Written by: M.N. Hidayad, M.Pd
Introduction
Traditional forms of testing and assessment have been criticized for their failure to truly assess young learners. Traditional forms of assessment do not represent the activities that children usually perform in the classroom. Children have an amazing ability to absorb the language through play and other activities which they find enjoyable (Scott and Ytreberg, 1990). Therefore, if the children are assessed using the traditional form of assessment, the result will not reflect the students performance. In addition, traditional forms of assessment only focus more on product rather than the process. For example, objective paper and pencil tests usually focus on whether children get the right answers, instead of the process of how they arrive at their responses (Fischer and King, 1995).
Scott and Ytreberg (1990: 7) stated that formal assessment may not be a compulsory part of a young learners’ teacher. It is always useful for the teacher to make regular notes about each child’s progress. These activities can be done by using alternative or authentic assessment. Authentic assessment describes the multiple forms of assessment that are consistent with classroom goals, curricula, and instruction (O’Malley and Pierce, 1996). Authentic assessment involves gathering information concerning a child performance while the child is engaged in genuine or realistic learning opportunities (Rhodes and Shanklin, 1993). Various types of authentic assessment have been used to supplement traditional forms of assessment. Authentic assessment have proven to be particularly useful in many classroom situations where paper-and pencil tests cannot gather specific types of information about children’s achievement (Tierney, Carter, and Desai, 1991). Therefore, nowadays, many teachers choose authentic assessment as an instrument to measure the children’s performance and to get some information about the children’s progress during the teaching and learning process.
One method of authentic assessment is to assemble and review a portfolio of the child’s work.
Portfolio
Portfolio is a record of the child’s process of learning: what the child has learned and how he/she has gone about learning; how he/she thinks, questions, analyzes, synthesizes, produces, creates; and how he/she intellectually, emotionally, and socially interacts with others. Arter and Spandel (1991) define the portfolio as purposeful collection of student’s work that exhibits to the students, or others, his/her efforts or achievement in one or more areas. Portfolio assessment involves the collecting of materials which reflect or illustrate a child’s performance, progress, achievement, experience, knowledge, and skills acquired over a period of time (Taylor, 1994). Portfolio assessment is the purposeful and systematic collection of a child’s work that reflects accomplishment relative to specific instructional goals or objectives (O’Malley and Pierce, 1996). However, a portfolio is more than a folder filled with a child’s work samples. It is a collected record of a child’s work which represents a variety of modes of learning to show the depth, breadth, and development of the child's competence. A portfolio is an authentic visual presentation of a child's performances, capabilities, strengths, weaknesses, and progress over time (Fischer & King, 1995).
Young learner
Scott and Ytreberg (1990) define the young learners as pupils between five and ten or eleven years old. They, then, classify the young learners into two categories, five to seven year olds and eight to ten year olds children. Each category has some characteristics, for examples young children love to play and learn best when they are enjoying themselves, they understand situations more quickly than they understand the language used, they have a very short attention and concentration span, and so on. McKay (2006) stated that young language learners are those who are learning a foreign or second language and who are doing so during the first six or seven years of formal schooling. In the education systems of most countries, young learners are children who are in primary or elementary school. In terms of age, young learners are between the ages of approximately five and twelve.
Performance
Performance is how well or badly a person does a particular activity (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English).
The Aspects of Young Learners’ Portfolio
Ideally, a portfolio includes observations in several or all of the following forms (http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content3/portfolio.young.pre.3.html):
Anecdotal records. Anecdotal records are factual, nonjudgmental notes of children's activity (Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, 1991). They are most useful for recording spontaneous events. They should be cumulative, revealing insights about the child's progress when they are reviewed sequentially.
Checklist or inventory. The checklist or inventory is one of the easiest tools for recording children's progress. It should be based on instructional objectives and the development associated with the acquisition of the skills being monitored. In general, observations should be based on regular activities, not on specially designed or contrived activities.
Rating scales. Rating scales are appropriately used when the behavior to be observed has several aspects or components, such as a child's success at following directions in different situations.
Questions and requests. One of the most effective and easiest means of gathering information is to ask direct, open-ended questions of individual children. Open-ended requests such as, "I'd like you to tell me about this," elicit samples of the child's expressive language ability. Asking children about their activities also often yields insights into why they behave as they do.
Screening tests. Screening tests are used to help identify the skills and strengths that children already possess, so that teachers can plan meaningful learning experiences for their students. Findings of screening tests and developmental scales should be considered with work samples and other, more subjective, material that the teacher assembles in portfolios. The assessment information revealed by such instruments is not appropriately used for grading, labeling, grouping, or retaining children.
Applying Performance and Portfolio Assessment Together
If a young learners’ teacher wants to apply portfolio assessment in the elementary classroom, he/she should remember that the assessment must be carefully and systematically organized. To this end, it is recommended that the following guidelines be considered:
The teacher must create an environment which is conducive to collaborative assessment (Glazer & Brown, 1993). If we want children to feel free to provide their best performances, and to assess their own growth, we must create a risk free environment. Children must feel that their opinions, ideas, and responses carry weight. This in turn will allow the teacher to see a more authentic performance, therefore, providing the teacher with a more realistic picture of the child's capabilities.
