Proposal for a System of Assessment

Posted: January 4th, 2023

Proposal for a System of Assessment

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Proposal for a System of Assessment

Introduction

As the global society continues to pursue the right to equality for marginalized groups in areas such as employment and resource allocation, it is equally important to ensure that the noble efforts are also reflected in the classroom. The typical classroom normally favors the majority groups while placing the marginalized ones at a disadvantage. One of the most marginalized groups comprises students with dyslexia; the prevailing methods of assessments produce results that create the misconception that they are not intelligent. The wrong impression simply arises out of their poor grades. Therefore, it is important to introduce a new system of assessment that takes into account their unique conditions and introduces resources and strategies that help portray their actual academic achievement.

Nature of the Learning Environment

The proposed system for comprehensive student assessment is designed to meet the needs of learners who are dyslexic. Dyslexia is a learning disorder that makes it difficult for an individual to read because of challenges in identifying speech sound and decoding them into letters and words. According to Leseyane, Mandende, Makgato, and Cekiso (2018), the mental condition affects persons from a very young age. When such individuals reach the school-going age, they start exhibiting problems in reading and writing. Instructors have often misjudged such students as unintelligent, although an increasing awareness of the condition has had a significant impact on correcting such misconceptions.

Target Audience

The main target audience comprises those in charge of making policy at the state level; it is, however, equally important to inform those at the federal level. The enactment of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution served to make education a function of states. However, the federal government plays a critical role in ensuring the right to free and high-quality education for all K-12 students. The federal government performs its function by protecting students’ civil rights and providing the necessary resources to those in need. The local community also forms a part of the audience, since for each district, the inhabitants, together with the state government, are responsible for administrating and financing the various schools. Accordingly, the stakeholder groups have been identified mainly because they are in charge of enacting policy to support the program in addition to providing funding and other resources that are necessary for implementing the program.

Philosophy of the Proposed Assessment System

The theory of pedagogy forms the basis of the assessment system. Pedagogy refers to the study of how knowledge and skills are taught in an academic context and takes into consideration the various interactions that occur during learning. According to Black and Wiliam (2018), it is important to ensure that the measures for education assessment are founded by the theory of pedagogy. The proposed system aims to incorporate the unique needs of the target student population and design assessment models that minimize the existing biases towards the learners. The assessment mainly consists of “three models, which are number sense, operation sense, and calculation algorithms,” as described by Schulz, Leuders, and Rangel (2019, p. 9). The approach focuses on testing the competence that corresponds to the learners’ unique condition as opposed to grouping their performance with the general student population.

Best Practices

According to Black and Wiliam (2018), the best practices in assessment require teachers to form a cohesive balance between formative and summative assessments. Formative assessment is normally conducted as a given program and is still under constant development or improvement. In essence, such assessments are designed to provide information on how teachers can improve their instruction and are therefore conducted at any time during the instruction process. The evaluations further help in monitoring the efficacy of instructional practices and offer feedback concerning the strengths and weaknesses of instruction. On the other hand, summative evaluation primarily involves formulating judgments about the effectiveness of a program after its completion. The evaluations provide a means of accountability by measuring the effectiveness of instructions. Accordingly, it is important to ensure that such evaluations are both reliable and valid. Taking into consideration the significance of the two forms of assessments, the best practices demand that the instructor integrates them and creates a balance.

How the System Design Reflects the Professional Literature on Student Assessment as Pertains to the Components of the Proposed System

There exists significant support on the need to come up with specially-designed student assessment models for students with learning disabilities. The typical approach of teaching and assessing students are normally prepared for the general population but fail to take into account the unique needs of students with learning disabilities. According to Crombie (2000), dyslexic students normally perform poorly based on the traditional methods of assessment in comparison to their non-dyslexic counterparts. Consequently, their poor performance often leads to the misconception that they are not as intelligent as the general student population. However, in the real sense, the poor performance is merely an indication of their challenges in reading and writing as opposed to their ability to learn and master concepts. Therefore, there is the need to modify the system of assessment in way that the results reflect what they have learned is not primarily based on their ability to read and understand the questions and write down the correct answers.

Formative Assessment

One of the common assumptions is that people who learn their native language have the capability to learn a second or foreign language. However, since dyslexic students may, in certain cases, find it challenging to even learning their native language, in all respects, it is of critical importance to take special consideration on how to meet their second or foreign language teaching and especially assessment. Accordingly, the proposed system will involve a formative assessment process that first focuses on collecting relevant information pertaining to the academic background and experiences of the learners. The information will be obtained from all possible stakeholders, including the teachers, parents, and students themselves (Guise et al., 2016). In cases where the student uses English as a second or foreign language, it is important to seek further information from the parents or other individuals who are conversant with their first language.

