UNIVERSITY OF GOCE DELCHEV - SHTIP

FACULTY OF PHILOLOGY

Paperwork on the subject

Methodology of English Language Teaching

On topic:

Learner Feedback and Assessment (Assessment of Young Learners)

Mentor: Made by:

PhD Nina Daskalovska

ID no. : xxxxxxx

June, 2017
Learner Feedback and Assessment (Assessment of Young Learners)

Content

Abstract .......................................................................................................................... 3

Introduction .................................................................................................................... 4

I. The Meaning of Feedback ................................................................................... 6

II. Learner Assessment Promoting assessment for teaching and learning sessions
............................................................................................................................. 8

III. Assessment of Young Learners .......................................................................................... 10

IV. Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 11

References ................................................................................................................... 12

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Learner Feedback and Assessment (Assessment of Young Learners)

Abstract

Assessment and feedback are an important part of the learning cycle. Most of the
time, both teachers and students express frustration and disappointment in relation to
the conduct of the feedback process. By being a student, I have witnessed many times
where students are complaining that the assessment or the feedback given was not
clear enough and unhelpful. This is often a result of not having enough or proper
guidance for using feedback to improve our subsequent performance. Most of the time it
is given too late, and its of no use or relevance at all. On the part of the teachers, it is
often commented that learners are not interested in the feedback comments or they just
have interest for the grade.

Descriptive and specific feedback is essential for student success and

improvement. Educators that combine strong subject knowledge with effective feedback
can offer learners focused, rich information about their learning, and how to improve it.
Learners that have clear feedback about their learning process can monitor their
progress and seek more feedback to improve their learning.

Key words:

1. Feedback;
2. Assessment;
3. Learning cycle;
4. Proper guidance;
5. Subsequent performance.

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Learner Feedback and Assessment (Assessment of Young Learners)

I. Introduction

Feedback and assessment are one of the most important and powerful
influences on learning and achievement. If we want effective feedback, especially with
the young learners, then they need to understand their desired goal and make evidence
about their present position and relation to that goal. Teachers need to guide them
clearly on the way to close the gap between these two.

John Hattie (2009) states that in order to be effective, feedback needs to be

clear, purposeful, meaningful and compatible with students prior knowledge, and to
provide logical connections. He says that if feedback is directed at the right level, it can
assist students to comprehend, engage, or develop effective strategies to process the
information intended to be learnt. Thus, when we combine feedback with effective
instructions in the classrooms, it can be very powerful in enhancing learning.

The assessment for learning supports the educators and helps them focus on the
learners and learning in individual classroom sessions. Formative assessment is the
assessment used by teachers on an ongoing basis, in order to help their students
achieve the best of their abilities. It is an integral part of the learning process. In
contrast, summative assessment takes place on completion of a topic or a unit, and it
often contributes to the grading and assessment of qualification.

Assessment is very important for students and teachers as well. It boosts student
motivation, or shows them a final result of their learning cycle which empowers them to
continue doing better or fixing the present fails. In order to provide correct assessment,
students need to be given feedback.

Feedback is a very important part of a learning cycle, and teachers need to focus
more on giving students clear and on-time feedback. Learners need to improve as they
go. If students and teachers have good communication, than it will definitely help the
student say if the feedback is helpful or not.

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Learner Feedback and Assessment (Assessment of Young Learners)

Teachers should make professional judgments on the performance of learners

during every teaching session. They should translate their judgments into feedback,
according to the quality of every individual learner and create the focus of assessment.
The value of the feedback depends on the quality of the feedback and how learners
receive it and ultimately use it.

Further in this term paper, by making a research in some sources related to

feedback and assessment in teaching, we are going to provide definitions and examples
of providing feedback and assessment in the teaching cycle.

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Learner Feedback and Assessment (Assessment of Young Learners)

II. The Meaning of Feedback

Feedback is conceptualized as information provided by a teacher regarding

aspects of ones performance or understanding. A teacher or parent can provide
corrective information, a peer can provide an alternative strategy, a book can provide
information to clarify ideas, a parent can provide encouragement, and a learner can look
up the answer to evaluate the correctness of a response. Feedback thus is a
consequence of performance.

To assist in understanding the purpose, effects, and types of feedback, it is

useful to consider a continuum of instruction and feedback. At one end of the continuum
is a clear distinction between providing instruction and providing feedback.

