Thinking about the form of assessment SCT offers for classroom interaction: Dynamic assessment.
Dynamic assessment aims to jointly construct the best performance with the learner. In this sense, DA tells us what students can do "with help" rather than "on their own" as traditional assessment does. DA is future oriented, in the sense that it stretches learners performance and mediates learners 'towards an independent performance...' (Swain et. al, 2010)
This concept was very controversial in my mind at the beginning, because it seemed a little bit unfair and loose. However, it makes a lot of sense to me now, if you think that every time we assess with the traditional methods -for instance, a multiple choice test- we are creating an artificial setting for performance, since it is not very likely to deal with those at work or when communicating with other people in a second language; and opposite to what your parents (and I myself) tell you, you are not alone in life. You interact with people and co-construct meaning in conversation, or aid yourself with books and teachers when creating a code for Astrophysics.
Nevertheless, some issues of accountability emerge and also identity. How do we report results from DA and how we make them valid for other people or institutions? How do we deal with students' expectations of more traditional tests and their (my T_T) obsessive dependance on grades to understand their academic identity?
The bright side of this kind of assessment is that it really motivates you to think. Usually, when we assess with a multiple choice test the learner just has to find the correct answer, but he/she don't think much about the other options. If we consider a 20 questions test, with 5 choices each, if the correct answer is on 5 questions on the first choice, then we lose 4x5=20 choices (if the learner studied).
ResponderEliminarAlso, this grading-obsession (which I also have)when you are really thinking about something is not that important. I'm talking about my personal experience with my work on the summer. My final grade was a 7, but I really didn't care about it. What I really liked is that I learned a lot and that gave me the academic identity that I usually had with grades!
I think that is inevitable, to assess, create artificial settings of performances, because we will never assess real life (in classrooms or similar configurations), also because when you think in assess something you change the "real life performance" flow. In the exceptional case that you think that you can assess real life (maybe with satellite cameras and hidden mics... Impossible Mission like ha ha ha) it will be extremely hard to understand the real conditions that make this "social interaction with knowledge" happens, so you will have to establish some assumptions that will make your "personal modified assessable life".
ResponderEliminarSo I think that you just have to know that it is important to know that it does not exist the "ultimate total infallible assessment tool".
I think this dynamic assessment is very useful when you have visible differences in the individuals that you are assessing. but the problem that you find appears when the crowd is homogeneous. I understand that we are all different, but when you are in a role you virtually are the same that is playing the same role (for instance: "the normal assessed", "the special assessed", "the un-assessable", etc.).
If you want to use this tool you first, I think, have to define the roles as scales, so you will have groups of assessable people. But you have to also be very carefully informing this "roles" dealing with the "discrimination issue".