Importance Of Performance Assessment

Question 1

Performance Assessment

Performance assessment is an all-encompassing term used to include products and procedures such as portfolios, projects and experiments (Johnson, R., Penny, J. A., & Gordon, B, 2009). The portfolio is one type of performance assessment which is employed to establish the student’s achievement of learning in practice (Popham, 2005). A portfolio is a meaningful collection of student work that recounts the story of student achievement or development. Performance assessment determines students’ skills based on authentic tasks, that require students to show that they can perform. This is an approach to teaching and learning that values application rather than rote memorization. Performance assessment requires students

Additionally, students understand what they’re learning should look like, students are more probable to see success with performance assessments. Performance assessment requires students to execute something, which gains them more likely to retain the knowledge they use. This is supported by (Herman, 1992). Indeed, performance assessment encourages students to work outside the confines of the class for additional learning, it may involve writing or the use of psychomotor skills. As a consequence, this boost of active learning on students. Higher-order thinking skills, which are significant for success as an adult, must be nurtured and developed throughout a student’s school career. Performance assessment prompts students to apply higher-order thinking skills such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The more opportunities students are committed to practice these skills, the more adept they become at using them. For instance, students might be given a current political map of Malaysia showing the names and location of states and a similar map from the year 1945. Students will asked to identify and explain the differences and similarities. These methods of assessment practices may serve to create divergent learners and provide opportunities for applying higher-order thinking skills. According to (Herman,

Through the demonstration of problem solving strategies, students’ higher-order thinking could be discovered. According to (Adi Badiozaman, 2006), teachers are far from ready to implement the school-based assessment into the education system. They do not fully realize the concept of school-based assessment and lack the know how in developing the assessment tasks. The major weakness with performance assessment is very time consuming for students and teachers. This means that fewer assessments can be gathered so if they are not carefully devised fewer learning goals will be assessed at which can reduce content validity. A research done by (Chan, Y. F., & Gurnam, K. S, 2010) on portfolio assessment, some students commented it was a sheer waste of time whilst others stressed they did not know what to write as they were most of the time repeating the same thing. Another weakness of performance assessment is hard to assess reliability, which can lead to inaccuracy and unfair evaluation. Also, the teachers’ knowledge and expertise in a subject matter is vital and may influence negatively upon the students’ learning. Are the teachers experienced and trained enough to adequately apply authentic performance assessment with their