2nd Piece of Assignment - LA EVALUACIÓN ALTERNATIVA – Develando la Complejidad

It’s time to start thinking about Rebeca Anijovich’s chapter. Of course, you can keep on commenting on the article about communicative testing.

In fact, there’s a connection between both texts. Anijovich also deals with the need to discuss evaluation in response to the new approaches to teaching and learning. She asserts that evaluation does fulfill its purposes only when it becomes self evaluation for both the teacher and the student, and when it helps illuminating the quality of the teaching programme. What is more, evaluation should stimulate learning, according to the author, who lists some characteristics any evaluation programme should meet (p. 64). These characteristics become of upmost importance if we adhere to the position that learning is an active process in which learners construct meaning on the basis of previous experiences. In other words, if we believe in the constructivist view of learning, teaching and evaluation should focus not only on achievements, but mainly on processes, the learner should be actively involved in both learning and assessment, there should be a strong focus on reflection and self assessment and the data collected and analyzed should illuminate the decision-making process.

The author then lists some of the characteristics of alternative assessment (p. 65):

• it provides us with information about the progress the learner is making (their interlanguage, in our case, among other skills, procedures and attitudes we may be interested in)
• it focuses on the strengths, rather than on the mistakes.
• it is contextualized (it considers the learning styles, the socio-cultural backgrounds and the cognitive and linguistic skills of the specific group of learners)
• it includes metacognition (strategic competence)
• it is based on the accomplishment of meaningful, authentic tasks (performance tests)
• it requires more time to be implemented
• the criteria is constructed by both teacher and learners
• the learner’s progress is assessed in relation to his/her starting point.

The chapter then highlights the importance of providing the learner with feedback that goes beyond the mere mark or grade (see la retroalimentación) and explains what self assessment, peer assessment and performance tasks are. The author then provides some examples of alternative assessment instruments such observation, portfolios, concept maps (very appropriate to assess the reading skill, btw), and journals. She also presents what she calls “matrices o rúbricas” which are useful instruments for selecting and establishing criteria for the assessment of performance tasks.

This is just a brief guide to the chapter which will hopefully maximize your understanding (or not!).

I’ll soon be posting a task to be done on the basis of the contents of the chapter.