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Assessment is important for teachers as it shows student understanding of the content

and provides a means of benchmarking this understanding. Teachers draw on their
professional experiences to develop their own philosophy on assessment. Personally, this has
been shaped through my passion for educating youth of all ages as well as drawing on my
own bad experiences in school and the good experiences from volunteering as a leader in cub
scouts, and working with kids in OSHC.
There are many different ways for a teacher to assess their students learning and the
majority of these can be split into two assessment types, formative and summative. The main
differences between the formative and summative assessment is the purpose of the tasks
being assessed. Formative work is considered to be assessment for learning and is a way of
providing ongoing feedback to students, to identify strengths and weaknesses and improve
capabilities, and helps teachers to improve their pedagogy. Teachers are able to immediately
target and address where students are struggling in their learning. During my placement, I
was teaching poetry techniques to students who were asked to show their understanding by
creating examples of each technique. Students were provided feedback on areas for
improvement, and I was able to notice the areas that needed scaffolding for students
understanding. Summative assessment is considered assessment of learning and is used to
evaluate and provide a statement about the achievement level of the students learning at the
end of a unit. This is usually assessed through benchmarking to certain criteria, such as a
rubric. In the same unit of poetry, my summative assignment for students was to create a
poem on a current issue in the news as well as a writers statement showing how they wrote
their poem. This allowed them to show me how well they understood the unit of work and
give them a grade based on the rubric criteria supplied. Formative assessment is more
important to me as a teacher, because it shows how student understanding develops and can
encourage students to succeed in their work. Summative assessment is less significant to me

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as a teacher because it shows a snapshot of a period of time for the student, as opposed to
progression of development. During my second placement, I had a student who suffered from
severe depression, and some days she struggled to do the work because she was having what
we called a bad day. However, I was able to establish a good relationship with her so that
during the formative assessments we could discuss her understanding of the tasks. From our
discussions I was able to establish that she had an excellent grasp of our topic, however,
when it came to the summative assessment she struggled because these bad days left her
unable to produce work. Ultimately, she managed to hand in her assignment with most of the
required information on it and achieved a B grade. I know that she could have achieved a
higher grade from her formative understanding, and therefore I feel that summative
assessment does not take into account students who struggle. To me assessment is not about
the grade a student achieves but the knowledge and skills they develop.
Formative assessment is driven by the positive relationships that teachers form with
their students. This is created and maintained through pastoral care. Pastoral care refers to
how teachers connect with their students, building positive relationships and helping youth
excel through this connection. One approach to pastoral care is known as the Black Box
method which discusses formative assessment as an essential component of classroom work
and that its development can raise standards of achievement (Black and William, 1). The
black box approach identified three issues surrounding assessment effective learning,
negative impact and managerial role of assessment. The main issue with effective learning is
that teachers say they aim to develop deeper thinking skills and understanding, but are
actually encouraging superficial learning. The other issue with effective learning is that
teachers commonly mistake quantity over quality of work. Assessment can have a large
negative impact on students especially when marks or grades are overemphasised and
feedback and learning development are underemphasised. Comparing students to one

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another, especially when a student is a low-achiever, can have a detrimental effect on the
student. This can be due to a teacher not giving appropriate feedback to encourage them to
produce work to the best of their ability, and make the student doubt their learning abilities.
Thirdly, the issue with the managerial role of assessment is that teachers feedback serves a
more social and managerial function serves a different purpose than student achievement.
This can often be at the expense of the students learning. This shows that teachers do not
recognise their students learning needs and that a collection of marks are a higher priority.
Black and William believe that the way to improve these issues is to increase the self-esteem
of pupils, use peer-assessment, produce effective teaching by evolving with the students, and
change the current policy and practice. I largely agree with what Black and William discuss
in their article about the issues surrounding assessment as I feel that student learning and
development is more important. By focusing on assessment for learning teachers will be able
to establish a better relationship with their students. This includes getting to know students as
individuals and discovering their talents through co-curricular methodologies as well as
conducting classroom dialogue as is encouraged through pastoral care. One example of this
from practicum was allowing my students to pick their own issue from the news to write a
poem on. Some students found this easier, where others struggled heavily. In particular one
student had no idea what issue to write her poem about, so I sat with her and we discussed
things she enjoyed, such as the subject art. Keeping this subject in mind, we collaborated with
other students on her table about what kind of issues in the news revolved around art. We
managed to get onto the issue of graffiti and discuss how one person would consider it art and
another person would consider it vandalism. By connecting something she enjoyed with the
issue of graffiti she was able to excel in producing her poem. This was reflected in the
feedback I gave her which focused on the positives and ways that she could improve her

