Education [ED] 4280: Ten Polarities within Evaluation
(see Milner and Milner, Bridging English, pp. 423-427)
1. Quantitative/Qualitative: impersonal versus personal assessment BAHow much should I take the personal lives of my students into consideration?@
2. Personal/Anonymous: The teacher=s trying to be objective by coding students= assignments before grading makes marking seem fairer to studentsBbut Abiases may creep in@ (and gradually you=ll recognize the students by their handwriting.
3. Absolute/Relative: The work=s meeting set criteria versus using a relativistic (normed) standard that takes into account actual student performance.
4. Objective/Subjective: Open-ended evaluative devices are difficult for the student to write and the teacher to grade, especially since the quality of the content must be weighed against that of the written expression; objective assignments, however, tend to challenge only lower cognitive levels, even though the mark generated appears to be precise.
5. Incidental/Cumulative: Summing isolated grading events to produce an average across time (versus an incremental approach in which the relative weighting of each piece is made clear at the outset, thereby avoiding placing stress on a final assignment or test) encourages the creation of multiple, manageable grading events.
6. Holistic/Partial: Reading and grading each exam separately versus reading all student responses to a given question to avoid bias by using the same standards for each answer.
7. Independent/Individual: The former places students on tracks of their own making or choosing while programmed instruction puts all students on the same track, permitting individualized completion times/dates. Programmed learning is uniform (based on mastery ), but independent learning is difficult to assess because it is more creative and idiosyncratic.
8. Bound/Open: More time for completion reduces test pressure for the student. However, students who finish early may not simply sit quietly and read or do homework. Take-home exams easily lead to cheating. Required reporting periods limit any assignment=s ultimate due date.
9. Formative/Summative: The former occurs over time and is motivational, the latter at the end of a course to determine whether the student has mastered learning objectives. Summative questions are broader and cognitively more challenging.
10. Cooperative/Competitive: The former shifts emphasis towards collaboration (pairs and groups) and allows for multiple intelligences.