Interviews also provide teachers and students with knowledge concerning student strengths, weaknesses, and level of mastery. By recording their thinking, observations, and insights, students become much more aware of their metacognitive processes. The ultimate goal of school is to create life-long, independent learners. Students must have highly developed knowledge of their own learning and thinking processes to achieve this goal. Checklists can provide teachers and learners with the knowledge of their next step or where they need to put additional effort.
Essays allow students to demonstrate their ability to put information in appropriate contexts.
Students show their mastery of subject-area content and processes by doing an active procedure that uses their newly learned skills. Frequently, projects are inquiry-based, thematic efforts that encourage student thinking, creativity, initiative, analysis, and allow students to make the links between various disciplines. They are designed to yield comparable scores. The term is most often applied to national norm-referenced tests developed by commercial test publishers. What I am saying is that we need to look at more than the technical features of our tests, we need to look at our assumptions about human development and education.