Putting assessment for learning into practice

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Theories underlying assessment practices

As literature indicates, over the past century, learning theorists have carried out a debate on how do individuals acquire, organize and deploy skills and knowledge. Particularly, how do people think and learn has been viewed as one of the most powerful questions of science education since the 20th century (Cizek, 1997: 6-7; Shepard, 2000: 4-9; Cowie, Moreland, & Otrel-Cass, 2013: 6-13). For this reason, there is a significant change in science education, specifically in assessment practices today. In line with the debate on how people learn; learning theorists put their own views on assessment (Swaffield, 2009: 4). By supporting this idea Cowie, Moreland, & Otrel-Cass (2013: 6) stated that “all assessment is underpinned by a view of learning.” Therefore, assessment may be practiced in many different ways depending on our views of learning. Thus, under here, we discuss the implication of behaviourism and constructivism perspectives on science learning, learners, instruction and assessment and the integration between them.

Behaviourism

The origins of behavioural learning theories may be traced backed to the late 18th and early 20th century with associative learning principle (Cizek, 1997: 6-7; Bennett & Gitomer, 2009: 59). Behaviorism is comprised of individual learning theories that have a shared common assumption within them (Peel, 2005:20-21).This traditional view of learning most popularly associated with the work of Pavlov, Watson, Skinner and Thorndike (James, 2006: 54). All of them emphasis on the observable behavior and the power of external environment to determine what is learned rather than the individual. For them, the learning environment is the determinant factor for learning to occur (James, 2006: 54). Behaviourists view that learning is brought through stimulus and response association (Shepard, 2000: 9-10) and the complex associations between response and stimulus are built up gradually through the teaching inputs (Underhill, 2006:166).
Furthermore, behavioural learning theory focuses on the observable behaviour rather than the covert or mental processes of the learners (Stobart, 2008: 161), because the main feature of behaviourists view of learning is that learning should be considered in terms of evidence of behaviours or actions. The divorcing of the mental process from the behaviour is a key feature of learning in bahaviourist view (Fautley & Savage, 2008:16). Similarly, James (2006: 54) pointed out the ignorance of the concept of mind and intelligence to explain learning in behavioural learning theory. Thus, learning is conceived as a process of changing observable behavior as result of selective reinforcement and punishment of an individual’s response to events that occur in the environment (Peel, 2005:20-21; James, 2006: 54; Race, 2007:1). Accordingly, the effectiveness of the instruction was judged based on the changes in the observable or overt behavior of learners.
For the behaviourist, when the individual is born, mind is seen as an empty vessel or „tabula rasa‟ to be filled by parents or teachers (Cizek, 1997: 6-7; Anderson, 1998: 8; Taber, 2011: 46). Therefore, for them, learners are considered as passive receiver, and knowledge is viewed as stable, objective and external (Taber, 2011: 40-41). Generally, according to behavioral learning theorists man is little more than an elaborative machine, whose behavior is largely determined by his/her environment (teachers) (Shepard, 2000: 6). Hence, it relies on a transmission of knowledge which is largely passive, teacher-directed and controlled (Richardson, 2003: 6; Hackmann, 2004: 697; Taber, 2011: 40-41). Within a behavioural learning view, complex tasks should be broken down in to smaller fragments to be mastered sequentially (Bennett, & Gitomer, 2009:59; Fautley & Savage, 2008:16), because learning means accumulation of specific facts and memorization of these facts sequentially
From behavioural perspective, knowledge is a hierarchical set of discrete package which teachers can teach sequentially and which learners learn progressively more complex ideas (Bell & Cowie, 2002:18). Therefore, the role of the teacher is to state objectives in relation to students‟ age, transmit it and measure the objectivity and clarity of transmission using valid tests of content mastery (Anderson, 1998: 8; Adair-Hauck et al., 2006:363).
Then, the assessment method in the behavioural perspective most widely comprises traditional forms of assessment which are unidirectional, semester or year-based, and paper and pencil exams (Fautley & Savage, 2008: 16-18). Here assessment is viewed as a way of estimating how much objectives a student has acquired and make judgment about the change in the observable behaviours of the student (Dysthe, 2008:19).
Here, teachers teach to make the learners performance better on a test or exam (Shepard, 1991:2). From this perspective, students‟ achievement is associated with the accumulation of skills and discrete knowledge and the memorization of facts in a given subject. Therefore, for behaviourism, teaching focuses on rote learning and assessment on the memorization of concepts, principles and formulas for the sake of exams (Taber, 2011: 42). Accordingly, the role of the students becomes working hard to listen and read accurately to memorize and repeat specific scientific concepts and formulas in science subjects, and teachers‟ role is to train learners to respond correctly and rapidly to the instruction.
Within a behaviourist paradigm, assessment focuses on measuring outcomes, grading and marking (Shepard, 1991: 2; Anderson, 1998: 6). In this perspective, the purpose of assessment is to select, rank and control, but not for internal modification (Shepard, 1991: 14; Anderson, 1998:8). Likewise, Bell & Cowie (2002: 19) stated that in this view formative assessment is used only to check whether a student has achieved the learning objectives or not and to provide judgmental feedback accordingly (Underhill, 2006:166; Scholtz, 2007: 43).
As behaviourists students‟ progress was judged based on the correct and incorrect answers they got on the paper and pencil tests. Moreover, their “poor performance was remedied by extra practice in the incorrect items, sometimes by deconstructing them further and going back to even more basic skills” (James, 2006: 55), because as behaviourist repetition is seen as one of the greatest means to ensure mastery of objectives (Shepard, 2000:5; Taber, 2011: 41). Therefore, assessment techniques in behaviourist approaches comprise of objective tests such as true-false, short answer, matching, multiple-choice and restricted essay questions (Anderson 1998: 8; Shepard, 2000:7; Fautley & Savage, 2008:18).Yet, such objective tests are inadequate to reveal the student‟s higher-order thinking, understanding, and problem solving skills especially in science subjects (Shepard, 1991: 2; Anderson, 1998:6; Scholtz, 2007: 43). If teachers want students to do more than memorization of facts and concepts, they need to assess students in various ways using multiple tools.

CHAPTER ONE  INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the study
1.2 The research problem
1.3 Significance of the study
1.4 Theoretical framework and literature review
1.5 Research methodology
1.6 Definition of key concepts
1.7 Outline of chapters
1.8 Summary
CHAPTER TWO  THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE 
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Theories underlying assessment practices
2.3 Putting assessment for learning into practice
2.4 Conclusion
2.5 Summary
CHAPTER THREE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Research design
3.3 Samplin
3.4 Data collection techniques
3.5 Methodological norms
3.6 Pilot study
3.7 Method of data analysis
3.8 Ethical considerations
3.9 Summar
CHAPTER FOUR  RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Analysis of background data
4.3 Analysis of the practice of assessment for learning in science education
4.4 Discussion of Results
4.5 Summary
CHAPTER FIVE FINDINGS, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

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TEACHERS’ PRACTICES OF ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING IN SCIENCE EDUCATION AT EAST GOJJAM PREPARATORY SCHOOLS, AMHARA REGIONAL STATE, ETHIOPIA