats (observations, performance
measures, portfolios, essays). The term “assessment” is often used to communicate the
intention to build a richer picture of the ways in which people think, learn, and work.
They frequently are conducted over a longer period of time than group tests permit.
Standardized tests focus on individual differences, answering the question “How does
this individual compare with all others in the reference population?” Assessments reflect
the interest of modern cognitive theory in the processes of learning and knowing in a
given individual.
and assessments is increasingly common in preschool settings as well.
In the current early childhood education milieu, there are four primary reasons for assessment:
Assessment to support learning,
Assessment for identification of special needs,
Assessment for program evaluation and monitoring trends, and
Assessment for school accountability.
Assessment to support learning, the first and most important of these purposes, refers to the use
of assessments to provide teachers with information that can serve as a basis for pedagogical and
curriculum decisions. Information presented in earlier chapters— about early learning, about the
episodic course of development in any given child and the enormous variability among young
children in background and preparation for school, about the centrality of adult responsiveness to
healthy cognitive and emotional development—leads to the conclusion that what preschool
teachers do to promote learning needs to be based on what each child brings to the
interaction. Assessment broadly conceived is a set of tools for finding this out. The second
reason for assessing young children is to diagnose suspected mental, physical, or emotional
difficulties that may require special services. The final two purposes can be combined under the
rubric of assessment to make policy decisions. Each of these purposes represents an important
opportunity for test or assessment data to inform judgment—if the tests or assessments are used
carefully and well. No single type of assessment can serve all of these purposes; the intended
purpose will determine what sort of assessment is most appropriate. There is much to be learned
from the experience in other educational settings about the uses, misuses, and unintended
consequences of testing. And there is much to remember about the developmental status of
young children, including the nascent state of their attention and self-regulation abilities, that
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makes assessment even more challenging than in other populations. The psychometric models on
which testing has traditionally been based make standardized tests particularly vulnerable to
misinterpretation. Experts agree on a number of guiding principles that apply to any setting in
which tests or assessments are used in decision processes. Perhaps the most important of these is
that no single procedure should be the sole basis for decisions, or, put positively, important
educational decisions should be grounded in multiple sources of information. These might
include individual assessments of various sorts, standardized tests, observation, investigation of
social and cultural background, and interviews. A corollary of this statement is that no test score
should be looked on as infallible or immutable. A second point of consensus is the requirement
of measurement validity. Whether test or assessment, formal or informal, criterion- or norm-
referenced, the measures being used need to have a reasonable level of accuracy. This means that
school officials and teachers must inform themselves. They need to understand the strengths and
weaknesses of various assessment approaches for the purposes they have in mind. They need to
know what the research says about the specific instruments they intend to use. They need to
develop sophistication in the interpretation of the information gleaned from tests and
assessments. A third important principle is borrowed from the Hippocratic Oath to first do no
harm. When test or assessment information is used for placement, school readiness, or other
high-stakes decisions, it behooves educators to pay attention to the consequences and to make
sure that they are educationally beneficial.
References:
http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/197171/chapters/The-Types-of-Portfolios.aspx
Schools all over the country are beginning to develop a culture of data, which is the integration
of data into the day-to-day operations of a school in order to achieve classroom, school, and
district-wide goals. One of the biggest difficulties that comes with this integration is determining
what data will provide an accurate reflection of those goals.
Such considerations are particularly important when the goals of the school aren’t put into terms
that lend themselves to cut and dry analysis; school goals often describe the improvement of
abstract concepts like “school climate.”
Schools interested in establishing a culture of data are advised to come up with a plan before
going off to collect it. They need to first determine what their ultimate goal is and what
achievement of that goal looks like. An understanding of the definition of success allows the
school to ask focused questions to help measure that success, which may be answered with the
data.
For example, if a school is interested in increasing literacy, one focused question might ask:
which groups of students are consistently scoring lower on standardized English tests? If a
school is interested in promoting a strong climate of inclusiveness, a focused question may be:
do teachers treat different types of students unequally?
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These focused questions are analogous to research questions asked in academic fields such as
psychology, economics, and, unsurprisingly, education. However, the question itself does not
always indicate which instrument (e.g. a standardized test, student survey, etc.) is optimal.
If the wrong instrument is used, the results can quickly become meaningless or uninterpretable,
thereby rendering them inadequate in determining a school’s standing in or progress toward their
goals.
The validity of an instrument is the idea that the instrument measures what it intends to measure.
Validity pertains to the connection between the purpose of the research and which data the
researcher chooses to quantify that purpose.
For example, imagine a researcher who decides to measure the intelligence of a sample of
students. Some measures, like physical strength, possess no natural connection to intelligence.
Thus, a test of physical strength, like how many push-ups a student could do, would be an invalid
test of intelligence.
