Sunday Star—Tests are an integral and invaluable part of the education system as they are a means of assessing and measuring student performance and, indirectly, the system itself. Recent developments in education, however, are not only changing people’s perception but also revolutionising its role as a measuring tool, says an expert and researcher in the field.
“People in education are becoming more and more accountable to the government and to those who fund them,” says Dr Peter Knapp, acting director of research and assessment of University of New South Wales’ Education Testing Centre in Australia.
“At the end of the day, they want to be able to say not only what their students can do but also whether the students can measure up to what is expected of them. This situation is not only specific in Australia but affects education systems around the world.”
The development, according to Dr Knapp, has had an impact on the field of test research and design.
“The traditional test theory looks at testing programmes as having the sole function of ranking students from lowest to highest achievement or vice versa.
“In old-style tests, you have the scores. You turn that into a percentage and then you get your means and standard deviations, and after that you’ll be able to rank the students on that scale.”
He notes that although the function has the desired purpose of informing teachers, students and parents where a student’s performance is located in terms of the testing population, it often tells very little about what students actually know or don’t know. “All you can say at the end of the day is if the student is good enough or not.”
The modern test theory however sees the potential scope of testing programmes expanding further than that. Tests, says Dr Knapp, can be designed to carry diagnostic elements.
He quotes Australia as an example where tests are now designed to help identify student achievement in relation to relevant syllabus outcomes. This means that the results are able to provide rich descriptive data on student performance that will enable teachers and parents to make informed judgements on the students’ future educational needs.
“What we are trying to do with our assessments is to be able to see where students are in a continuum, beginning from where they start in the education system and how they’re moving through it.
“So, rather than just seeing it (the test) as a “Yes, they have gotten a question right’ or ‘No, they haven’t’ situation, we’re trying to see a whole range of skills and knowledge that are integrated into the test items, plus a whole lot of other factors that need to be taken into account.
“The technical term for this (approach) is called the ‘item response theory’. In simple words, in modern testing programmes, we’re not just looking at the student’s ability to get the items right, but we’re also looking at the student’s ability itself.
“We calibrate the items before the test in terms of student ability and item difficulty. Once students have done the test, we should be able to see whether students who should have gotten it right, did or didn’t.
“If they didn’t get it right, then diagnostically there’s something wrong here. The next question to ask is why?”
Dr Knapp says the question in itself is interesting, especially to the teacher. The teacher may then ask herself, “Is it my teaching?”, “Should I think about how I teach the students?” or “Do I change my teaching programme?”
“It’s a whole lot of issues which traditional testing can’t tell you. (With old-style tests) all teachers can say is, “These are my best students’ but they can’t tell you why. So, modern tests are diagnostic in that they actually inform teachers how they could improve their teaching.”
Teachers in general, claims Dr Knapp, are keen to improve themselves. “They very much want to know how to do things better but one of the things we don’t do well enough is to show them how.
“With this (new) approach, we’re not only showing students what they’re doing correctly and not, we’re also showing teachers how they can more effectively teach their students.”
By Choo Hooi Peng