Educators should base their assessment of students' learning not on students' grasp of facts but on the ability to explain the ideas, trends, and concepts that those facts illustrate.
Education is a holistic process of facilitating knowledge, learning, beliefs, skills and values. Educators have the responsibility to not only facilitate this process but also to design appropriate pedagogical assessment to ensure its effectiveness. The statement contends that educators must base this assessment on students’ ability to explain concepts, ideas and trends underlying a fact rather than the grasp of the fact itself. While young children may not be intellectually advanced to comprehend all concepts, trends and ideas; for students of advanced age the recommendation is highly beneficial.
The Bloom’s pyramid for learning objectives starts with remembering facts and then progresses to its apex ‘creativity’. A pedagogy that evaluates students merely on the basis of their ability to remember some vivid information amounts to restrict their learning to the bottom of this pyramid and thus impeding creativity. When students know that they will be only assessed based on their memorization abilities; rote learning is encouraged. Given the importance of grades for higher education or for employment, this method will discourage them to spend their limited time in exploring, discovering and analyzing the information they have grasped despite their interest if any.
On the other hand, a system which aims to grade students based on their ability to comprehend and explain ideas, trends and concepts will motivate concept based learning. For example, students will not read history to merely remember ‘what, where and when’ type of information about the events but rather to understand why the events took place therefore taking lessons from past mistakes and fulfilling the very purpose of studying History. This will hold true for other subjects as well. Such a scenario stands to benefit the institution as well as the country.
Another argument to support the statement, and hence opposing the evaluation of students based on their fact learning ability, deals with their competency for job market. Students lacking skills in comprehending ideas, trends and concepts behind given facts will have compromised employability. For example, a meteorologist who is unable to predict trends in weather from given data will not be welcomed. Moreover, when students’ focus is limited to memorizing facts, they will fail to develop skill of knowledge application for different questions. For instance, that the earth revolves around the Sun is a fact and the gravity is the underlying idea. When students merely learn about the former, they won’t be able to explain whether other planets revolve around the Sun. The answer could have been deduced had they known about gravitational force.
People may argue that assessment based on fact-learning provides an objective and easier method for student evaluation. Yet, ease of this assessment methodology cannot compensate for the fact that it undermines the very objectives of education. Furthermore, some may argue that for many subjects, especially humanities, learning facts is as important as trends or ideas. However, one must note that ideas, trends and concepts are only derived from facts and can only be understood if associated facts are grasped. Admittedly, young children lack intellectual maturity to fathom all the ideas, trends and concepts surrounding a given fact. Therefore, in that case, it is wiser to asses them on their fact retaining ability but, yet, this should not be paramount in their pedagogy.
In conclusion, the proposition to evaluate students on their ability to grasp ad explain concepts, ideas and trends would foster creativity, knowledge application skills, curiosity and employability. However, the recommendation may not be practical for younger children given their diminished intellectual faculty and they, therefore, must be assessed otherwise. Yet, mere memorization of facts should not be of profound importance in their learning methodology.
Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
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2024-07-26 | maddo4568 | view | |
2023-10-18 | raghavchauhan619 | 66 | view |
2023-07-25 | Victory | 50 | view |
2023-07-25 | Gnyana | 66 | view |
2022-07-06 | Soumyadip Kar | 66 | view |
- The best test of an argument is the argument s ability to convince someone with an opposing viewpoint 85
- The surest indicator of a great nation is represented not by the achievements of its rulers, artists, or scientists, but by the general welfare of its people. 66
- People s behavior is largely determined by forces not of their own making 83
- Claim Imagination is a more valuable asset than experience Reason People who lack experience are free to imagine what is possible without the constraints of established habits and attitudes 83
- Government officials should rely on their own judgment rather than unquestioningly carry out the will of the people they serve. 66
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 852, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...d they known about gravitational force. People may argue that assessment based o...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, furthermore, hence, however, if, may, moreover, so, then, therefore, thus, well, while, for example, for instance, in conclusion, as well as, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.5258426966 108% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 21.0 12.4196629213 169% => OK
Conjunction : 25.0 14.8657303371 168% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 11.3162921348 141% => OK
Pronoun: 42.0 33.0505617978 127% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 67.0 58.6224719101 114% => OK
Nominalization: 27.0 12.9106741573 209% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3374.0 2235.4752809 151% => OK
No of words: 603.0 442.535393258 136% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.59535655058 5.05705443957 111% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.9554069778 4.55969084622 109% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.99983910858 2.79657885939 107% => OK
Unique words: 295.0 215.323595506 137% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.489220563847 0.4932671777 99% => OK
syllable_count: 1027.8 704.065955056 146% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59117977528 107% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 6.24550561798 112% => OK
Article: 8.0 4.99550561798 160% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 3.10617977528 129% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.77640449438 56% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.38483146067 68% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 28.0 20.2370786517 138% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 23.0359550562 91% => OK
Sentence length SD: 48.3632487177 60.3974514979 80% => OK
Chars per sentence: 120.5 118.986275619 101% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.5357142857 23.4991977007 92% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.07142857143 5.21951772744 116% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 4.97078651685 121% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 7.80617977528 13% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 16.0 10.2758426966 156% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 5.13820224719 117% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.83258426966 124% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.461002430322 0.243740707755 189% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.132801515511 0.0831039109588 160% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.104638579665 0.0758088955206 138% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.270837097259 0.150359130593 180% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0578935323808 0.0667264976115 87% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.7 14.1392134831 111% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 41.7 48.8420337079 85% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.92365168539 141% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.1743820225 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.2 12.1639044944 125% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.26 8.38706741573 110% => OK
difficult_words: 175.0 100.480337079 174% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 11.8971910112 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.2143820225 93% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.7820224719 110% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.