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understanding. The above experience shows how pastoral care is highly important when
working with students who are not engaging with the curriculum.
Academic approaches such as direct instruction aims at forcing knowledge on
students in order to get a grade. Direct instruction involves explicit teaching of the curriculum
which has been carefully sequenced to develop knowledge and skills. Direct instruction is
based on both the theory and evidence that learning can be greatly accelerated if instructional
presentations are clear, minimise misinterpretations, and facilitate generalisations (Rowe, 5)
focusing on the what of learning rather than the who. Direct instruction is flexible in grouping
students with similar abilities and they will only progress through the levels when they have
mastered the current level they are at. The three main issues with direct instruction is that it
can produce surface learning, it tends to ignore student-centered learning in todays society
and ability grouping. Surface learning is a problem because it produces short-term learning
rather than profound and in depth knowledge. It also does not take into consideration current
research into student centered learning like the Black Box approach, which is an issue
because students are individuals and in most cases need some type of differentiation. Ability
grouping is also a problem, especially if you consider most schools do not have the funding
to have explicit same ability grouping. During my second placement at Craigmore High
School, most of my classes were mixed ability with eight to ten negotiated learning plan
(NEP) students in them. Without government funding they are unable to stream these students
with same ability students. Instead they provide these students with one on one time with
School Services Officers. In my opinion and experience, having students with negotiated
learning plans in the general student population can produce some excellent results. This
pairing can reinforce what the mainstream student knows because they have to teach it to the
NEP student. I feel that this process could work in many situations but it should be noted that

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this will not work in all cases as students may not wish to work together, which can be more
detrimental than successful.
The assessment philosophy I have begun developing leans more towards pastoral care
from my own experiences with students. Building a positive relationship with students is
extremely important to me as a teacher as it allows me to get to know them and how I can
help them achieve to the best of their ability. It also helps me to know where I can push
students to challenge themselves. I feel that schooling is a three way partnership with
teachers, students and parents and that building a relationship with all these elements will
give the youth a better chance of achieving to the best of their ability. When educating
students I want them to feel as passionate about their learning as I do about teaching. For
instance, a student with dyslexia often has trouble reading and writing without spelling errors
and without a pastoral care approach that student may end up under-achieving because it is
too hard to do. Instead it should be about making that student feel positive about themselves
in the classroom. When giving feedback to a dyslexic student I would complement what they
have done well and ignore the spelling in the task. This does not mean ignoring the spelling
altogether, but providing ways to further their spelling ability, such as working with them one
on one. This encourages the student to have a positive outlook and not discourage them from
achieving to the best of their ability. I feel that as a teacher formative assessment is more
important than summative. This is not to say that summative assessment in not important at
all, because it is imperative in benchmarking where students are at in their knowledge and
understanding of a topic. For me formative assessment is about developing a students
knowledge and scaffolding the work down so that when they get to their summative they
know how to produce the work for the assignment. Summative assessment can also be used
in conjunction with formative assessment, especially early on in the year. If a student does
not achieve well in a summative assignment it is ok to give feedback to the student and

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discuss with them where they could improve. By conversing with the student I am achieving
two things, acknowledging that yes the grade is low but there is room for improvement and
also showing the student that I care about them as learners. I mark against a rubric, especially
when working with Year 11 and 12 students, as this allows me to benchmark them against the
standards produced by the SACE board and helps me to scaffold the work to these standards.
I believe that it is therefore important to scaffold the rubrics down so that students understand
what they need to do to achieve these standards.
Assessment for learning and assessment of learning is highly important to teaching as
it shows the students depth of knowledge and understanding of a topic. Drawing on my own
experiences through placement, cub scouts, and OHSC work, I have begun to develop a
multifaceted philosophical approach to assessment that leans more towards pastoral care. In
my opinion it is important to acknowledge that all philosophies should be student centered,
meaning that student understanding, knowledge, and learning abilities are being utilised to
the highest capability. Differentiating the tasks, allows for individuality of students to shine
through, helping them to grow and discover their talents. In my opinion students can achieve
their best when they are shown how to.

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Bibliography
Black, Paul and Dylan William. Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through
the Classroom Assessment. 1998.
<http://www.spd.dcu.ie/site/teaching_today/documents/raisingstandardsth
roughclassroomassessment.pdf>.
"Craigmore Placement." 2015.
Rowe, Ken. Effective teaching practices or students with and wthout learning
difficulties: Constructivism as a legitimate theory of learning AND of
teaching? 2006. <http://research.acer.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1008&context=learning_processes>.
"St Aloysius Placement." 2015.

JESSICA BURTON