IMPROVEMENT OF TEACHING FROM IMPROVEMENT OF ASSESSMENT TEST: CHALLENGES

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IMPROVEMENT OF TEACHING FROM IMPROVEMENT OF
ASSESSMENT TEST CHALLENGES

• Madihah Khalid
• Universiti Brunei Darussalam

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OVERVIEW

• Touch on the relationship between curriculum
  practice and assessment
• Changes in assessment in Brunei
• What are the challenges?
• What are we doing?
• Some result on teacher perception of assessment

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Assessment in Brunei

• Before, assessment was mainly based on school
  examination made up of topic tests and end of
  semester examination with a small percentage of
  marks from class work. Students have local
  standardized exam at the end of year 6, year 9 as
  well as Brunei Cambridge GCE O-level and A-level
  in years 1113
• New mathematics curriculum for primary school was
  introduced in 2006 and this lays the groundwork
  for the new guidelines on teaching/ learning and
  assessment. A lot of wonderful stuff
• The National Education System for the 21st
  century (SPN 21) was introduced in 2008. For
  mathematics, the continuation from the last
  introduction follows with some changes here and
  there.
• Year 9 local standardized examination abolished.

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The Curriculum Framework
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• Assessment task should include problem solving,
  mathematical thinking and creative work (CDD,
  2006, 2008)
• Assessment for students from year one to year
  three, is supposed to be made up of 60
  continuous school-based assessment (SBA) and 40
  school-based examination, while for years four to
  year six, the proportion is 30 for continuous
  school-based assessment and 70 school-based
  examination (CDD, 2008).
• This presentation will focus on SBA.

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• School-based Assessment (SBA) will play an
  integral part in the SPN-21 curriculum. It is
  important that assessment is conducted on a
  continuous basis throughout the school year.
  Whether it is formative or summative, teachers
  are expected to conduct quality on-going
  assessment of pupil learning outcomes. This
  assessment could be used for diagnostic and
  intervention purposes, and is an integral part of
  good teaching practices. Information gained can
  be used as a basis for the planning of teaching
  sequences, and the breadth and depth of learning
  unit in subsequent lessons. Learning difficulties
  that pupils have encountered or misconceptions
  that they may have developed at an early stage
  should be identified so that immediate and
  effective remedial help can be given. (CDD,
  2008a, p. 3)

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• It is hoped that by implementing School-based
  Assessment, greater emphasis will be placed on
  student-centred learning and activity oriented
  pedagogy.
• It is also expected that more emphasis will be
  placed on the process of mathematical learning
  and less on drilling for passing examinations.
  Thus the complexity of a childs performance
  cannot be described by a single set of scores or
  a single type of assessment activity.
• Some of the different types of school based
  assessment that was suggested for teachers to
  carry out in a semester include class
  discussions, oral presentations, project work,
  model-making, statistical surveys, written
  assignments and problem solving/mathematical
  thinking.

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• Proposed change for the end of primary school
  examination. The examination will not be worth
  100 as it was before the introduction of SPN 21.
  Now, the examination that will be centrally set,
  will only be worth 60 and the rest of the marks
  would be from mental computation (which is 5
  from year 5 and 5 from year 6) as well as
  school-based assessment (15 from year 5 and 15
  from year 6) (CDD, 2008b).
• Since the new SPN 21 primary mathematics
  curriculum focuses on childrens mathematical
  processes like communication, connection, mental
  computation, estimation, problem solving,
  mathematical reasoning, visualization, creativity
  and the use of ICT (as seen in the curriculum
  framework of Figure 1), assessment at school
  level should at least include the assessment of
  these processes exhibited by pupils.

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The Challenges

• Challenges involves convincing stake holders that
  changes are beneficial teachers, students,
  administrators, parents
• On the SBA examinations many not convinced of
  standard of teacher constructed classroom
  assessment. Different teachers different kinds of
  assessment/ difficulty level.
• Moderation on the different assessment from
  different schools need to be in place

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• Teachers ability to select appropriate
  assessment modes and monitor so that the children
  not other people work on projects/investigation.
• Teachers ability to come up with good tasks
  (rich enough) and good rubrics for performance
  based assessment to include important TL
  processes and make assessment judgements.
• Need to convince every one involved of the
  advantages of different assessments for balanced
  assessment so that the assessment is holistic and
  not restricted to just the cognitive domain.

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• Need to convince parents of the benefits of
  classroom assessments.
• Teachers not quite used to teach constructively
  used to the traditional way.
• Besides suitable tasks, teachers need to improve
  questioning techniques asking HOT questions.
• Ministry providing support by giving many
  continuous professional development courses