Curriculum assessment refers to measurement of academic content of past, proposed and evaluated curriculum. Curriculum assessment also measures the similarities and variations of all three curriculums. At state and district level teachers conduct student learning test to measure the performance and learning’s of students. These tests known as achievement tests and the curriculum used to teach students known as assessed curriculum. A student learning does not depend upon the curriculum and its content. A student may learn more things than what provided in curriculum or may be less depending upon the circumstances, intelligence level and other influential factors.
It is very important to know the content of future curriculum and evaluated curriculum because the questions or content not asked during assessment test may not notified. Curriculum directly refers to assessment of content. Now the question is what is content? Content is detailed description of topics, sub topics and various things covered under that topic.
Curriculum assessment cover assessment of all three types content i.e. intended, enacted and assessed content.
Assessment of intended curriculum – subject specialized people code all the topics and demand. Demand of the topics came after proper study and evaluation. Benchmark the content of intended curriculum against very specific and good curriculum content. Evaluation of topics, sub topics, all points will be covered under that topic need to analyze. After evaluation each point and part of document get a weight. Total three individuals evaluate content independently. After this task a combined evaluation of all three documents provided by three raters carried out. Each topic and sub topic provides an average weighted. Thereafter the course which content similar content as given in benchmarked document got advantage over other contents.
Another way is to do evaluation on map in which north and south axes symbolize the topic and sub topic whereas east and west axes symbolize demand of topics. The map very clearly represents the how much similarity are there in proposed content and a specific content.
Assessment of enacted curriculum – in general teacher take decision about; the time need to spend on each subject, during that time what all topics/ content will be covered, what type of contain will be suitable for student, and what all will be the achievements. For example science will take very time when student is in junior class and the time will be increased as the class is increasing because of the vast curriculum and difficulties involved in subject. Time is the main factor which impact teacher decision.
In this assessment teacher is responsible for measuring the learning’s of student. Teacher is the deciding authority about content. Teacher asses the content and decide what all topic student is required to learn and how much student can learn in the given time.
This is one of the most challenging assessments. Teacher use self report survey carried out by teacher in the classroom. The survey can be complete in a day time or may extend to a longer time for a month or for an year depending upon the requirement. A higher frequency eases the burden of teacher to recall the performance. The survey designed in such manner that it captures demand, time and topic all three aspects. The response of survey gets translated and topic, demand all gets measured and compared with earlier content.
Assessment of assessed curriculum – the process to assess the intended curriculum is similar to the process of assessing, assessed curriculum.
All these measures used at various levels like state, district and school level to measure and assess the curriculum of various subjects.
2. Student learning is very important aspect of teaching process. Is the grade student procuring during class room test and other related exams represent his or her learning. Does the grade match the expectations of a teacher from the student? Sometimes it happens that the grade obtain by student does not match what teacher thought about the student. Student may procure grade higher than what his learning in classroom. There are various measures to access students learning in classroom. Few of direct measures are – standard test, performance observation by teacher, observation of work and task student is doing and checking and analyzing assignments that student is doing. Some in-direct measures are – peer survey or review, number of student passing the exams and going to senior class, and feedback from senior students etc.
The most effective way to analyze the student learning is as suggested by the educationists is a blend of several assessing methods including summative, formative, formal and informal assessments. According to these assessments methods students are assessed and their performance is evaluated. By applying these methods properly in student learning ensures better performance by students and their concentration in the studies. Various tests and exams are provisioned in these assessing methods and help a student to evaluate and improve his performance as well as inspire a student to make more efforts towards achieving good results.
As I have observed, all these students assessing methods are applied in my school as well as in other schools of my district. In my school there is provision of various tests and exams in every semester as well as in annual exams and based on these tests and examinations a performance of student is assessed. After these tests and examinations when result is declared the teachers let the students about their performance and that how they can improve their performance and which is the area they should put more focus on. This method helps students and is usually visible in next term examinations. Through student learning assessment the school ensures that there is an improvement in the performance of students.
References
Continuous Improvement of Student Learning. (n.d.). Retrieved October 24, 2011, from www.explore.kent.edu: http://explore.kent.edu/aa/guide/fulltext.html
Course Development Workshop. (n.d.). Retrieved October 24, 2011, from www.ncrtm.org: https://ncrtm.org/moodle/mod/forum/view.php?id=1262
Porter, A. C. (2004, June). Curriculum Assessment. Retrieved October 24, 2011, from www.andyporter.org: http://andyporter.org/papers/CurriculumAssessment.pdf
