Papers by Nur Syazwani II
School Based Assessment (SBA) has been carried out for a long time—but there are problems with ho... more School Based Assessment (SBA) has been carried out for a long time—but there are problems with how it has been done and new priorities that require changes. Traditionally, SBA has involved examinations and tests that mimic or mock public or school end-of-year examinations. Student performance on these kinds of SBA are usually reported as percentage scores or letter grades designed to reflect the same standards as would be applied by the examination authority in the formal, public examinations. Teachers were expected to comment on student performance in terms of effort, and likelihood of the student obtaining a pass or a high grade. It is generally assumed that public examinations (and the school-based mimics) evaluate students fairly and the consequences attached to the grades are merited and appropriate. And the consequences can be immense—high enough grades give entry to the next level of education and highly exceptional grades lead to prestigious financial, educational, and social rewards. SBA also determines the quality of schools and teachers. Hence, public examinations and school-based versions of these assessments had great importance to the school, the teachers, let alone the students and their families. Issues with SBA include: (1) little use of alternative forms of assessments (e.g., portfolios, performances, peer, or self); (2) much trickle down of high-stakes examinations into pre-examination school years. There are some advantages to this approach to SBA. Since the stakes are so high, students are usually motivated to make significant effort. There is usually systematic and extensive coverage of the syllabus content, ensuring students and teachers pay attention to those things. There is, in most countries, a strong social acceptance that examinations are accurate, lead to valid decisions as to who is good, and have positive social consequences (i.e., exams identify talent regardless of sex, social status, ethnicity, wealth, and so on). Furthermore, there is a strong conviction that examinations are relatively robust against corruption, collusion, and cheating. There is also potential to provide diagnostic analysis of which parts of the required curriculum have yet to be or are already mastered. This is only a potential benefit as very careful curriculum analysis and mapping of test content to the curriculum map and effective reporting of performance is required. However, for teachers in schools to take advantage of this approach requires that teachers have significant professional development so as to be able to replicate the highest standards in testing. However, ordinary classroom teachers rarely have the necessary skills, which are normally available to qualifications authorities and test development companies. Hence, instead of turning teachers into testing experts, we aimed to give teachers a computer-assisted tool that helped teachers fulfil better the task which they were employed for— pedagogically skilled delivery and facilitation of real learning in the real-time space of a classroom. In other words, we supported the teacher with computer assistance. Another significant limitation of tests and examinations is that they usually generate a total score (a percentage) and/or a rank-order score such as position in class (e.g., 1 st or last) or position relative to a norming sample (e.g., percentile or stanine). While these scores have some educational value, they do not lead to strong educational decision-making in the This is the pre-published version.
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Papers by Nur Syazwani II