The teacher and child must be trained in data collection. Teachers and children need to understand the nature of portfolio assessment process. Both parties will be involved in the decision-making. Therefore, it must be seen by both parties as a team effort, with the goal being to establish the best picture of what the child is capable of doing in the classroom. To do this, the teacher and child must first understand that not everything can or should be saved. Teachers need to show children how to be good collectors of the data which represents their efforts in the classroom (Glazer & Brown, 1993). Allow the children to gather data and monitor their collection over time to make sure they understand the process. Then throughout the school year, the teacher and children can get together and review the process, and the child's understanding of the process of data collection. "We collect data by taking notes about children during activities, teaching children to review and write about their products (self assessments), collecting photographs and videos of children in action (performance assessment), reviewing writing samples, retellings in response to reading, and oral think-aloud about reading" (Glazer & Brown, 1993, p. 34).
The teacher and child must establish a clear purpose for the assessment. Portfolio assessment is often used for diagnosis and grading. The form of portfolio assessment can work together to provide information about how a child performs a specific behavior or task. Children's performances and other forms of work are often scored holistically or analytically. If the assessment purpose is to diagnose a child's strengths or weaknesses, or to certify mastery of an individual performance criterion, then analytic scoring is most appropriate. The strengths and weaknesses can be identified through observation and the collection of data, then remediation can be developed (Airasian, 1994). In situations where the decision to be made concerning the performance or work is a general one, holistic scoring is most useful (Airasian, 1994). In the end, the product(s) can be used to illustrate how the child has progressed toward the achievement of the stated goal or purpose.
The teacher and child must determine the scoring and evaluation criteria for the child's performance and work. In order to determine the criteria to be used to assess a child's performance, the teacher and child must first decide what will actually be included in the assessment. Some common examples of what might be assessed include: (a) samples of works in progress; for example, a child's writing of a fictional story. (b) product samples; for example, completed stories or works of art, (c) teacher observations of performances; for example, a child leading a discussion of a piece of literature, and (d) parent(s') input. After determining the above, the scoring and evaluation of a child's performance or work should be done in a variety of ways.
The teacher must provide an appropriate setting in which the performance or task can be demonstrated and stored. Depending upon the nature of the performance, or the work the child is undertaking, the teacher should observe the child's behavior as it naturally occurs in the classroom or in a particular setting created for a specific performance (Airasian, 1994). For example, if a child is involved in the acting out of a story, the teacher needs to see the child actually performing in front of the class or on the stage of the auditorium. Additionally, the data collected from the performance needs to be collected and stored in a predetermined manner. If the data represents an ongoing record of the child's progress, for example, from practice to the actual performance of a play, the data bank will be very rich. In this instance, the teacher and child might want to video the performance(s) and store it in an electronic portfolio. Therefore, the teacher needs to determine where and how to store the portfolio information in advance (Fischer & King, 1995).
Using the Portfolio in Evaluation
The most important thing that must be considered when we use portfolio to assess and evaluate the children is that the material in a portfolio should be organized by chronological order and category. Since all information in the portfolio is dated, arranging the work samples, interviews, checklist, inventories, screening test results, and other information should be simple.
Once the portfolio is organized, the teacher can evaluate the child's achievements. Appropriate evaluation always compares the child's current work to her earlier work. This evaluation should indicate the child's progress toward a standard of performance that is consistent with the teacher's curriculum and appropriate developmental expectations. Portfolios are not meant to be used for comparing children to each other. They are used to document individual children's progress over time. The teacher's conclusions about a child's achievement, abilities, strengths, weaknesses, and needs should be based on the full range of that child's development, as documented by the data in the portfolio, and on the teacher's knowledge of curriculum and stages of development.
The use of portfolios to assess young children provides teachers with a built-in system for planning parent-teacher conferences. With the portfolio as the basis for discussion, the teacher and parent can review concrete examples of the child's work, rather than trying to discuss the child's progress in the abstract (http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content3/portfolio.young.pre.3.html).
Conclusion
Nowadays, many young learners’ teachers prefer to use authentic assessment rather than traditional forms of assessment to assess and evaluate children’s performance. One of the authentic assessments that is recommended for young learners’ teachers is portfolio assessment. This form of assessment enables the teachers to evaluate children’s progress during the teaching and learning process. Additionally, as Pierce and O’Malley (1996) have suggested, this form of assessment allow children to use their higher-order thinking skills as they collaborate with teachers in the assessment of the teaching and learning process.
In order to get the advantages of the use of portfolio assessment, teachers and children must understand the guidelines for its use. If both teachers and children do not understand the guidelines how to use the portfolio assessment, the portfolio will be just a folder of children’s work.
The use of portfolio assessment is appealing because of its instructional relevance. When children are given chances and opportunities to create authentic products they often become more engaged, motivated, and committed to their own learning. Portfolio assessment can make the students become more creative.
References
Airasian, P.W. (1994). Classroom assessment (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Arter, J., & Spandel, V. (1992, Spring). Using portfolios of student work in instruction and assessment. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 34-44.
Fischer, C. F., & King, R. M. (1995). Authentic assessment: A guide to implement. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Glazer, S.M., & Brown, C.S. (1993). Portfolios and beyond: Collaborative assessment in reading and writing. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon.
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Engllish. 2005. New York: Longman Inc.
Mckay, Penny. 2006. Assessing Young Language Learners. Cambridge University Press.
O’Malley, JM & Pierce LV. 1996. Authentic Assessment for English Language Learners: Practical Approaches for Teachers. New Jersey: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
Rhodes, L.K., & Shanklin, N.L. (1993). Windows into literacy: Assessing learners, K-8. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Scott, Wendy A & Ytreberg, Lisbeth H. 1990. Teaching English to Children. New York: Longman Inc.
Taylor, M. (1994). Literacy portfolio assessment: A source for literacy workers. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 372 222)
Tierney, R.J., Carter, M.A., & Desai, L.E. (1991). Portfolio assessment in the reading- writing classroom. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon.
http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content3/portfolio.young.pre.3.html
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar