DDP 717. Bonnie L. Prince and Conrad Wesley Snyder, Jr. "What's Communicated in Classroom Assessment? Judgment Crossroads in Continuous Assessment." July 1999. 31 pp.
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Continuous assessment is an important instructional concept, supported by behavioral and cognitive theories of learning, but in practice, such assessment is frequently either diminished in form or ignored entirely. In its most common operational cast, continuous assessment becomes a procedural task, providing meaningless feedback that is lost within the complex, uncertain classroom environment. Its potential benefits to illuminate accomplishment and guide next steps are compromised by the narrow rationality of teachers and students in impoverished schooling communities. When properly practiced and better exploited, continuous assessment contributes noticeably to learning possibilities within the classroom. If ignored or not carried out well, there is little likelihood of thoughtful engagement and maximum exploitation of educational moments.
In this study, many highly structured mathematics and English lessons are observed in a scholastically impoverished schooling context to probe the communication features of continuous assessment in its various practiced and non-practiced forms. Continuous assessment does produce an enriched educational environment, signaling attitudes, important problems, and milestones along didactic, non-verbal, and symbolic communication dimensions. In this way, it can help escape the strange loops inherent to instructional processes.
JEL Classification: I20
Keywords: Educational reform, educational development, continuous assessment, classroom assessment
Bonnie Prince is Dean of Alternative Education at Hocking College in the Appalachian hills of southeastern Ohio. She holds a Ph.D. in communication from Ohio University, and has served as an education consultant in many countries, focusing on the communication aspects of basic education classrooms. This work was undertaken for HIID as part of a basic education reform effort in Namibia.
Wes Snyder is Research Professor of Education at the University of Montana and Faculty Associate at HIID. He has worked for HIID for three years, and some of his analyses of strange loops can be found in DDPs Nos. 690 and 705.