Afterword: Learning-Centred Focus to Assessment Practices

Abstract

Many teachers commonly use assessment as the starting point of their teaching activities because they believe that assessment drives learning and teaching activities. Hence students tend to organise their learning activities around these prescribed assessment tasks. These beliefs and practices have the potential to detract from promoting effective, efficient, and engaging learning. Teachers, in using assessment tasks to orchestrate their teaching activities send out a message to their learners which minimises the importance of the learning experience. Not only does this constrain learners from taking full advantage of the designed learning experience, but with an explicit focus on assessment tasks by teachers, learners tend to adopt coping mechanisms that focus on the assessment task itself, and little else.