2 – Work file 6: Checklist “How do I assess my students?”

When assessing students teachers should bear in mind the key principles in the following checklist:

• Assessment should be a means of support: help for individual defining of position, hints for further work, strengthening the self-concept and self-image of students.
• Assessment should help students and enable them to evaluate themselves.
• Assessment has to be transparent: students have to know the basis of assessment, the criteria of assessment as well as the norms used.
• Assessment has to be adequate to the contents and goals. Knowledge has to be evaluated differently from competences and skills.
• Teachers have to bear in mind the function of selection they fulfil when grading. Instead of only summary assessment, conversations and reports should become the future methods and tools of assessment. Only by doing so can permeability within the school system be improved.
• Tests should be designed in a way that they test the approach towards the set goals. (Tests also give information about the quality of the teaching which was used for approaching these goals: test results therefore not only give information about the students’ performance but also about the quality of the teacher’s teaching.)

Questions for self-evaluation

Learning process of the students:

• How do I ensure that the students have achieved the objectives?
• Did the students regularly experience success while they were learning?
• Are they aware of the progress they have made?
• Does my teaching give boys and girls an equal chance of success?
• Do the students consciously watch, control and improve their learning and working behaviour?
• Were the students given any guidelines to assist them while learning?
• Can the students control and assess their learning behaviour and their results themselves?
• In their self-assessment, do the students also refer to their own objectives, standards, criteria or needs?
• Do I perceive individual students’ progress?
• How do I identify learning problems of individual students?
• How do I observe social interaction in the class?
• How do I keep a record of my observations and assessments of individual students and the class as a whole?

Some questions about the teacher’s learning process:

• How, when and with whom do I reflect on my teaching?
• How do I let my students participate?
• How do I relate my students’ success or failure to my teaching?
• How do I recognise my progress in teaching, and how do I learn as a teacher?