However, when feedback is combined with more a correctional review, the

feedback and instruction become intertwined until the process itself takes on the forms
of new instruction, rather than informing the student solely about correctness (Kulhavy,
1977, p. 212). To take on this instructional purpose, feedback needs to provide
information specifically relating to the task or process of learning that fills a gap between
what is understood and what is aimed to be understood (Sadler,

1989), and it can do this in a number of different ways. These may be through
affective processes, such as increased effort, motivation, or engagement. Alternatively,
the gap may be reduced through a number of different cognitive processes, including
restructuring understandings, confirming to students that they are correct or incorrect,
indicating that more information is available or needed, pointing to directions students
could pursue, and/or indicating alternative strategies to understand particular
information. In fact, feedback is information with which a learner can confirm, add to,
overwrite, tune, or restructure information in memory, whether that information is
domain knowledge, meta-cognitive knowledge, beliefs about self and tasks, or cognitive
tactics and strategies.

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Learner Feedback and Assessment (Assessment of Young Learners)

There are many possible ways for learners to reduce the gap between current
and desired understandings in response to feedback, and they are not always effective
in enhancing learning. Those likely to be effective include the following. Students can
increase their effort, particularly when the effort leads to tackling more challenging tasks
or appreciating higher quality experiences rather than just doing more. We are more
likely to increase effort when the intended goal is clear, when high commitment is
secured for it, and when belief in eventual success is high (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996, p.
260).

Learners may also develop effective error detection skills, which lead to their own
self-feedback aimed at reaching a goal. Such error detection can be very powerful,
provided students have some modicum of knowledge and understanding about the task
on which to strategize and regulate. In addition, students can seek better strategies to
complete the task or be taught them, or they can obtain more information from which
they can then solve problems or use their self-regulatory proficiencies.

Teachers can also assist by clarifying goals, enhancing commitment or increased

effort to reaching them through feedback. Goals can also be made more manageable
by narrowing the range of reasonable hypotheses (Sweller, 1990). More generally,
teachers can create a learning environment in which students develop self-regulation
and error detection skills.

How feedback contributes to these processes depends largely on the focus of

feedback and the level to which it is directed. In the next section, we develop a
framework to assist in identifying the circumstances likely to result in the more
productive outcomes.

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Learner Feedback and Assessment (Assessment of Young Learners)

III. Learner Assessment Promoting assessment in teaching and

learning sessions

Assessment as part of classroom activities is a fundamental process required to

promote learning and ultimately achievement. Learners need to know and understand
the aim of learning, why and how can they achieve it.

When learners know and understand these principles, the quality of learning will
improve. Sharing this information with learners will promote ownership of the learning
aims and a sense of shared responsibility between the teacher and learner to achieve
those aims. Improving learners confidence and self-esteem reflects positively in
learners work and their motivation is improved.

To promote effective assessment, teachers need to explain the learning aims to

learners and check their understanding and demonstrate the standards learners are
required to achieve and help them recognize when they have achieved that standard.
Teachers need to give effective feedback on assessment decisions, so that learners
know how to improve. They should demonstrate high expectations and make it obvious
to learners that they believe that they can improve on their past performance

Assessment for Learning is all about informing learners of their progress to

empower them to take the necessary action to improve their performance. Teachers
need to create learning opportunities where learners can progress at their own pace
and undertake consolidation activities where necessary.

In recent years, it has been stated that teachers have become adept at
supporting the less able learner, sometimes to the detriment of the more able learner.
Assessment for learning strategies should be implemented in such a way that quality
feedback provided to learners based on, for example, an interim assessment decision,
will help to challenge the more able learner to reach new levels of achievement and, in

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Learner Feedback and Assessment (Assessment of Young Learners)

doing so, reach their full potential. The individuality of feedback, by its very nature, has
the facility to support weaker learners and challenge more able learners.

Much classroom practice can be described as assessment activities. Teachers

set tasks and activities and pose questions to learners. Learners respond to the tasks,
activities and questions, and the teachers make judgments on the learners knowledge,
understanding and skills acquisition as evidenced in the learners responses. These
judgments on learners performance happen quite naturally in the course of any
teaching and learning session and require two-way dialogue, decision-making and
communication of the assessment decision in the form of quality feedback to the learner
on their performance. Depending on how successfully these classroom practices have
been undertaken, learning will have taken place in varying degrees from learner to
learner. At the end of each session, teachers need to ask themselves: What do learners
know now that they did not know before they attended the session? Although somewhat
crude, this will evaluate how effective a particular session has been.

