Abstract
Over the past decade, the need for successful learning strategies in initial teacher training has become increasingly clear. One of these strategies focuses on rhetoric competence development. The main point of the strategy is the assessment for learning. This chapter investigates the impact of assessment for learning on learning outcomes in the process of rhetoric competence development and their feasibility within initial teacher training. The starting point is instructional dynamic and flexible strategy. This strategy made notable progress with respect to digital textbook. However, there continues to be gaps in the literature examining the extent to which successful learning strategies are being assessed. This problem has begun to take a place on the agenda within higher institutions. It was observed that to date there has been little effort to bring together the effective procedures around the purpose of equipping students with successful learning strategies to learn for the long term. This chapter closes this gap.
TopIntroduction
In higher education, the assessment, measurement and testing strategies must be a reliable component of the learning process. We hope that assessment for life-long learning competence, rather than inefficient teaching, has a major impact on learning outcomes. Learning does not happen incidentally. It depends on our capacity to adapt and accommodate environmental challenges. Therefore, the assessment, measurement, and testing strategies are an important component of the learning process because relies on their capacity and competences to learn and communicate through all life.
The power of assessment, measurement and testing strategies and there impact on learning outcomes depends on the teacher’s capacity to plan, develop and to implement successful learning strategies for students or/and with students. However, when we look at the classical assessment’ methodology we could observe a problem. Even if these strategies occur under higher education standards, they have focused on measurement the declarative knowledge. Students are more interested in procedural knowledge. Procedural knowledge is part of complex liquid skills that can be performed, but not and explained.
Assessment, measurement, and testing strategies are not only generating the data for final grading. Assessment influences learning, acting as an incentive for deep learning. The assessment has a powerful effect on what students do and how they do it. In the case of rhetoric competence, the assessment, measurement and testing strategies are focused on achieving the learning outcomes. Thus, assessment in higher education should be understood not as a methodology for grading of students, but for improving the competence of adequate adaptation to environmental challenges. This is an assessment of learning.
The term “assessment for learning” has grown substantially over a rather short period. The term was coined together with the term “formative assessment” (Black& William, 1998). The best marker for the change was the idea that timely and adequate assessment influences learning outcomes and processes. Since that, many papers in higher education have been developed. Nevertheless, the problem of assessment for learning becomes more and more actual.
Assessment for learning is all about informing students of their progress to empower them to take the necessary actions to improve their performance. Teachers need to create learning opportunities where students can progress at their place and undertake consolidation activities where necessary. <…> Assessment for Learning strategies should be implemented in such a way that quality feedback provided to learners based on, for example, an interim assessment decision, will help to challenge the more able learner to reach new levels of achievement and, in doing so, reach their full (Jones, 2005).
In conceptualizing assessment for learning, it is important to take account of the context of assessment. Assessment for learning is a need. Thus, for example, digital technologies provide novel opportunities for self-assessment and, therefore, assessment becomes a value-laden activity surrounded by global and national debates regarding global academic standards. However, to be a successful assessment for the learning needs to be carefully planned by the teacher. He/she decides what is going to be taught in a particular session; what are learning goals and outcomes. Moreover, it is important to compile questions to check understanding and the capacity of the student to rationalize what is provided as new information/knowledge and how to solve cognitive, affective and psychomotor problems. We argue this idea with the following statement:
Assessment would be less of a problem if we could be assured that what occurs under the guise of assessment appropriately influenced student learning. However, when we look at the content and approaches used in the dominant assessment practices in higher education, we find that they are often focused on students demonstrating current knowledge, generating material for grading and getting, often inadequate, feedback from teachers. Commonly, the assessment focuses little on the processes of learning and on how students will learn after the point of assessment. In other words, assessment is not sufficiently equipping students to learn in situations in which teachers and examinations are not present to focus their attention. In other words, we are failing to prepare them for the rest of their lives (Bound and Falchikov, 2007).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Ethos: The Greek word for “character”, used in persuasive communication to prove the importance of applying the appropriate language, knowledge, actions, and behavior following the specific characteristics of the audience.
AFL (Assessment for Learning): An approach of non-classical assessment that states the importance of feedback.
Logos: The Greek word for both “experience” and “suffering”, used in situations when is important to persuade an audience by appealing to their emotions. The procedures for developing logos refer to using meaningful language, emotional tone, emotion-evoking examples, stores of emotional events, implied meaning, etc.
Querying: The capacity for seeking relevant knowledge and apply them to a given situation.
Procedural Knowledge: Knowledge exercised in the performance of a complex task; related to how to deal with a difficult or stressful situation.
Pathos: The Greek word for “word”, used in situations when the word is important or “that by which the inward thought is expressed” ( Liddell & Scott, 2019 ).