Research reveals that in contemporary classrooms, there lacks a connection between the number of tests and the betterment of learning among students (Perrenoud, 1998). Therefore, there has been a dramatic shift in academic assessment practices towards more emphasis on formative assessment than summative evaluation. The shift offers strong support for dyslexic students to excel in classrooms. Formative assessment provides the teachers with the opportunity to gain important information about the specific needs of each student and a basis to come up with the necessary support. The transition has also served to decrease the levels of stress that are associated with high-stake assignments and tests while allowing the learners to focus more on gaining knowledge as opposed to improving their final grade. According to the International Dyslexia Association (2017), the assessment of dyslexic learners’ academic progress should focus on their progress as opposed to grades. The underlying reasoning is that the use of grades tends to keep them at a disadvantage and the results may not necessarily reflect on their ability to learn. As earlier indicated, dyslexia mainly affects reading and not necessarily the entire learning process. For instance, a dyslexic student may be good in mathematics, physics, or music but will end up being disadvantaged by the education system since classroom learning is mostly done through reading and writing. In essence, the best practices highlight the need to integrate unique testing conditions, such as increasing the amount of time to complete a task or focus more on using illustrations in the form of diagrams and diagrams and minimal focus on written assessments. Additional strategies include redesigning the formative assessment measures to account for the learners’ unique condition through the integration of technology.

Summative Assessments

Similar to the need to modify formative assessment to suit the unique needs of dyslexic learners, it is equally important to also remodel the summative assessments. The proposed system requires teachers to provide disadvantaged learners with adequate time to complete the tests. Furthermore, the assessment profiles are designed to place more focus on evaluating the non-verbal intelligence of the students as a means of accounting for the linguistic needs and reading and writing challenges experienced by dyslexic students. The proposed system involves the use of the Comprehensive Test of Nonverbal Intelligence. The instructor applies the tool to each student and evaluates their non-verbal reasoning in terms of how they are able to reason analogically and make proper categorizations and sequencing ideas, as described by Guise et al., (2016). In terms of design, the Comprehensive Test of Nonverbal Intelligence comprises six areas of testing, which are further categorized into two distinct contexts. The contexts are images of common objects and geometric shapes. The tool consists of six subtests that are categorized into two distinct contexts, which are Pictures of familiar objects and geometric designs. On the other hand, the subtests comprise of “(1) Pictorial Analogies, (2) Geometric Analogies, (3) Pictorial Categories, (4) Geometric Categories, (5) Pictorial Sequences, and (6) Geometric Sequences” (Guise et al., 2016, p. 68). Another test that is part of the proposed system is the Wechsler Nonverbal Scale of Ability (WNV).

Technology–Driven Assessment

The new system identifies the impact of technology-enhanced assessments in bridging the learning gap between dyslexic learners and their non-dyslexic counterparts. The reasoning is based on the findings by the International Dyslexia Association (2017), indicating that the use of assistive technologies in teaching has a significant impact on the improvement of learning among students with disabilities. The proposed assessment system requires teachers to use voice recognition and transcription software when conducting tests among the target student population as these will help in transforming their mental thoughts and ideas into written text.

Although the tool may not help in improving writing skills, a review of the prevailing patterns indicates that there are typically minimal cases where handwritten communication is used in both social and official communication. People are increasingly conducting social communications through texts via internet-based social media applications, and the corporate world has also adopted the use of digital formats to present reports or other communications.

The proposed system also involves the use of innovative assessment techniques that include the use of recorded tests to ensure equality. The system also capitalizes on the opportunity to differentiate the learning resources, texts, and how the classroom is organized, in addition to the introduction of instruction strategies that meet the unique needs of the disadvantaged learners, as supported by Rontou (2016). More specifically, the new system will require teachers to differentiate assessment material according to the task in a listening exercise. The use of differentiated texts will enhance the reading capabilities of the disadvantaged learners and consequently enhance their response capacities by making the length of sentences, level of complexity, and style of presentation meet their needs.

Data-Driven Decision Making

Data Collection Plan and How to Address Validity and Reliability

The proposed assessment system will collect assessment information from the target students at the individual, classroom, and school-level. However, much of the focus will be on the classroom data as it will better represent the students. Targetting the data collection methods on specific classrooms will help in improving the validity and generalizability of classroom-level findings of the assessment data.

