CURRICULUM STUDIES MODULE 4

UNIT 12: MEASUREMENT, ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION

The three words measurement, assessment and evaluation need to be understood before they are
used in the teaching/learning process

1.0 MEASUREMENT

“is concerned with the statement of performance usually represented in quantitative terms. Measurement in
schools takes the form of descriptive data obtained from student performance using a measurement
instrument in given learning situation” (Print, 1989:195)

Examples of measurement are: The student

 scored 9/10 on a spelling test

 Obtained 66 per cent in an office practice test
 Completed all the six steps in the science experiment

However, the score alone in measurement has little meaning unless it is interpreted through the use of
assessment procedures.

2.0 ASSESSMENT
“Is any activity used to appraise pupils’ performance – assessment thus consists of techniques you
can use to monitor pupils’ progress in terms of specific learning outcomes” Hayes et al (20000)

Assessment is said to involve the interpretation of measurement data, usually in terms of whether or not an
intended level of achievement has been attained. It is concerned with firstly making sense out of
measurement data and then assigning a mark, a grade, a rank, or some form of qualitative comment to that
previously collected measurement information
(Print, 1989:195)

The assigning of marks may be in quantitative or qualitative terms. In quantitative terms may be in terms of
percentages e.g. 65% whereas in qualitative terms the 65% has to be interpreted e.g. Credit, merit etc.

WHY ASSESS?
There are many reasons why teachers assess learners and keep records of students’ assessment. Some of
the reasons are:
1. To help learners realize what they have learnt
2. To help teachers plan for future learning and remediation.
3. To meet the requirements of a set curriculum (e.g. ECZ, UNZA etc)
4. To meet students’ motivational needs.

Most importantly, from a teaching point of view we assess learners for the following reasons

1. Diagnosis

 Establish entry behaviour

 Diagnose learning difficulties

2. Feedback

 Feedback to students on their progress

 Diagnose strengths and areas for development
 Reinforce learning
1
  Feedback to the teachers
 Motivate students

3. Standards
1. Maintain standards
2. Certificate achievement
3. Facilitate progression
4. Predict future performance/selection
5. Qualify as “safe to practice” e.g. doctor, nurse, driver etc.
6. Data for quality assurance

Other complementary reasons for assessing are that we assess for:

1. Mastery
2. Increasing the motivation of learners.
3. Prediction of an individual’s potential
4. diagnosis of learning
5. diagnosis of teaching
6. Evidence of competence or attainment
7. Certification, classification and comparison with other learners

Assessing for whom?

1. Assessing for learners

2. Assessing for teachers
3. Assessing for outsiders

Learners can be assessed both informally and formally.

In informal assessment, teachers can observe learners and in the same manner students observe their
teachers and judgments are made. Whereas in formal assessment activities and schedules for assessment
are planned, i.e. timetables are set, learners are informed that they are being or will be assessed, results are
said to have a particular purpose which is usually known by both learners and teachers.

Formative and summative assessment

(Often used in the context of evaluation)

Formative – continuous assessment using the results to facilitate learning

Summative assessing is more focused on using the results for some external reasons, perhaps deciding
whether or not a particular learner may be allowed to continue with a course of study or had achieved the
required competences. It may come at the end of the course or phase,

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT TECHNQUES

 Question and answer
 Supply type questions
 Selection type questions
 Projects
 Assignments
 Essays
 Practical tests

SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUES

 End examinations

2
  Supply type questions
 Selection type questions
 Projects
 Assignments
 Essays
 Practical examinations

USES OF FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT RESULTS

 Teachers for ensuring that learning has taken place

 Teachers for improving methods of instruction
 Students to gain an idea of their success

USES OF SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT RESULTS

 Employers for job selection

 Curriculum developers for curriculum review
 Examining/validating bodies for award of grades and diplomas/certificates
 Students for selecting courses of higher study.

3.0 EVALUATION

“An understanding of the role of evaluation in the designing and redesigning of curriculum … is central for
the professional teacher who has the autonomy and responsibility to reflect and deliberate about curriculum”
(Karen Zumwalt, 1989:19 as quoted in Print, 1989)

Gronlund (1981) defines evaluation “as a systematic process of determining the extent to which instructional
objectives are achieved by pupils”

It is important as teachers that we understand and able to distinguish the above terms accurately - and as
Print, (1989:198) states,

“understanding evaluation, the highest level in the hierarchy of terms, is based upon assessment
interpretations of the collected data. With the information gained from measurement and assessment,
educators are in a better position to make value judgments”. (Print, 1989:190)

Evaluation just like assessment can be expressed in both quantitative description(measurement) and
qualitative description (non measurement) plus value judgments. Examples:

 Mary solved 35 out of 40 maths problems (quantitative)

 Mary’s work was neat (qualitative)
 Mary is making good progress in Maths (value judgement)
(Gronlund 1981:6)

According to Print, (1989) evaluation is essentially concerned with two major approaches to making
judgments:

1. Product evaluation which is essentially an evaluation of student performance in a specific

learning context and such an evaluation seeks to determine how well the learner has achieved the
stated objectives of the learning situation. The student’s performance is seen as a product of the
educational experience. In our case a school report is an example of product evaluation.

2. Process evaluation examines the experiences and activities involved in the learning situation.
The learning situation will involve the making judgements about school effectiveness, classroom
interactions, the curriculum and the effectiveness of specific programmes. Some of the things that
may be evaluated will be teaching methods employed and whether the school curricula are
discriminative or not.
3
Types of Evaluation

Evaluation may be conducted at several points in the teaching/learning process both for product and
process evaluation and some of these are:

1. Placement concerned with the entry performance of learners in a sequence of instruction

2. Formative concerned with learning progress during instruction – i.e. course work.

3. Diagnostic concerned with evaluating learning difficulties of learners during instruction.

4. Summative concerned with learner achievement at the end of instruction of course.

(Gronlund, 1981:17)

Below is an illustration to show the relationship between the above three terms i.e. measurement,
assessment and evaluation.

EVALUATION
(judgement)

ASSESSMENT
(data interpretation)

MEASUREMENT
(data collection)

There are terms we need to understand that are used in measurement, assessment and evaluation and
below are some of such terms:

1. CRITERION-REFERENCED

Criterion-referenced assessment/evaluation aims to assess the learner by comparison with some pre-
determined or negotiated criteria. In this case one describes what an individual can do without reference
to the performance of the others. (typed 45 words per minute without error)

As can be seen from the example above, this kind of assessment describes pupil performance in terms of
a specified domain of instructionally relevant tasks.

2. NORM-REFERENCED

4
 Norm-referenced assessment/evaluation aims to compare the achievements of the learner with those of
other learners. (Typed better than 90 per cent of the rest of the class. This kind of assessment describes
pupil performance in terms of the relative position held in some known group).

However For any assessment and evaluation to the meaningful, it must be valid, reliable and usable.

3. VALIDITY

Refers to the extent to which the results of an evaluation procedure serve the particular purpose. The
test/examination should test what it is supposed to test.

4. RELIABILITY

Refers to the consistency of the results. If a teacher obtained similar scores when the same test is
administered to the same group on two different occasions, the evaluation/assessment is said to be
reliable.

5. USABILITY

Refers to the practicality of the procedure and implies nothing about the other qualities present. It should
be economical in both time and money; it should be easily administered and scored and it should provide
results that can be accurately interpreted and applied by all concerned in the administration of a given
evaluation.

Modes of assessing and evaluating learners

A number of instruments can be used for assessing e.g. assignments in form of essay, class exercises,
diagnostic tests, oral tests, written tests, mini research projects, open book examinations etc.

When deciding upon assessment techniques, our starting point is to consider:

 The overall purposes or aims of assessing.

 Who the audience is for the results of the assessment.

There are various categories of questions. The following examples may be helpful in placing the
questions into appropriate categories and are also indicative of the types of objectives for which this
procedure is appropriate.

Questions can be at low or high level. Below is an explanation of both low and high order questions.

Low order cognitive questions

Recall: Does the student recall what he or she has seen or read?

Comprehension: Does the student understand what he or she recalls?

Application: Can the student apply the rules and techniques to solve
Problems that have single correct answers?

High order cognitive questions:

Analysis: Can the student identify motives and causes, make inferences and give examples
to support his or her statement?

Synthesis: Can the student make predictions, solve problems or produce interesting
expositions of ideas, or problems?

5
Evaluation: Can the participant judge the quality of ideas, or problem solutions, or works of art?
Can he or she give rationally based opinions on issues or controversies?

Domain Level Example question

Cognitive Knowledge (or Define the term Filing
simple recall)

Comprehension Explain the meaning of discount as it relates

(or understanding) to buying and selling

Application If the goods were bought at K50,000 and

sold at K121,450 what would be the profit?

Analysis(pulling What method does the Layer use in the case

an idea apart) study that cause the article to be biased?

Snythesis How would you have improved upon the

(putting together strategy employed in this counseling case
something new study?
Design a three bed roomed house
Evaluation (or What do you think would be the best
making and approach to use in this case study?
defending a
judgment)

Affective Receiving How interesting was your visit to the school

Responding How did you feel after talking to the

HIV/AIDS patients?

Valuing What action would you take on teachers who

discriminate against pupils who are
HIV/AIDS positive

Types of questions
1. First order questions: A first order question may be defined as any question that has served its
purpose as soon as an acceptable answer it given.

