Formal and informal forms of assessment

Students may often complain about having too many assessment tests. However, professors and teachers have a significant need for this activity since it shows particular aspects of the student’s weaknesses and strengths in the subject. Assessment is an inevitable part of any educational process, carried out in order to evaluate student’s general performance, knowledge, skills, and so forth. The aim of assessment tests is not only to reveal students’ level of knowledge and achievement, but also to determine the course program of study and direction of future lessons. Educators use various forms of assessment, but the most popular ones are formal and informal assessments. It is described in topics for process essay.

Informal assessment is the most important form of assessments since it involves daily observations of the teacher or professor in the class. Using this form of assessment, educators observe and evaluate students’ behavior in the class while they are doing various tasks, assignments, or simply asking teachers questions. Conducting an informal type of assessments, teachers do not necessarily have a particular plan in their minds. Instead, they try to get to know different things about students during the class when they behave naturally. Informal assessments suggest essential insight into a student’s fallacies, abilities and disabilities that often are not reflected accurately through the formal type of assessments. For instance, an educator might find out that a student has a misunderstanding regarding some issue or even theme as a whole. Besides, a teacher might get to know that a student has a certain type of disability, for example, bad hearing in case he or she often asks him/her to repeat a question or a statement.

In contrast to informal assessments, a formal type of evaluating students is preplanned and bears systematic character. Teachers use this form of assessment in order to find out what students have learned during the course. In spite of the fact that formal assessments are less effective than informal ones, the major part of assessments in educational institutions is formal. In general, formal assessments are employed along with objectives and goals submitted at the beginning of a lesson or the whole academic year. One more point that distinguishes formal assessments from informal ones is that students have enough time to prepare ahead for formal assessments.

Testing culturally and linguistically diverse students, one should choose an informal type of assessments because the results of formal assessment in this case will be unfair. Regarding educational professionals, one can state that it is rather suitable to apply formal types of assessments to them. Educational professionals proved their knowledge and abilities long ago and need simply to upgrade their skills. They are usually very responsible and are aware of various forms of assessments. Finally, when testing students with disabilities, it is always better to choose an informal type of assessment rather than formal one. The reason for this is that by the means of informal assessment a teacher can better see the disabilities of students, their behavior when they realize they have failed to do something, and their potential. Formal assessment is rather difficult for such students and does not provide an accurate result.

Formal and informal types of assessments play certain roles in the identification and support of students with disabilities. While formal assessment is unfair towards students with some kinds of disabilities and does not show accurate results, informal assessment is the best way to evaluate the general performance and achievement of such students. Due to various types of disabilities, both physical and mental ones, it is very difficult for these students to show their knowledge and skills. Therefore, observing their usual behavior in the class is an effective way to evaluate their performance.

A Peer-Reviewed Research Assessment Article

The peer-reviewed article that was chosen for the analysis is titled Guidelines for the Educational Evaluation of Autism Spectrum Disorder and was written by Susan Hepburn, Kristen Kaiser, and Melinda Graham. The article is well written, rather educative and informative. In their written work, the authors reveal autism as a disorder itself for better understanding of the disability and its background. Moreover, they provide the table of the disability’s signs in different ages. In addition, the authors examine the eligibility level of students who suffer from this disorder. However, the most important part of the article is the overview of the educational assessment for students with autism.

The authors state that there are six steps that allow completing the evaluation process properly. The first one is detection; at this stage, educators detect students who suffer from this disability and face certain difficulties with communication, social interactions and flexibility. The second step is referring, which means that the administration of the school creates an effective way for teachers and professors to communicate anxiety about a student or students in order to start evaluation. This process is followed by screening; it is when an assessment team gathers, reviews all the necessary information, and decides on whether it is rational to employ a formal type of assessment. The fourth stage is the assessment process itself; depending on the situation and the educators who decide which type of assessment is better to implement, students have to face either formal or informal evaluation of their general performance and achievements. Though informal form of assessment is much better for students with disabilities than a formal one, the article does not make any statements regarding this issue. The next stage is collaboration, which predetermines the cooperation of educators and families of disabled students in order to decide on the most fitting category for the students. Finally, the last step is activation of a special program for the students since their disability will undoubtedly hinter their performance and achievements in a usual class.

The rationale of this article is to provide educators with the most comfortable and suitable way to assess students, to find disabilities if any, and to create an individual learning program. The research method that was used by the authors in the article is a qualitative one since numbers do not play any significant role in this research. The authors conclude their article with the idea that students with any kinds of disabilities, no matter if they are physical or mental, must be educated with a special program taking into consideration their disabilities. Nevertheless, the authors do not state which of the assessment forms is better to conduct for students with disabilities.

As one can see, the article Guidelines for the Educational Evaluation of Autism Spectrum Disorder has a very close relevance to the area of autism since the theme of autism is the focus of the article. Critically evaluating the article itself, one can state that it is rather informative and provides very valuable information concerning the area of autism in educational process. However, the great disadvantage of the analyzed article is that it lacks a strong conclusion stating which form of assessment is the most efficient for students with disabilities.