Approaches to Measurement and Evaluation.

Summary Approaches utilized to appraise student progress depend upon the philosophy of education involved. Each specific philosophy uniquely determines that which learners should acquire. The testing and measurement movement stresses the utilization of predetermined objectives written in measurable terms. The objectives are written prior to instruction of learners. With appropriate learning opportunities, a student either does or does not achieve one or more precise objectives. Measuring student progress against the stated objectives emphasizes the concept of criterion referenced testing (CRT). The testing and measurement movement also advocates using norm referenced tests (NRT). Students are spread out on a continuum from highest to lowest based on test scores. Predetermined objectives tend not to exist when utilizing norm referenced tests to measure student achievement. Norm references tests spread students' results in terms of test scores much more so than criterion referenced testing. Students attempt to attain predetermined objectives with CRTs. The measurably stated objectives represent absolute standards. A high number of students might well achieve the measurably stated objectives, as the teacher usually intends. Self-evaluation by the student is an opposite approach to appraisal of learner progress as advocated by the testing and measurement movements. With self-evaluation, responsibility rests with the learner him/herself to acknowledge strengths, weaknesses, and modifications to attain at a higher level. Learners, when evaluating themselves, need to perceive the processes and products completed from the frame of reference of personal improvement. The truth resulting from evaluation may well reside within the student. Subjectivity in results is to be expected, since open-ended criteria are utilized to appraise progress. The tendency here will be not to utilize objective tests to ascertain progress. With self-evaluation, the student might well perceive increased purpose in assessing the self. The teacher is a stimulator and initiator guiding the self-evaluation process. Idealism advocates students' achievement in mental development. Mental maturity here is prized more highly than affective and psychomotor objectives. The affective dimension is salient to the point that learners attain well academically and intellectually. Students' attaining vital concepts and generalizations is of utmost importance to an idealist. To appraise learner progress effectively, the teacher must evaluate student growth in achieving worthwhile subject matter content, consisting of vital broad ideas. Discussions and essay tests, in particular, assist the idealist teacher to determine student acquisition of subject matter. Experimentalists depend upon teacher observation, basically, to evaluate student progress. The experimentalist teacher evaluates students in life-like situations in which they select information and solve problems. Hypotheses, tentative in nature, attempt to provide answers to identified problems. Since each hypothesis is to be tested within a social context, modifications or revisions may need to be made. Perennialism is a philosophy of conservation, rejecting a continually changing environment as identified and defined by experimentalists. The great ideas of thinkers of the past provide subject matter content. The abstract and academic are preferred to the concrete and the practical. Transitory ideas from the past have no place in a perennialist's curriculum. Rather, content must remain salient, vital, and significant as the decades and centuries pass. Endurance in time and in diverse geographical regions characterize that which is classic. Perennialists emphasize the liberal arts and general education for all. Preparing for jobs, careers, and the professions, has no place in such a curriculum. Vocational needs are not to be emphasized on the elementary, high school, or baccalaureate degree level, but only on graduate levels of study which should prepare the student for a niche in the world of work. Prior to that time, however, common learning should be acquired by students in the form of a liberal arts education. Liberal education, which is non-vocational, needs to emphasize as objectives of instruction the development of the mind towards maturity so that the great ideas of the past may be understood and accepted. The classics provide the intellectual system of subject matter which is offered to students. The content needs to be challenging intellectually and enable retention of major concepts and generalizations.