2. Probing questions: A probing question is asked to encourage students go beyond their initial
responses to explain themselves further. This can be done by the facilitator asking participants to
provide examples, illustration, rationales and so on.

3. Open-ended questions: an open-ended question has no definite right or wrong answer. A question
such as “What do you think about the Law of inheritance?”

4. Convergent questions: These are arranged in a series and are designed to ‘converge” on a
particular point or idea. For example, “How does HIV/AIDS pandemic affect the economy?”
6
 5. Divergent questions: These are asked to draw the participants’ attention away from one point and
allow it creative freedom to settle on a different but related point. Divergent questions are particularly
useful in inspiring student discovery of analogous situations. E.g. “What present-day parallels do we
have, if any, to the solutions of combating child abuse?”

As you prepare to assess your learners, you may use subject or objective test items. The objective test
provides the pupils/learners with a highly structured task that limits the pupil’s response to supplying a word.
Number, or symbol or to selecting the answer from among a given number of alternatives. While the essay
tests permit the pupils to respond by selecting, organizing and presenting those facts the student considers
appropriate. (Gronlund, 1981:153) He further states that “the preparation of a set of relevant rest items
involves:

1. Matching the test items to the learning outcomes as directly as possible;

2. Obtaining a representative sample of all intended outcomes
3. Selecting the proper level of item difficulty
4. Eliminating irrelevant barriers to the answers
5. Preventing unintended clues to the answer
6. Focusing on improving leaning and instruction

The tests usually constructed by most teachers may be classified as objective or essay tests which can be
further subdivided as follows:

Objective tests:

A Supply type
1. Short answer
2. Completion

B Selection type
1. True-false or alternative-response
2. matching
3. Multiple choice

Essay type

A Extended response
B Restricted response

USES OF SHORT-ANSWER ITEMS

(Gronlund, 1981)

Below are some of the examples of the uses of short answer items as illustrated by Gronlund, 1981:156

Knowledge of terminology
 Lines on a weather map which joins points of the same barometric pressure are called (isobars).

Knowledge of specific facts

 A member of the Parliament in Zambia is elected to a term of (5) Years

Knowledge of principles
 If the temperature of a gas is held constant while the pressure applied to it is increased, what will happen
to its volume? (It will decrease)

Knowledge of method of procedure

 What device is used to detect whether an electric charge is positive or negative? (electroscope).

7
Simple interpretations of data
 How many syllables are there in the word Argentina? (4)
 In the number 612, what value does the 6 represent? (600)
 In the triangle below, what is the number of degree in each angle?(60)

MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS

Multiple choice questions consists of two parts: a stem and a number of options. The stem consists of the
questions or statement which must be answered by choosing one of the options. The options are plausible
answers or concluding statements from which one option must be selected. (Reece and Walker, 1997)

Or

A multiple choice item consists of a problem/stem and a list of suggested solutions which is stated either as a
direct question or an incomplete statement called the stem of the item. The correct answer alternative is
called merely the answer while the remaining alternatives are called distracters.

Below are some of the examples of multiple choice test items where there is one absolutely correct answer:

Direct-question form:

In which one of the following cities is the capital of Zambia located?

A Livingstone
B Ndola
C Lusaka
D Kitwe

USES OF MULTIPLE CHOICE ITEMS (Examples drawn from Gronlund, 1981:180-185)

1. Measuring Knowledge of terminology

Which one of the following words has the same meaning as egress?
A Depress
B Enter
C Exit
D Regress

Which one of the following statements best defines the word egress?
A An expression of disapproval
B An act of leaving an enclosed place
C Proceeding to a higher level
D Proceeding to a lower level

What is meant by the word egress in the following sentence: “The astronaut hopes he can now make
a safe egress”?
A Separation from the rocket
B entry into the earth’s atmosphere
C Landing on the water
D Escape from the space capsule

2 Knowledge of specific facts

Examples
 Who was the first United States Astronaut to orbit the earth in space?
 What was the name of the missile which launched the first United States astronaut into
orbital flight around the earth?
 When did a United States astronaut first orbit the earth in space?
 Where did the Friendship Seven capsule land after the first United

8
3 Knowledge of principles

Examples
 The principle of capillary action helps explain how fluids ..
 Which one of the following principles of taxation is characteristic of the income tax?

4 Knowledge of methods and procedures

Examples
 Which one of the following methods of locating a specimen under the microscope is most
desirable?
 To make treaties, the President of the United States must have the consent of the…
 If you were making a scientific study of a problem, your first step should be the …

Measuring Outcomes at the Understanding and Application Levels

5. Ability to identify application of facts and principles

Examples
 Which one of the following is an example of a chemical element?
 In each of the following sentences circle the word that makes the sentence correct.
 Which one of the following best illustrates the principle of capillarity?
 Pascal’s law can be used to explain the operations of
 Which one of the following best illustrates the law of diminishing returns?