Reliability, on the other hand, is not at all concerned with intent, instead asking whether the test
used to collect data produces accurate results. In this context, accuracy is defined by consistency
(whether the results could be replicated).
The property of ignorance of intent allows an instrument to be simultaneously reliable and
invalid.
Returning to the example above, if we measure the number of pushups the same students can do
every day for a week (which, it should be noted, is not long enough to significantly increase
strength) and each person does approximately the same amount of pushups on each day, the test
is reliable. But, clearly, the reliability of these results still does not render the number of pushups
per student a valid measure of intelligence.
Because reliability does not concern the actual relevance of the data in answering a focused
question, validity will generally take precedence over reliability. Moreover, schools will often
assess two levels of validity:
1. the validity of the research question itself in quantifying the larger, generally more
abstract goal
2. the validity of the instrument chosen to answer the research question
The most basic definition of validity is that an instrument is valid if it measures what it intends
to measure. It’s easier to understand this definition through looking at examples of invalidity.
Colin Foster, an expert in mathematics education at the University of Nottingham, gives the
example of a reading test meant to measure literacy that is given in a very small font size. A
highly literate student with bad eyesight may fail the test because they can’t physically read the
passages supplied. Thus, such a test would not be a valid measure of literacy (though it may be a
valid measure of eyesight). Such an example highlights the fact that validity is wholly dependent
on the purpose behind a test. More generally, in a study plagued by weak validity, “it would be
possible for someone to fail the test situation rather than the intended test subject.” Validity can
be divided into several different categories, some of which relate very closely to one another.
References:
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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242477615_Assessment_of_learning_outcomes_validit
y_and_reliability_of_classroom_tests
Regardless of your opinion of the annual performance review, organizations still need to
have a performance management process. Performance management is a way to provide
feedback, accountability, and documentation for performance outcomes. Even
organizations that are “ditching” the annual review aren’t abandoning accountability,
feedback, and documentation. So, it’s important for organizations to create a process that
works for them.
Here are the five components:
1. Management Involvement. It starts here. Managers are responsible for setting
performance expectations, providing feedback and coaching, and recognizing
excellent work. That doesn’t happen on the sidelines. Managers need to buy into
and be an active part of the performance management process.
2. Goal Setting. High performing individuals and teams have a big hairy audacious
goal (BHAG) that drives their performance. And company cultures that place an
emphasis on goals align employee performance with that BHAG. The connection
creates engagement because employees see how their work helps the company.
3. Learning and Development. Once goals are set, employees need to have the
knowledge and skills to do the work. Companies that want high performance need
to make investments in employee learning and development. It will allow
employees to accomplish their goals – both now and in the future.
4. Feedback and Coaching. Employees want to know how they are performing.
Because they want to do a good job. Managers should regularly tell employees
about their performance – what’s good, what could be improved, and even more
importantly, how to evaluate their own work. When employees can evaluate their
own performance well, they can set their own goals and begin to become self -
learners.
5. Ongoing Conversations. This component brings the other four items (management,
goals, learning, and feedback) together. Organizations should create cultures where
having ongoing discussions about performance goals, learning, coaching, etc. are
happening.
There are many different types of reports, including business, scientific and research reports,
education but the basic steps for writing them are the same. These are outlined below.
Step 1: Decide on the 'Terms of reference'
Step 2: Decide on the procedure
Step 3: Find the information
Step 4: Decide on the structure
Step 5: Draft the first part of your report
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Step 6: Analyse your findings and draw conclusions
Step 7: Make recommendations
Step 8: Draft the executive summary and table of contents
Step 9: Compile a reference list
Step 10: Revise your draft report
Portfolio assessments can provide both formative and summative opportunities for monitoring
progress toward reaching identified outcomes. By setting criteria for content and outcomes,
portfolios can communicate concrete information about what is expected of students in terms of
the content and quality of performance in specific curriculum areas, while also providing a way
of assessing their progress along the way. Depending on content and criteria, portfolios can
provide teachers and researchers with information relevant to the cognitive processes that
students use to achieve academic outcomes.
As more and more educators use portfolios, they increasingly recognize that the process has the
power to transform instruction. Some teachers, however, are confused by the many types of
portfolios, their different uses, and the practical issues surrounding storage, ownership, and the
like.
The three major types of portfolios are: working portfolios, display portfolios, and assessment
portfolios. Although the types are distinct in theory, they tend to overlap in practice.
Consequently, a district's program may include several different types of portfolios, serving
several different purposes. As a result, it is important for educators to be clear about their goals,
the reasons they are engaging in a portfolio project, and the intended audience for the portfolios.
References:
https://www.hrbartender.com/2017/employee-engagement/5-components-performance-
management/