Assessment and evaluation in mathematics education has been an interest of mine for a while now. I will be opening this series of topics that explores assessment and evaluation in various ways. I will likely try to incorporate more to this once my graduate studies (on assessment and evaluation) begins in the fall.
First, let me introduce this topic by explaining why I am interested in it:
Why more so than other aspects of mathematics education?
I have tirelessly been watching, reading, and observing teaching practices. I take a lot of it away with me. In fact, I manage to take away at least one good thing from even the most horrifying approaches (not labelled by me, of course). I find that there a lot of good ways of incorporating these together into a cohesive whole, and -- even if I don't incorporate them -- they are valuable teaching methods that I may use in the dynamic classroom that changes from year to year, class to class, and day to day. But how do we evaluate? I don't mean to portray "getting good grades" as the ultimate goal that the students should strive for. That notion absolutely abhors me, actually, and I will likely touch on this topic later in the future. Good assessment and evaluation should strive to accurately describe a student's performance, and be able to inform them in a way that is beneficial to their understanding and their learning. "Accurately describe" is the heavy phrase that I've sneaked into the previous sentence. How do we do this? What tools can we employ? What tools should we employ? While I am becoming more confident that my students are critically thinking in class, I often find it challenging to evaluate and quantify the examples and anecdotal evidence in the classroom.
I will be looking more at assessment and evaluation processes in future [AnE] series (couldn't label "&" so it will remain as AnE as a label)
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