5.2. Synthesis of the research study 69
5.2.4. Diversity in task design 70
This theme relates to various experiences of teachers when designing assessment tasks.
Participants revealed a positive experience as the availability of some resources which assist them when they design tasks. Pat 10 and Pec 12 felt that textbooks were significant as they provide a number of assessment tasks and tools which they refer to when they design tasks.
These findings were contrary to those of Raboijane (2005), Cele (2009) and Cassim (2010), who reveal that inade quate resources were impacting negatively on the implementation of new assessment practices. In this study teachers did not experience resources as an impediment, but rather as promoting design of assessment tasks.
Pub 11 and Pec 12 mentioned that their capacity has been developed through workshops that have been conducted as well as cluster moderation sessions. Pec 12 identified some
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improvement in designing tasks as a result of these intervention programmes aimed at capacitating teachers on new assessment approaches in Business Studies.
Lack of time to do proper planning was one of the challenges experienced by teachers, resulting in haphazard and reckless design of assessment tasks, stated in Pat 10 and Pub 11’s responses. Pub 11 links this challenge to work overload, which leads to compromising the quality of the task designed. In a study of Grade 9 teacher attitudes towards CommonTasks for Assessment (CTA), it was found that teachers did not consider inclusion of assessment in their planning. Hence they experienced a variety of problems in their efforts to administer common tasks for assessment (Sithole, 2009). Time was also found to be a major limitation in the adoption of SBA practices in Mathematics in Botswana and Economic and Management Sciences in SA (Raibojane, 2005; Cassim, 2010). While McPhail & Halbert found that better planning results in better management and improvement of assessment.
Application of cognitive level was discovered to be another area where teachers struggle a great deal. There was no evidence of any task among those designed where cognitive levels were appropriately applied according to the weightings stipulated in the assessment policy.
Pec 12 stated that application of cognitive levels in an assessment task was problematic, while Pub 11 felt that those tasks he designs were not catering for all learners’ abilities and that they were above learners’ abilities.
Findings from document analysis revealed that in all of the participants’ formal tasks (except controlled tests and examinations), higher-order questions were not included. It was therefore clear that Pub 11 does not understand Bloom’s cognitive levels, let alone applies them in a task. Pat 10 did not mention this as a challenge because she used exemplars provided and claimed that she modifies them. However, findings from her documents showed that she removed all higher-order questions from the assessment she used. Hence the issue of appropriate allocation of cognitive levels was also identified as a challenge.
This refers to Bloom’s taxonomy model defined by Forehand (2005) as classifying thinking according to six cognitive levels of complexity: knowledge/remembering, comprehension/understanding, application, analysis, evaluation and synthesis. According to Bloom (1956) and Anderson (2000) knowledge means memorising facts, figures and basic processes; comprehension is understanding and illustrating facts; application is generalising
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the facts to other contexts and situations; analysis is understanding why the facts are the way they are and breaking problems down; while synthesis is making connections between different elements of one’s own and evaluating critically using one’s knowledge to ascertain the information.
These findings correlate with my observations discussed in the rationale for the study in Chapter 1. Teachers struggle to apply cognitive levels appropriately according to the weightings stipulated in the assessment policy. It is evident from this study that despite the availability of policy documents to guide teachers on the application of cognitive levels, teachers still lack capacity. The implication of this impacts on learner performance, because controlled tests and examinations cover all cognitive levels while formal tasks designed by teachers do not. Evidence in the findings of documents analysis of CASS records showed high marks for these tasks but low marks for summative assessments which are quarterly controlled tests and examinations.
This study also found that teachers were experiencing difficulties with the designing of rubrics. Pat 10 declared that she has never come into grips with designing a rubric and states that it has never been easy (bearing in mind that the NCS was introduced in 2006 in Grade 10). Pub 11 was neutral on the issue of rubrics, but mentioned that designing rubrics needs time and consideration and thorough preparedness. His experience on this issue is that a rubric needs to be designed before the task is given to learners.
According to Moon et al. (2005) teachers should involve students in the process of developing rubrics, because students who help create rubrics have a better understanding of what is expected and are more invested in the task. This does not happen in Pub 11’s class as it is not given sufficient time and consideration. Findings in his document showed that he was also struggling with this aspect. Pec 12 claimed that he was able to design rubrics - but findings from his documents were to the contrary. It is therefore evident that teachers are struggling to design rubrics to assess learners.
Concentration on ensuring that correct marks are allocated to the task was found in Pat 10’s response on this theme. She mentioned that the CASS grid prescribes marks to be allocated for each formal task. In the process of designing the tasks she ends up focusing on ensuring that she allocates exact marks, and ignores the purpose of that assessment. Pat 10’s challenge relates to misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the policy as it does not prescribe marks to
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be allocated but weighed marks of each task. Ignoring the purpose of assessment was a serious challenge, since purpose is crucial in assessment. Mueller (2008) asserts that meaningful assessment begins with identifying the purpose of assessment. He points out that the purposes of assessment should directly prescribe the standards, which are more specific statements of what learners should know and be able to do.
In summary, it prevailed from this theme that there are aspects which have been found to contribute positively to the experiences of teachers in designing tasks. Important to note are the various challenges impacting negatively on teachers’ experiences. Therefore the study finds that there are numerous challenges experienced by teachers when designing assessment tasks.