ABSTRACT
The teacher’s role is to help the student move through the Zone of Proximal Development by supporting the student with intervention, facilitating or setting up teaching activities that allow the student the independence to work alone on what they can do and also on those areas where they would need help. To do this effectively requires a balance of different types of assessment:
Diagnostic assessment seeks to find out what the weaknesses are in the student’s science learning, to determine why it is weak, share that information with the student in the form of learning targets and then, in partnership with the student, to set about rectifying and developing the learning as well as possible. As was shown by Sternberg (1994) a gifted pupil will not be globally gifted but selectively gifted so diagnostic assessment by the use of concept cartooning, prediction–observation–explanation and concept mapping is just as important for the gifted science student as for the least able. However the gifted have the capacity to monitor their own progress towards targets using logbooks of progress and self-criticism, interviews or peer-discussion on their learning.
Formative assessment informs both teacher and student how well the learning process is progressing against specific science learning objectives and for this to be effective those learning objectives need to be shared and understood. To enable differentiation to be understood by the student the objectives need to be tiered and linked and revisited at the end of a lesson to enable the gifted student to determine how well they have progressed towards those objectives. A science teacher’s day-to-day assessment of the student’s written, drawn and spoken work will be against these objectives and, if the teacher and student have a constant record of the objectives, they have a means of checking learning through a varied means of assessment.
Summative assessment indicates the ‘milestones’ reached in terms of key principles or ideas relating to the science topic covered in that period of time. They are measured against the full set of learning objectives linked to learning outcomes which are assessed and quoted as the mark of attainment and when measured against the starting point marks the progression in learning. This should test understanding as well as knowledge but it is often limited to relatively low level thinking tasks related to question and answer style assessment. However the use of concept mapping, flow diagrams, flash cards and concept cartoons can vary the assessment diet and provide more information about understanding.
