ABSTRACT
Assessment and evaluation are both terms which measure educational effects. However, the terms differ in that assessment measures a pupil’s progress whereas evaluation judges the merits of an educational system. Evaluation is therefore a broader term; it measures the achievements of pupils, teachers and curriculum, and is linked with the themes of change and choice which are evident throughout this book. When a pupil learns mathematics, he changes from a state of nonunderstanding, or misunderstanding, a mathematics topic to a state of understanding it. The extent of the change is assessed by the pupil’s teacher. From this assessment the teacher can choose further topics or different teaching styles which will be suitable. Consider, for example, the pupils and teacher in a classroom, where the teacher is controlling a continually changing situation. As the lesson progresses, the teacher may discover some pupils who are successfully doing mathematics, some pupils who have misunderstood something and other pupils who are just bored. The teacher must respond to these discoveries in a suitable way. As an identical situation has never before arisen, every teacher plays the rôle of an experimental scientist in a classroom where the three reagents are the teacher, the pupils and the curriculum materials. All three are interacting and the scientist (teacher) must continually:
decide which information may be worth collecting
collect, sort and interpret that information
use the interpretation to decide how the lesson will continue.