6. Ability to interpret cause-and-effect relationships

Examples
 Bread will not become moldy as rapidly if placed in a refrigerator because:
 There is an increased quantity of carbon monoxide produced when fuel is burned in a limited
supply of oxygen because
 Investing money in common stock provides protection against loss of assets during inflation
because common stock ..

7 Ability to justify methods and procedures

Examples
 Why is adequate lighting necessary in a balanced aquarium?
 Why do farmers rotate their crops?
 Why is nickel used in the process of changing cottonseed oil to a solid fat?

Incomplete-statement form:

The capital of Zambia is located in

A Livingstone
B Ndola
C Lusaka
D Kitwe

It should be noted however that not all knowledge can be measured or stated in such precise terms where
there is only one correct answer. Questions that start with why or how tend to reveal several possible

9
answers. So it should be born in mind that when such test items are constructed, as a teacher you are
looking for the best answer. Below are some of the examples:

Best answer type:

Which one of the following factors must be considered when selecting to relocate?

A Central location
B Good climate
C Good road network
D Good communication

Multiple choice test items have an advantage of covering a wide syllabus network and it is also easy to
mark/score

or

Which one of the following factors is given most consideration when selecting a city for a capital of a given
country?

A Population
B Highways
C Location
D Central location

Some other objective type tests will include:

True-False

Example
 (Circle T if the statement is true or F if it is false). Litmus paper turns red in an acid solution. T F

Matching Block Questions

Here are two columns. Match the decimals in the left-hand list with the appropriate prefix on the right-hand
by completing the table

Decimal Prefix
i) 0.000 001 a) centi
ii) 0.000 000 001 b) milli
iii) 0.001 c) pico
iv) 0.01 d) micro
e) nano
f) deca

Filling in blanks

This is where an incomplete sentence is given and students must complete it by inserting the appropriate
word or phrase.

Example
 In the year ……………………Zambia got its independence

Structured Essay Questions

This is an essay-type question where the response is structured for the student.

Example
10
 Using the following headings, state briefly how to grow a lettuce crop in the open
a) soil preparation
b) sowing
c) thinning
d) harvesting

Essay Type

In this type of question, no restrictions or limits are placed on the student response.

Example
 Discuss the significance of objectives in curriculum development.

Practical Test

The term practical test refers to a test in which students perform a practical exercise according to instructions
prepared in advance and assessed according to a marking scheme (Reece and Walker, 1997)

ADMINISTERING TESTS

The role of the teacher is to prepare the pupils/students adequately for the tests whether such tests are class
tests or they form part of the continuous assessment. The same would apply during the administration of
the summative examinations for those classes being prepared for summative examinations. Care should be
taken not to create anxiety in the pupils. Below are some of the things that you should avoid as a teacher so
as not to create excessive test/examination anxiety:

 Threatening pupils/students with tests if they do not behave.

 Warning pupils/students to do their best “because this test is important.”
 Telling pupils/students they must work fast to complete the test/examination on time
 Threatening dire consequences if they fail the test/examination.

Additionally, as a teacher you should avoid the following:

1. Talking unnecessarily before the test.

2. Keep interruptions during the test/examinations to a minimum.
3. Giving hints to pupils/students who ask about individual test items.
4. You should also discourage cheating in the test/examination

FUNCTIONS OF MARKS AND PROGRESS REPORTS

School marks pupils/students records of achievement serve a variety of purposes to a variety of

stakeholders. The stakeholders include, pupils/students and their parents; teachers and counselors, and
administrators.

The reports to pupils and parents

1. help clarify the objectives of the school programme

2. Indicate the strengths and weaknesses of a particular pupil/student
3. Promote greater understanding of the pupil’s/student’s personal-social development.
4. Contribute to the pupil’s motivation.

For the teachers and counselors, the progress reports contribute greatly to the instructional and guidance by
providing more information about a particular pupil or student. The progress reports of individual
students/pupils help teacher plan instruction, in the diagnosis of learning difficulties and in planning remedial
work. Reports help counselors to guide learning effectively, aid in personal-social development, and help
with future planning. For administrators, marks and progress reports are used for determining promotion of
students/pupils to higher grades and also to promote well deserving teachers. They are also useful for
accreditation and for reporting to higher administrators and prospective employers.
11
In conclusion, it is important that your assessment of students is done consistently according to the laid down
procedures. The questions set should measure the objectives as outlined in the curriculum. You should also
mark objectively and provide feedback to the students at your earliest possible convenience so that students
know their performance.

12