Thinking like an Assessor

What evidence can show that students have achieved the desired results?
The chapter starts with this and other interesting questions that challenges our minds to find the answers to the matter. In fact, the author points out that assessment is the evidence implied by the outcome sought and not a mean for generating grades.
As agents of change we should start asking about these issues among our colleagues in order to implement a backward design of planning. The expected outcomes become the core of our planning.
However, it takes a great deal of time and agreement among colleagues to establish this evidence for each level. There must be a consensus and also coherence between the kind of activities done in class, the kind of practice carried out inside the classroom, and the way all this process is going to be assessed. This aspect becomes particularly difficult to be done since teachers have different points of view and different beliefs that one way or another are going to determine their decision-making.
There is also a need to prepare teachers in this process, since we have not been trained enough on how to develop critical thinking, or how to effectively develop the big ideas and ask those essential questions. Universities do not give the necessary tools to be promoters of all these changes. The fact of reading chapters and article about teaching for understanding is just the first step, but we lack the practice on how to do it in everyday classroom situations, it is just something we, teachers are not used to.
On the other hand, the design and implementation of appealing projects is not enough to catch our students’ attention, as the author says, they should not be empty tasks with no real context. Now, the implementation requires a real commitment of all the members of the community involved, not only teachers, but also head of departments and the competent authorities as well as parents, who, most of the time are more interested in grades that real learning.

Gaining Clarity on our Goals

This chapter tries to establish the guidelines to set out goals, in other words, what are the points to be considered and how they will be developed. The essential Questions that will highlight the big ideas that are central to the design of a course.

So far we have discussed the distinction between Knowledge and Understanding, and the need to develop certain skills in our students that will enable them to grasp the core of a matter. However, once again, a number of questions and doubts arise when we discuss the different aspects when designing a model.

Among those aspects mentioned in the chapter, one that is interesting to analyze is the idea of “a prioritizing framework”. Every year we face, especially during the second term, the urgency of covering all the contents or “units of a textbook” due to different reasons (school demands, external evaluations, parents demands, etc). Then the question arises; how can we make choices and frame priorities? It is not clear if such choice-making is in the hands of teachers or in the hands of other participants of the process. One may wonder, however whether teachers at school are prepared to do so, and to develop all the wonderful ideas expressed in this book. On the other hand, time seems always to be against any purpose of making things different and start a change in our practices. In most schools, the time devoted to department meeting is so short, that it is mainly devoted to domestic issues such as the events of the week, the coming evaluations, or any other urgent matter that replaces the important ones.

It is absolutely frustrating to read chapters and articles that bring so much refreshing knowledge and ideas about how to improve learning, and to feel unable to carry them out because there is not a clear policy or idea of the importance of the role of the teacher. Governments still look at teachers as mere “deliverers of contents”, not as professionals able to implement the changes our system urgently needs, only when that view is changed, education will go one step forward.