How the Proposed System Addresses the Unique Opportunities and Challenges Inherent in the Target Educational Environment

One of the challenges presented by the target environment is based on the high level of multiculturalism and diversity that characterize the contemporary classroom. Each culture has its unique characteristics that also translate into learning needs. Additionally, as earlier discussed, children who find difficulty in learning their first language may also face significant challenges in learning the second one. The proposed system addresses the system by collecting information from all available stakeholders, especially parents or persons who are conversant with the learner’s culture. The system also incorporates culturally and linguistically appropriate materials while taking into account the linguistic effects, such as grammar, accent, vocabulary, and syntax of the native language and how they impact on the second or foreign language (Peer & Reid, 2016). The proposed system also comprises of a training program for teachers on how to teach a multicultural group. As part of the program, the teachers will learn how to deal with some of the common specific challenges, such as communication barriers, and cultural biases and stereotypes. The proposed system will also capitalize on the opportunities presented by a multicultural and diverse population. Such a population normally brings together different perspectives to a problem, along with supplementary knowledge and skills. The differences play a critical role in problem-solving, in addition to creating cultural awareness among the learners. The proposed system also identifies the opportunies presented by the prevailing advancements in technology and will capitalize on them to introduce tools that help the students understand assessment questions and offer the necessary responses without necessarily having to read and write.

Introduction of System to Teachers

Project management principles hold that it is important to ensure that the most critical stakeholders are involved throughout the project’s life cycle for its effective implementation. Accordingly, the development and implementation of the new system is a highly complex and difficult process, especially when the stakeholders, in this case the teachers, are not sufficiently engaged. Lack of inclusivity promotes difficulty in getting them to support the project, and it is even more difficult to ensure that they use the new assessment model. Consequently, the likelihood of project success decreases significantly. Many project managers end up failing in their efforts despite having a deep belief that the project has significant benefits to the end-users. The main reason is that they fail to address the interests and concerns of the group directly involved in supporting the project. Additionally, teachers have the skills and knowledge that will make valuable contributions to the proposed project while ensuring that it provides better deliverables. Therefore, the introduction of the new system will not necessarily occur during the implementation phase but from the development and eventual use of the deliverables.

The Professional Development and Ongoing Guidance of Teachers

The proposed system takes into consideration the need to impart teachers with the necessary skills and expertise that will facilitate its effective implementation in the classroom. As part of the implementation phase, there will be training and empowerment program for the teachers to equip them with the necessary skills and expertise on how to conduct assessments using the proposed system. As part of the training program, the teachers will learn how to use the proposed technologies in the classroom.

Ensuring That all teachers Are On Board

The system will attempt to ensure that all teachers are on board by including them during the design and development process. The introduction of a new system is bound to experience some level of resistance from the main stakeholders, especially the teachers. Therefore, it is important that they are directly involved during its development by gathering the input throughout the process. Ensuring inclusivity in the development process has a significant impact on creating a sense of ownership among the stakeholders and ensuring minimal resistance during its introduction. Additionally, since it is not possible to include all teachers during the system development process, it is pivotal to conduct a comprehensive awareness program before its introduction among all teachers. The program mainly involves providing critical information about the proposed system in terms of its components, and at the same time, placing emphasis on its significance to advancing learning to the disadvantaged group. Furthermore, it is important to deal with stakeholder issues for the success of the implementation efforts. The issues and concerns raised by teachers will have a direct impact on the bottom line of the proposed system, which is to have a positive impact on the education of the disadvantaged group. The project team will, therefore, collect information from teachers on a regular basis and also involve them in seeking pragmatic solutions.

Conclusion

The prospective system will go a long way in helping dyslexic learners become near at par with their non-dyslexic counterparts by introducing strategies that address their unique challenges in reading and writing. The system will focus more on their actual learning process as opposed to depending on reading and writing skills to reflect achievement. The system takes into account the need for stakeholder engagement by involving teachers throughout its lifecycle in addition to providing them with the necessary skills and expertise to implement it.

References

Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (2018). Classroom assessment and pedagogy. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 25(6), 551–575. doi: 10.1080/0969594x.2018.1441807

Crombie, M. A. (2000). Dyslexia and the learning of a foreign language in school: Where are we going? Dyslexia – An International Journal of Research and Practice, 6(2), 112-123.

Guise, J., Reid, G., Lannen, S., & Lannen, C. (2016). Dyslexia and specific learning difficulties: Assessment and intervention in a multilingual setting. In Multilingualism, literacy and dyslexia (pp. 61-73). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

International Dyslexia Association (2017). Dyslexia in the classroom: What every teacher needs to know. Retrieved from https://dyslexiaida.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/DITC-Handbook.pdf

Leseyane, M., Mandende, P., Makgato, M., & Cekiso, M. (2018). Dyslexic learners’ experiences with their peers and teachers in special and mainstream primary schools in North-West Province. African Journal of Disability, 7. doi: 10.4102/ajod.v7i0.363

Peer, L., & Reid, G. (2016). Multilingualism, literacy and dyslexia: Breaking down barriers for educators. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Perrenoud, P. (1998). From formative evaluation to a controlled regulation of learning processes. Towards a wider conceptual field. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 5(1), 85-102.

Schulz, A., Leuders, T., & Rangel, U. (2019). The use of a diagnostic competence model about children’s operation sense for criterion-referenced individual feedback in a large-scale formative assessment. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 0734282918823590.