Hal 45-48

4.1.4 Context of the assessment

The interviews of the class teacher and focus group of students of class eight revealed that in
science the assessment practices of students learning are decontextualized and mostly based on
bookish knowledge.
(a) Assessments take place inside the classroom
In an interview in the pre-intervention stage the teacher said that she has never assessed her
students outside the classroom. She further explained that due to the pressure from the school
management committee and parents in order to complete the syllabus/course, her focus of
teaching and assessment was the textbook content and she had no time for context related
issues in the classroom.
“we are bound to teach according to syllabus. The school management committee and parents
usually ask abaout the coverage of the course. Therefore, our focus is to cover textbook. We
do not have to work with students outside the classroom”. (interview, February 18, 2006).
Moreover, the same information was obtained in the interview with students. They said that
very rarely they go outside the classroom to do any task. However, one student explained that
they rarely had an opportunity to work in real context but once in language class, they have
discussed the real context issues in classroom.
“for example, last year in a session in Urdu subject, we discussed the issues of environmental
pollution”. (student interview, Feruary 20, 2006).
The analysis of the interview data revelaed that assessment is only conducted in the classroom
an not in the real context. The assessments, teaching and learning did not relate to solving real
life problems and issues.

4.1.5 Authentic assessment

During the reconnaissance stage, I also explored that to what extent the class teacher (secondary
research participant) and students (primary research participants) are aware about the authentic
assessment. The findings are as under:
(a) No knowledge about authentic assessment
The analysis of the interview of the teacher and students revealed that they had no idea about
authentic assessment. In response to a question about the authentic assessment the teacher
expressed that she did not know about it and also views it as a time consuming project.
No, I don`t know (obout authentic assessment)…. Maybe it is project type. Such type of
assessments need some processes and these are very time consuming too. But in five hours
school duration, it is very difficult for us to arrange such kind of activities. These need time
and resources. (teacher interview, February 18, 2006).
The students also expressed that they did not know anything about authentic assessment. When
they were probed further, they pointed out that they are rarely given opportunities to learn in
the real context or to discuss the real world issues in their classroom.
Student 1
“we rarely go outside the classroom for any task”. (Students interview, February 20, 2006)
Student 2
“But sometimes we discuss real-issues in our classroom, for example, some days before we
had discussed air pollution in Urdu class”. (Students interview February 20, 2006).

The data shows that the students were occasionally exposed to real context. It also shows that
ini classroom they just focus the textbook content and very rarely discuss contextual issues
related to the science topics given in the textbook.

4.1.6 Feedback
During the interview with the teacher and focus group of students, ini the pre-intervention
stage, giving and taking of feedback for learning emerged as a strong point.
(a) Feedback improve the understanding
The students in the focus group while talking about assessment and feedback explained that
the teacher after test gives feedback which helps to improves learning. For example, one
student said:
“…after the test the teacher`s feedback also helps us to improve our understanding of the
topic”. (Student interview, February 20, 2006).

(b) Collective feedback

The teacher also claimed that usually during the students presentations, model making or other
practical work she tries to find out the weak areas of the students and the gives them feedback.
“It is mostly oral and collectively given to all the class. It is difficult to give each and every
student individual feedback”. (Interview, February 18, 2006)
Moreover, she explained that sometimes individual and on the spot feedback is given.
“When students make models, I try to go to each of them and observe their work and give
feedback if there is a need to do so”. (Interview, February 18, 2006)
(c) Rare written feedback
The teacher while responding to a question regarding the way of giving feedback, she said that
she rarely gives written feedback because it is difficult for her to give individual feedback to
each and every student.
“Or we live collective feedback to whole class. It is the easy way of giving feedback. As you
know that it very difficult to give each and every student individual feedback”. (Post-
observation discussion, March 17, 2006).
It was also evident from the analysis of students work, students answer sheets that teacher
rarely gave any written feedback. During the analysis of students work, I found some home
task assigned and checked by the teacher. There were also some comments, such as “very
good” was written by the teacher. In another notebook it was written that:
“Good, but write the date of each home work”. (Taken from students notebook, February 28,
2006).
Some other comment which I found while analyzing students work, were as under:
“Pay attention on spelling correction”
“Incomplete work”
“Why are you writing only hydrogen`s valency. You should write the valency of all elements”.
(Analysis of students notebook and home assigments, February 28, 2006)
The analysis of the data on feedback from interview reveal that the teacher gave verbal
feedback but the nature of feedback could not be determined. However,as the nature of written
feedback were very superficial which is common in our context. Hence, it is likely that the
verbal feedback might also be superficial in nature. It is common to use praising words as
feedback in teachers feedback and not focus on actual learning. The real feedback is that which
gives the learners information about what he/she has done, what he/she has not done and some
suggestions to enable the learner to self-adjust. Wiggins (1998) argues, “the best feedback is
highly specific, directly revealing or highly descriptive of what actually resulted, clear to
performer, and available or offered in terms of specific targets and standards”.

4.2 analysis of the findings of the implementation and reflection stages

In this section, I present the process of implementing and assessing authentic assessment plan
and the findings of assessment. I also discuss students self-assessment, their reflection and the
process of enhancement of students learning and findings regarding it.
4.3.1 implementation and assessment of authentic assessment plan and findings
In the light of finding of the reconnaissance stage, literature reviewed and exemplars provided
by assessment educator (supervisor) the authentic assessment task was developed and then
implemented step by step. The assessment task was implemented in four steps; the issues
identification, planning, data collection and making sense of it, and demonstration of their
conclusions/understanding to the community, and learning at all stages were assessed through
rubries. The findings are also presented in four steps.