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ENSURING FAIRNESS IN ASSESSMENT

 INTRODUCTION

Ensuring Fairness in Assessment

Assessment is the systematic basis for making inferences about the learning and development of students. It is the process of defining, selecting, designing, collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and using information to increase students' learning and development.

Fairness in assessment

● Fairness in assessment refers to the consideration of learner's needs

and characteristics, and any reasonable adjustment that need to be

applied to take account of them.

Fairness in assessment means all assessment approaches including 

standardized test, performance assessment, portfolio assessment and 

informal measures are free from bias and that methods of students 

assessments are equitable and sensitive to diverse students population.

Concept of fairness

● A fair assessment is one in which students are given equitable opportunities to 

demonstrate what they know. It means students assessed using methods and 

procedures most appropriate to them.

● The concept of fairness can be used in many ways:

 a. Absence of bias: Use of a test will fair if the prediction 

 of non test performance are comparable for different 

 groups.

 b. Procedural fairness: In the assessment process 

 individuals from different groups will be treated equally.

c. Opportunity to learn: Students should be provided with an adequate or equal opportunity to learn the materials

  d. Equality of results: The average performance of different groups should be same. then, a test would be considered fair.

Here,an absence of bias and procedural fairness are essential for an assessment to 

have high level of validity in measuring the knowledge, and understanding that it is 

intended to measure.

Forms of unfairness

● When individual differences are ignored unfairness operates.

● They are influenced by a previous work when assessing the next assignment.

● Halo effect - Teacher forms an overall impression of a student or their work - 

whether positive or negative and then makes assessment decisions that are 

influenced by this view of them.

What can do to ensure fairness in Assessments?

No one wants to use an assessment tool with obvious stereotyping or offensive material, of course. But it's easy to assess in ways that inadvertently favor some students over others. Effective assessment processes yield evidence and conclusions that are meaningful, appropriate, and fair to all relevant subgroups of students.Following are the ways to ensure fairness in assessment,

1. Don't rush.

Assessments that are thrown together at the last minute invariably include flaws that greatly affect the fairness, accuracy, and usefulness of the resulting evidence.

2. Plan your assessments carefully.

Aim not only to access your key learning goals but to do so in a balanced, representative way. If your key learning goals are that students should understand what happened during a certain historical period and evaluate the decisions made by key figures during that period, for example, your test should balance questions on basic conceptual understanding with questions assessing evaluation skills.

3. Aim for assignments and questions that are crystal clear.

If students find the question difficult to understand, they may answer what they think is the spirit of the question rather than the question itself, which may not match your intent.

4. Guard against unintended bias.

A fair and unbiased assessment uses contexts that are equally familiar to all and uses words that have common meanings to all. A test question on quantitative skills that asks students to analyze football statistics might not be fair to women, and using scenarios involving farming may be biased against students from urban areas, unless you are specifically assessing student learning in these contexts.

5. Ask a variety of people with diverse perspectives to review assessment tools.

This helps ensure that the tools are clear, that they appear to assess what you want them to, and that they don't favor students of a particular background.

6. Try out large-scale assessment tools.

If you are planning a large-scale assessment with potentially significant consequences, try out your assessment tool with a small group of students before launching the large-scale implementation. Consider asking some students to think out loud as they answer a test question; their thought processes should match up with the ones you intended. Read students' responses to assignments and open-ended survey questions to make sure their answers make sense, and ask students if anything is unclear or confusing.

7. Teachers need to ensure that assessments match the purpose of learning and are valid and reliable.

8. School needs to provide professional learning to ensure consistency of teacher judgement in marking student assessments so that teachers have high expectations of all students regardless of their ethnic background.

9. Schools should provide training for staff around the quality teaching model and learning programs to engage all students.

10. School should provide training for staff around the quality teaching model and apply higher order thinking models to assessments and teaching and learning programs to engage all students.

11. Teachers should focus on assessment for learning by reducing the number of formal tasks and enhance informal assessment as part of the learning process so that students can construct their knowledge and build upon their skills gradually.

12. Teachers should provide quality feedback and maintain high expectations of all of their students.

Principles of fair assessment

Fair assessment should possess the following principles:

1. Improves learning

The purpose of assessment is to ultimately improve student learning. Formative and summative assessments helps to accomplish this goal. It sure the student their gaps in knowledge and serve as a tool to enable and motivate students to apply and demonstrate their knowledge. It helps to inform what has been learn and accomplished.

2.Validity And Reliability

The assessment should be well it and reliable. It should be consistent and accurate indicators of student performance. To help with reliability ,assessments should be administered under suitable conditions.

3.Matches the learning outcomes and content

The assessment should be measure whether the learners have met one or more of the internet learning outcome of the lesson .Assessing students on content that has not been covered in the course content should be avoided.

4.Endeavours to be free from bias

Efforts should be made to ensure that the assessment methods do not disadvantage students based on factor search as such as there culture, gender, language etc. Assessments do not discriminate or favour any group of learners.Teachers should consider the significant differences in student learning style and not treat them as a homogeneous group.Different opportunities should be provided to demonstrate their learning.

5.Has transparency

Students should understand the purpose of the assessment and how the assessment will be used.Clear and complete directions regarding the actual assessment ensures transparency.Also a clear written policy in the course syllabus must be included.

Steps to fair assessment

1.Have clearly stated learning outcomes and share them with your students so they know what you expect from them.

2.Match your assessment to what you teach and vice versa.

3.Use many different measures and many different kinds of measure.

4.Help students learn how to do assessment task.

5.Engage and encourage your students.

6.Interpret assessment results appropriately.

7.Evaluate the outcomes of your assessment.

ASSESSMENT FOR ENHANCING CONFIDENCE IN LEARNING

Confidence is a state of mind.It is a measure of one's belief in one's own abilities.Confidence based assessment and learning is a unique methodology in which the learning truly with the assessment process.It provides numerous benefits to educational institutions.

Relationship of Assessment with Confidence,Self -esteem ,and Motivation.

1.Assessment and confidence

● Good assessment gives effective feedback to the learners and 

thereby enhance their level of confidence. 

● Confidence come from feelings of well being, acceptance of 

your.

body and mind and belief in your own ability, skills and experience. 

● Confidence and knowledge are related terms.Both of them are critical 

determinants in evaluating future performance.

2.Assessment and self - esteem

● Assessment will provide knowledge about the progress of the 

learners. The knowledge about the progress will enhance the 

self - esteem of the learners.

● Self - esteem reflects a person's overall subjective 

emotional evaluation of his own worth. 

● It is a judgement of oneself as well as an attitude towards 

the self.

● Self - esteem will motivate students to achieve high scores 

in assessment.

3.Assessment and motivation

● Assessment play a role in student motivation. 

● Assessment that encourages learning, promotes motivation by 

emphasising progress and achievement.

● Assessment capable students feel greater ownership of their 

learning and are more likely to attribute outcomes to factors within 

their control. This encourages and motivates students.

IPSATIVE ASSESSMENT

★ Students make their own way ,set their own standards and meet their own goals .

★ This is an assessment which compares the current performance of students with their own previous performance.

★ Ipsative assessment tends to correlate with effort ,to promote effort based 

attributions of success and to enhance motivation to learn.

★ An ipsative assessment in an education or learning context compares a test 

taker’s results against his or her previous results .

★ It is a descriptor used in psychology to indicate a specific type of measure in 

which respondents compare two or more desirable options and pick the one 

that is most preferred.

Merits

● It measures progress and development .

● It encourages students to break their previous score.

● It helps to know the improvement

Whether the learner is taking advantage of feedback from previous 

assessments.

● Improves self esteem and confidence .

● It helps learners assess by self and become more self reliant .

Teacher will get an idea about students ,

■ Who are not progressing and who are not suitable for the course.

■ Enables teachers to learn from assessment and this can be used to 

modify their teaching.

Limitations

● The biggest problem is that assessors need to have access to records of a learner’s 

past assessments to make comparisons and these are not always available, although 

electronic records can help.

● It also means that assessments of different modules in a modular scheme may 

need to be linked and this may be difficult if the modules have very different 

learning outcomes. 

● Finally, ipsative assessment requires a different way of thinking about assessment 

and this may take time for teachers and students to get used to.

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PRINCIPLE OF TIMES TABLE CONSTRUCTION

 Learning Objectives

Students will be able to understand the principles of time table construction and also able to make a time table.

Introduction

TIME TABLE

 A timetable is a detailed plan showing the schedule of time allotment to various subjects and activities. Usually timetable is prepared for a week to be repeated. All the work in school is carried out systematically in tune with the time table. The successful working of a school depends on a suitable timetable. Friends time table said to be second School clock. A time table is necessary for the proper management of the affairs of a school.

 Principles of time table construction

 Time table give a clear vision and comprehensive picture of cool activities, that is what work is being done during which period were by whom and when. The first thing to be decided in the framing of a timetable is to determine the number of working days in a week and the duration of school hours. All this are determined by regulations approved by the department of education.It also prescribes number of periods for each subjects.All this regulations should be observed while constructing the time table the following principles also must be looked into.They are,

1.Type of school

 The time table will considerably depend upon the type of school a different type of time table is prepared for a primary high or Higher secondary school girl's school,boy's school and co-education schools should have different types of time table to serve their individual purpose. The requirement of a rural school and that of an urban school might be different and hence the time table should reflected. In fact the norm of the time table is determined by the norm of the schools of various types.

2.Availability of time

 Time table is to be framed within the limits of the time table available . The duration of working hours and amounts of time required for a particular subject and the organisation of activity should be taken into consideration.

3.Staff, Building, and Equipment

 The availability of staff, building and equipment is an important consideration while constructing a timetable.The time table is to be formed in accordance with the number of rooms available, number of teachers,accommodation in the rooms or in laboratory etc.

4. Relative important and difficulty of subject

 There are certain social and economic consideration that determine the importance of the subjects.Subjects like English and mathematics are supposed to be important and difficult and so they should be a lot more time.

 These so cold difficulties of dead should be accommodated in the morning fresh hours of the school. Subject like drawing, painting, PT,music etc can be adjusted in between too difficult subjects. Thus important and difficult subjects should get priority in the time table.

5. Duration of periods

 Pupils in lower classes need frequent changes of occupation, with short period to prevent incidence of fatigue.Normally it should be of 30 minutes. Pupils in higher classes may have long periods of 40 minutes  to 45. During summer pupils get tired very soon.Hence in summer the duration of periods and even the working hours in the school should be shorter.

6. Principle of fatigue

 Fatigue means that Lowering down of efficiency as a result of exhaustion of energy. There can be physical as well as mental fatigue. Fatigue demises, attention and weakness the power of understanding and insight. As a result the work rate is diminished.

Hence while framing  time table, we should be familiar with the subjects which cause more fatigue and that time of the day when the students are in a position to concentrate in subjects.

 According to fatigability the order of school subject is maths, English,  indian languages,science history and geography, drawing painting ,music and PT. All the morning time is considered to be the best for Mental freshness and alertness and warming up. But it has been found by experiment and research that the best work is never done during the opening periods,but only after a certain momentum has been gained. The second and third periods in the morning and second after recess are the best periods for fatiguing subjects. The last period in the afternoon is the worst period. Tuesday and the Wednesday are the best days of the week from the point of view of mental freshness. Monday goes in "warming up" and are the victims of' inertia of rest'. Saturday Saturday is 'worst day '. The incident of mental freshness and alertness maybe shown in following way.Hence while framing the time table the best periods of the day and if possible, best days of the week should be devoted to fatigue causing subjects like mathematics, English etc.

7.Principle of variety

 It has been seen experiment early that change of room seed and foster usually is and antidote against weakness.It is applied on both students and teachers variety can be introduced in following manners,

– no subject except science practical should be tempted for two consecutive periods.

– the same class should not set in the same room for the whole day

– the same teacher  should not have two consecutive periods in the same class.

– If subject is taught only 2/3 time a week,should follow at intervals.

– the physical training periods,science practical and drawing work follow a change.

8.Principle of play and recreation

 Timetable should accommodate a few periods for play and recreation. Recess period should be not more than 30 minutes. In which the students may just play after taking the tiffin. Play other recreation activities are the sources of pleasure and enjoyment.

9.Principle of elasticity.

 Find able to be flexible, elastic and not rigid.  It should be kept in mind that daily change mares the interest of the students. Yet. Should be a probation for making necessary alteration to it should not be to flexible.

10. Principle of Equitable distribution.

    It is expected that the workload should be equally distributed amongst the teacher to maintain peace and happiness in them. Time tae is the index to show the equitable distribution of such work load.

11. Free periods for teacher.

    Free periods for teachers should be provided so as to increase their efficiency and also for correctional works. Free period should be scattered over all the days of weak.It is not wise to alot all the free periods in a particular day of weak. It is suggested that a teacher will be allowed atleast three free a day. This will enable him to take rest, to correct the home work and to prepare him self for the class.

12.Department Rules and Regulations.

The time table should be based on the rules and regulations as prescribed by the education department.

13.Principle of fulfillment of needs.

While framing time table, it could be kept in mind whether it is fit for fulfillment of needs. It can pave the way for overall development of students.

14. Factors of climate

 We should not have the same time table for all of the session. The timetable meant for summer season should be kept different from mean for winters. It also depends upon the geography which directly effects the weather of that area like hilly area will have different timetable than planes.

15.Principle Of Justice

 Work among the members of staff should be equally distributed. Unequal distribution of work may cause frustration. Leisure periods should be judiciously distributed. No teacher should be asked to teach a subject for which he is not qualified.

Time table gives a clear vision and comprehensive picture of school activities. It should follow these all principles. These make time table effective.

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UNIVERSITY QUESTIONS

1.What are the principles of time table construction? (4marks)

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