Date: Wed, 09 Feb 2000 12:31:41 +1100
To: voced-coord@rite.ed.qut.edu.au
From: Janine Bowes <jbowes@ozemail.com.au>
Subject: Re: Enhancing validity of assessments!

Dear Patrick, Shelley and others

At 09:18 AM 2/9/00 +1100, Patrick Griffin wrote:
>Most teachers are in fact doing most if not all of these ALL the time.
>Because most are common sense and intuitive. The difficulty is to see that
>this is what we do normally in the process of teaching, and then be able and
>confident enough to defend what we do.

When I donned the black hat yesterday I was hoping to stir things up a bit !

< black hat removed and white hat (gathering facts) on?>
- Ann Morris responded and acknowledged the challenge of adequately attending to all aspects of valid assessment. Let me hasten to clarify that I wasn't suggesting teachers are not capable (far from it) but rather that on the surface of it, the task looks too daunting to be achievable.

- Shelley has laid down the gauntlet of raising standards (by implication they are not generally tight enough now?) by critically examining practice (perhaps this should/could apply to other assessment in schools too, not just CBA)

- and Patrick has just reassured us that in most case the "right thing" is being done but that there is an issue in being confident enough to defend itI interpret Patrick's comments as suggesting that the 26 atomised requirements for valid, reliable, fair and flexible assessment equate to the component attributes of riding a bike - good teachers combine them all in a seamless fashion quite naturally. However, just knowing that this happens is not enough - we need to be able to adequately describe and record the process.

Both Shelley and Patrick have invited examples of tasks that can be assembled into a resource bank - Shelley has invited people to share their assessment instruments and Patrick has challenged:

>How can we translate these methods into "teacher talk" to give teachers the confidence to say "I do that!" Is anyone willing to have a go at
>translation, and give an example of how this works in the routine of classroom
>teaching and placement work?

I contacted the 1999 winners of the Assessment award for VET in Schools - you will recall it was a Tasmanian school (Newstead College) and they are happy to share part of their award application. The document is downloadable as Word or RTF and describes much of the quality assurance framework that the school uses. The document includes a detailed description of the assessment processes used in the Hospitality program.

http://www.veco.ash.org.au/filestore/newstead/assessappaward.doc
(MS Word7 40KB)
http://www.veco.ash.org.au/filestore/newstead/assessappaward.rtf
(RTF 25KB)

What is described is comprehensive but sounds achievable.

Janine Bowes
VECO Project Coordinator

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First published February 9, 2000. Last modified February 24, 2000.