Developing educational diagnostic assessment systems
Each learner has the right to informed support in their learning. Each individual needs to feel that they are seen, heard and understood. Educators need to observe and read the needs of each learner in their care. We concur with Dr. Mary-Jane Drummond of the University of Cambridge in asserting that pedagogical,
Evaluation is clear seeing, rich understanding, respectful application.. Assessment is essentially provisional, partial, tentative, exploratory and inevitably incomplete….Unless there is, at the centre of a school’s curriculum, a sustained and unshakeable interest in children’s learning, there will always be children…who do not learn what their teachers set out to teach them. The process of assessing children’s learning by looking closely at it and striving to understand it – is the only certain safeguard against children’s failure, the only certain guarantee of children’s progress and development. …The practice of effective assessment requires a thorough understanding and acceptance of the concepts of rights, responsibilities and power, lying at the heart of our work as teachers. (Drummond: 2003)
Over many years ipf consultants have worked to develop effective methods of monitoring, documenting and assessing the developmental of children and young people. We have developed diagnostic methods of assessing children’s developments in ways that reveal as much of the whole person as possible. We have also developed methods summative assessment, for example through competence profiling that show a wide range of learning outcomes.
ipf has also researched the kind of assessments that are appropriate to the various method of learning, including those used in adult education.
Ipf offers training, coaching and material on diagnostic and summative assessment of learning outcomes in schools and in adult education.