No matter how well a teaching and learning session is planned, or how well a
teacher may feel at the conclusion to the session, it is not how well the teacher has
performed, but the reaction of the learners that matters. The real test is whether
learners have learnt and ultimately progressed against the learning objectives defined at
the start of the session. Testing learning is an important part of classroom practice, and
questioning is one of the most common methods of checking learner understanding.
Questioning is something teachers do naturally as part of their daily routine, but
developing the skills associated with questioning techniques presents many challenges
for teachers and is something that is developed over time. Teachers need to review
what is to be learnt in any one teaching and learning session and plan for the inclusion
of questioning accordingly. When to pose open and closed questions, how to develop a
question distribution strategy and when to use questions to check learners knowledge,
comprehension and application are all issues that teachers should consider. (Jones,
2005, p. 9)

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Learner Feedback and Assessment (Assessment of Young Learners)

IV. Assessment of Young Learners

The assessment of young learners is very different from the assessment of older
learners and adults in several ways. The greatest difference is in the way young
learners learn. They construct knowledge in experiential, interactive, concrete, and
hands-on ways (Bredekamp and Rosegrant, 1992, 1995) rather than through abstract
reasoning and paper and pencil activities alone. To learn, young learners must touch
and manipulate objects, build and create in many media, listen and act out stories and
everyday roles, talk and sing, and move and play in various ways and environments.
Consequently, the expression of what young children know and can do would best be
served in ways other than traditional paper and pencil assessments.

Assessment is likewise testing amid early adolescence on the grounds that a

learners advancement is fast, uneven, rambling, and very impacted by the surrounding
world. A creating youngster shows times of both quick development and successive
rest. Kids create in four domainsphysical, intellectual, social, and emotionaland not
at a similar pace through each. No two youngsters are the same; every tyke has a one
of a kind rate of improvement. What's more, no two youngsters have a similar family,
social, and experiential foundations.

Unmistakably, these factors imply that a "one-measure fits-all" appraisal won't

meet the requirements of most youthful kids. Another assessment challenge for young
learners is that it requires investment to direct assessment appropriately. Assessment
basically ought to be controlled in a one-on-one setting to every child by his or her
instructor. What's more, a learners ability to focus is frequently short and the appraisal
ought to in this way be directed in short sections over a time of a couple days or even
weeks. While early youth instructors request formatively fitting appraisals for
youngsters, they regularly gripe about the time it takes to control them and the coming
about loss of instructional time in the classroom. Nonetheless, when quality tests reflect

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Learner Feedback and Assessment (Assessment of Young Learners)

quality guideline, assessment and teaching turn out to be practically consistent,

supplementing and advising each other.

V. Conclusion

Formal and informal assessments are an integral part of an early childhood

program. Teachers and policy makers who are responsible for the education of young
children should create carefully planned assessment programs. Giving quality
assessments to learners has many benefits: they give teachers valuable and
individualized information about childrens developing skills and knowledge, they lead
the teacher to select quality early childhood activities and instruction, and they provide
information that helps administrators strengthen existing programs and hold them
accountable. Most of all, developmentally appropriate assessments benefit young
children by helping teachers ensure that a young childs educational journey springs
from a solid foundation of basic skills.

There are major implications for the design of assessments. Too often,
assessments are used to provide snapshots of learning rather than providing
information that can be used by learners or their teachers to address the three feedback
questions.

Certainly, a critical conclusion is that teachers need to seek and learn from
feedback (such as from learners responses to tests) as much as do learners, and only
when assessment provides such learning is it of value to either. Most current
assessments provide minimal feedback, too often because they rely on recall and are
used as external accountability thermometers rather than as feedback devices that are
integral to the teaching and learning process. It is the feedback information and
interpretations from assessments that matter, not the numbers or grades.

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Learner Feedback and Assessment (Assessment of Young Learners)

References

o Bredekamp, S.,&Rosegrant, T. (Eds.). (1992). Reaching potentials: Appropriate

curriculum and assessment for young children (Vol. 1). Washington, DC: National
Association for the Education of Young Children.
o Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning. London and New York: Routledge
o Jones, C. A. (2005) Assessment for Learning. Vocational Learning Support
Programme: 16-19, 9-13
o Kluger, A. N., & DeNisi, A. (1998). Feedback interventions: Towards the
understanding of a double-edge sword. Current Directions in Psychological
Science, 7, 6772
o Kulhavy, R. W. (1977). Feedback in written instruction. Review of Educational
Research, 47(1), 211232.
o Sadler, R. (1989). Formative assessment and the design of instructional
systems. Instructional Science, 18, 119144
o Sweller, J. (1990). Cognitive processes and instruction procedures. Australian
Journal of Education, 34(2), 125130.

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