Critical Assessment Essay

Assessment

The last challenge that a beginning teacher may face is designing appropriate assessment to assess students’ critical reasoning. It is not easy to assess students’ critical reasoning as it is not just about having the knowledge of critical reasoning. Willingham (2007) states that “knowing that one should think critically is not the same as being to do” (p. 13). The teacher may be able teach the students critical reasoning and the students are aware of it but without the right assessment, it is hard to know if the students have actually acquired critical reasoning.

Another concern the teacher may have with assessment of critical reasoning is that the assumption that the assessment must be very cognitively challenging or overly complex

Nitko and Brookhart (2011) define interpretive exercises as "items or assessment tasks that require the student to use reading material, graphs, tables, pictures, or other material to answer the items" (p. 505). Using interpretive material such as graphs or pictures can help teachers to assess complex thinking skills such as as mathematical problem-solving ability, reading comprehension, writing skills (Haladyna, Downing, & Rodriguez, 2002). It is not hard for teachers to actually incorporate stimulus materials such as graphs or other visuals into existing assessment to assess students’ critical

And by doing so, the teacher is able to monitor their process and assess their critical reasoning through the inquiry exercises and there is no need for overly complex assessment tasks.

In conclusion, I have presented three challenges beginning teachers may face in promoting critical reasoning in their classroom and strategies they may adopt in order to overcome the challenges. It is saddening that promoting critical reasoning is not the main focus in the ITP programme in NIE despite its many benefits for both the teachers and the students. However, I believe that even though there will definitely be challenges along the ways, the teachers will persevere on and promote critical reasoning to produce a new generation of