oriented assessment
Research findings
A well-developed curriculum includes strong and functional
assessment components. These assessment components are
aligned with the curriculum’s goals, and so they are integrated
with its content, instructional methods and learning activities,
and designed to evaluate progress towards its major intended
outcomes.
Comprehensive assessment does not just document students’
ability to supply acceptable answers to questions or
problems; it also examines the students’ reasoning and problem-
solving processes. Effective teachers routinely monitor
their students’ progress in this fashion, using both formal tests
or performance evaluations and informal assessments of students’
contributions to lessons and work on assignments.
In the classroom
Effective teachers use assessment for evaluating students’
progress in learning and for planning curriculum improvements,
not just for generating grades. Good assessment
includes data from many sources besides paper-and-pencil
tests, and it addresses the full range of goals or intended outcomes
(not only knowledge but also higher-order thinking
skills and content-related values and dispositions).
Standardized, norm-referenced tests might comprise part of the
assessment programme (these tests are useful to the extent that
they measure intended outcomes of the curriculum and attention
is paid to students’ performance on each individual item,
not just total scores). However, standardized tests should ordinarily
be supplemented with publisher-supplied curriculumembedded
tests (when these appear useful) and with teachermade
tests that focus on learning goals that are emphasized in
instruction but not in external testing sources.
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The teacher uses a variety of formal and
informal assessment methods to monitor
progress towards learning goals.

In addition, learning activities and sources of data other
than tests should be used for assessment purposes. Everyday
lessons and activities provide opportunities to monitor the
progress of the class as a whole and of individual students, and
tests can be augmented with performance evaluations such as
laboratory tasks and observation checklists, portfolios of student
papers or projects, and essays or other assignments that
call for higher-order thinking and application. A broad view of
assessment helps to ensure that the assessment component
includes authentic activities that provide students with opportunities
to synthesize and reflect on what they are learning,
think critically and creatively about it, and apply it in problemsolving
and decision-making contexts.
In general, assessment should be treated as an ongoing andintegral part of each instructional unit. Results should be
scrutinized
to identify learner needs, misunderstandings or misconceptions
that may need attention; to suggest potential
adjustment in curriculum goals, instructional materials or
teaching plans; and to detect weaknesses in the assessment
practices themselves.