Updated: Mar 2000 | Assessment - Classroom Approaches | Observation

Assessment - Observation

Assessment practices should foster self-directed learning by helping students to be responsible for their own learning. The criteria should be described in ways that are understandable to students, helping them to reflect on their own learning and set future learning goals. Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting: Policy and Guidelines, (1998), p.7

Observation is probably the most powerful technique that teachers have.

Importantly, in an outcomes-focused approach, assessment embeds evaluation in the context of learning.

Its purpose is to build up a picture of students' personal, social and cognitive development and how they are progressing in their learning.

However, only when a number of cameos / vignettes / snapshots / notes / indicators exists can teachers begin to look for patterns in student behaviour and make judgements about their performance.

Recording demonstration of an outcome at a particular level will require ongoing records until sufficient evidence has been collected to clearly indicate achievement. Dating such records and recording the contexts, together with observed characteristics of achievement, will build useful, historical profiles.

As all school records are open to public access, observations must reflect not the teachers' own attitudes and values but what they notice and recognise as being learning of the kind described by outcome statements.

Formats for recording observations include, for example: using notebooks or sheets, Post-it™ notes, annotated lists, anecdotal record cards, checklists, grids, journals, computer records, developmental continua and progress maps.

Traditionally students in the same class have worked toward the same objectives. Recording of achievement has been against the same set of criteria for all students in the group. This is not the case in an outcomes-focused approach. Acknowledging and supporting students working at different levels and proceeding at different rates requires flexibility and tailoring to the individual. Formats for observing and recording students' development should be designed to:

	suit the particular activity in which the students' development is being observed.
	reflect the main goals of the activity.
	provide ways of involving students in assessing their own progress.
	enable recording of information at various points in the activity.
	support the recording of students working at different levels and rates.