Guest posting to voced-coord email list
Item 4 of 8: Teachers as Assessors

Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 17:49:28 +1100
To: voced-coord@owl.qut.edu.au
From: Patrick Griffin (p.griffin@edfac.unimelb.edu.au)
Subject:RE: VocEd:Patrick Griffin (guest)First, second and third impressions

Ken Price made quite a few points about teachers' roles and involvement in workplace setings. His thoughtful reply gave me a few things to think about and raised the whole issue of suspicion of teachers as assessors for work place purposes.

Teachers are indeed in a difficult position. If we accept the role of partners in a school and work relationship and try and work with the employer to train and assess students against work place competencies we are taking on a huge workload. Schools focusing on a few industry areas still have to become familiar with the entry level competencies associated with the industry standards. Then given the restrictions on work place assessment we have to become registered as assessors by completing a training program and demonstrating that we can meet the assessment standards.

Linking in with the work place and conducting assessments in the work place is difficult enough. The training programs generally teach assessors to fill out checklists, that replicate the industry standards list of performance criteria. Most of the criteria describe tasks that have to be performed and by ticking these off in the checklist, we then declare students or workers to be competent. If this is all that competency assessment requires it really doesn't matter what value system is operating or where the assessment takes place. Direct observation is difficult off the job, of course.

But competency also involves the ability to manage a group of tasks (perhaps this is satisfied by filling in the checklist of tasks); it also involves dealing with contingencies and problems; (rarely dealt with); the incorporation of the tasks into the job role (I know of no training program for assessors that addresses this) and the ability to transfer the performances in to new contexts and situations (as teachers we are generally sensitive to transfer of learning but in the world of competency assessment his is very often ignored. These components are the defined aspects of competency accepted by the National Training Authority and the Training Advisory Boards.

So what are we doing if we ignore most of the components of competency? The role that Ken listed for teachers (teaching) may widen in a Voced setting and the different viewpoints of teachers and workplace assessors may assume a greater importance. The background in assessment theory that Ken refers to has long since disappeared from teacher training courses as well. Teachers will need to be trained in competency assessment. Even then, will the workplace accept them as assessors?

Competency assessment hinges on setting up processes and conditions where the workplace or the classroom becomes an area of experience or inquiry based learning. Different members of the workplace and the classroom will have roles in the assessment and in establishing the learning opportunities. It is a matter of negotiating these roles.

Assessment then becomes the medium that allows us to explore what has been learned and whether competency standards have been met. Because assessment involves language it is also an interpretive process. Just as meanings are constructed for texts and conversations, we also construct meanings for assessed performances. For example, competency uses interpretive assessment in the form of performing actions, creating products, and providing written or spoken words, the purpose of which is to make judgements of competency. Whether assessing within the arts, a school classroom, vocational sector or industry, all assessment tasks and procedures can be classified within the these four broad media (e.g. interview schedules, tests, portfolios, workplace performances, questionnaires, team meetings, simulation exercises etc).

Different people assessing someone's competence will use different words to describe it. The competency standards represent a way of standardising the language of the assessment. However, when it is time to provide reports to supervisors or to record assessments, the assessor has to do this in the face of severe time, space, format and cost constraints. There are also serious relationship and cultural constraints among the assessors, supervisors, trainees and external agencies who might become involved in the interpretive process through records and reports. At times, the assessor is faced with reducing extensive and complex knowledge of the assessee to a single tick on a checklist. This confronts the assessor with difficult ethical dilemmas. Indeed the greater the knowledge held by the assessor about the assessees' competency the more difficult it is to encapsulate this in a single checklist. A list of statements checked off might look 'scientific' or 'objective' but this too in turn must be interpreted and this is always a value laden and subjective process. It is here that the value systems of the school and the workplace may become increasingly important.

Assessment has become the object of intense discussion and the language of that discussion has itself become important. For example, the terms with which assessors discuss the outcomes have also changed. "Incompetent" is a term not used. Instead the optimistic "Not Yet Competent' is preferred. Observation is regarded as 'subjective' in some contexts, but as 'objective' in others if it is linked to the term 'direct'. 'Formal assessment' is regarded as superior to ' informal assessment'.

Assessment terms change as different groups appropriate them for different purposes and as situations change, terms and their meanings change. For example 'Norm-referenced' was once the central approach to interpreting assessment data by comparing a performance to those of another person from a similar group. Similarly criterion referenced interpretation is also changing. It once meant that a performance was interpreted in terms of whether an assessee could perform a specific task. Either a performance met a criterion or it did not. Now it is more in terms of a level of performance in comparison to a range of other tasks that can be ordered in terms of the amount of competency needed. Criterion referencing now requires descriptions of levels of performance like those in the national profiles for schools.

As the language evolves in workplace assessment, more changes can be expected. Amid these fundamental changes, a new language of assessment is emerging. Terms such as recognition of current competencies, recognition of prior learning, standards referencing, criterion referencing, competency based assessment, are becoming part of the lexicon of every day employers and supervisors. Interviews, checklists, role-plays, folios, observation and judgement are central terms used in the context of assessment. Context itself has become an issue; and the dilemma of over contextualising assessments has been discussed in earlier chapters. New terms such as 'range of variables', evidence guides, elements, performance criteria, units, endorsed components, non endorsed components, Australian Qualifications Framework levels, Workplace Trainer Categories 1 and 2, all introduce new concept and can be confusing to assessors, as well as those being assessed. Even the terms 'assessor' and 'assessee' are relatively new and linked completely with competency based assessment.

Competency itself has been defined as having components and the assessment of these has proven problematic, even to the point where advice, guidelines and the standards for assessment have ignored them. Competency has become synonymous with the performance of a task as specified in the performance criteria. This in turn appears to have led to the ubiquitous checklist dominating competency-based assessment. The language of the assessment decision has even been couched in terms that have implications for further assessments. An assessee is declared to be competent or "not yet competent'. Just as the term "illiterate" has been banished by those responsible for delivering literacy programs, the concept of "incompetent" has been banished by those responsible for pursuing a competency agenda.

So a teacher's role in assessment is changing as well. Assessment in schools will undoubtedly be influenced by these changes in industry. But what is needed is an efficient way of making valid assessments of competency that do not just reinforce the status quo. All five components need to be addressed, the performance, management, contingency, incorporation and transfer. Imagine if all assessments in schools required this as well. Is it even possible?

Patrick Griffin