So we have designed our training courses, included all the elements that we feel are important, gathered some enthusiastic students together and we are well on the way to put them into practice.
Now, how do we assess?
The traditional method of assessing has always been for a master or expert to lay out what standard is required and then set an examination so that the specified standard will be attained by a pupil.
This could be an academic assessment that many of us are familiar with, where we sit down and read an unknown question or questions and that draw on what we have learned and studied, and then regurgitate it as faithfully as we can to please the examiner and prove to her that we have a detailed knowledge of the subject matter.
It could also be a physical test, e.g. in the trades, where we have to manufacture an item so that an external examiner will deem it to be of the quality required. In music it is similar, we play an unknown piece and an examiner decides whether or not we play it with sufficient proficiency to reach a particular standard or grade.
What about self-assessment – where I decide whether or not I have reached the standard that is required? People might immediately think; this is ridiculous – it’s open to all sorts of cheating and is a recipe for not only fooling those who are responsible for our education – but ourselves also!
Well, I propose that if we encouraged self-assessment from a young age, before children learned how to play the game of how to pass examinations, affirming what the child was good at while supportively and collaboratively challenging unrealistic self-assessment, it would lead to a lot more honesty in education in general.
The danger that children would constantly try to fool those who are responsible for educating them would be minimised as they would have a stake in the process themselves. This could be done in very creative ways with younger children and more explicitly as children grow into young adults and then as adults in 3rd level or as mature students.
Because we are so accustomed to the unknown exam where our competence is assessed by others we might think that self-assessment is a new idea – but actually it has been around for a long time.
One great advantage is that it takes the pressure out of external assessment and examination, and, in places where it has been tried, enhances the quality of education – which, as I mentioned already, comes from the Latin root educare – to draw out.
So in considering assessment during training it is useful to look at two forms of assessment in the world of education – as both are applicable in the world of helping people. They are Summative and Formative assessment.