At the start of the semester, I was wondering what knowledge I would gain and how important it would be for

my future career as a teacher, I was also wondering what critical thinking and paradigm shift really is, though I have heard it from other instructors frequently I seemed not to fully understand the true essence of what is really the paradigm shift in education. At the end of the semester, I have now fully understood everything about it, especially because my Facilitating Learning and Assessment subjects were offered in same semester. My experiences in the conduct of the field studies in this course have tremendously improved my understanding to the different forms of performance assessment and rubrics that as a teacher would improve my capacity of gauging the performances of my students. To become fair in assessing the students performances, teachers have to develop ways to mitigate biases in the application of the different assessment strategies to ensure fairness in assessing and interpreting the students performance. The teacher should always be aware that diverse students present the risks of constructing biases in examinations, activities and even in grading. By recognizing the different biases that may arise in the course of the activity or learning process, it will be only then, that teacher will be able to use assessment models that eliminate inequity in the class. Alternative assessments such as performance-oriented and product-oriented assessments can help ensure fairness whether it may be ethnic, economic or gender in assessing the students understanding of the lectures. However, I believe that ensuring fairness or equity does not rely fully on the reforms in the quality of assessment, the development of an unbiased curriculum and instruction as well as improved pedagogical practices must work together so that teacher could clearly present an accurate overall picture of the students performances and achievement in the classroom. This observation has made me think that sometimes performance-oriented assessment cannot be used in assessing students performance and this is where the product-oriented assessment oriented assessment comes in. I have likewise learned to appreciate more the product-oriented assessment just like the performance-oriented one because the product-oriented tasks represents the learners understanding of the different concepts, theories and principles that are being taught to them. With it, the teacher can clearly see the evidence of the knowledge and skills that are learned in the

entire instructional process by the students and help them account for their learning by seeing the outcomes and the product of their academic engagement which will motivate the students to continue and sustain in the learning process. Finally, one of the most important lesson I have learned in this activity is that, it is imperative for a teacher to recognize that the classroom consists of diverse individuals that must be assessed in a neutral way and by understanding the different alternative assessments combined with the right rubric, it equips me with the different assessment strategies that can eliminate the different biases that may arise in the classroom because of the diversity of my students.