Criteria and Validity (Chapter 8)

The learning process is full of important concepts which some of them help the learner to be aware of his/her performances, challenges, results and how they are progressing throughout this process. In Chapter 8 we can find two important concepts such as criteria, understanding and validity to explain how the learner is performing and how effective the assessments are.

After a test every teacher should assess and evaluate the students’ performance, which should always need to be based on a judgment supported by criteria. A good criteria focus on the deep issues of a piece of work more than on the first thing you see like grammar and length. Although, criteria importantly need to specify what the purpose of the test is and what are the main points to assess, it is to say that it is important to base the criteria on the main objectives of a work. Moreover, that is why with every piece of work teachers give to students it is important to have rubrics which will always support the teachers’ power of assessment and surely make this work of assessing easily.

Referring to rubrics we can describe them as Wiggins says in Chapter 8 “Rubrics describe degrees of quality, proficiency, or understanding along a continuum”. There exists two types of rubrics, holistic and analytic, where the holistic rubric is used to give a judgment of the students’ performance and it gives a general impression of it. On the other hand, analytic rubric have two ways to judge the students’ performance separately by dividing it by traits. It is important to highlight the representation of a descriptive rubric of criterion which is really analytic and allows us to give a score with evidences.

The chapter 8 also allows us to be conscious about the understanding. It says that understanding is a process which does not depend on right and wrong answers. If we focus on the assessment of understanding, it is necessary to create a rubric based on concrete ideas to assess which should go beyond the first look at the work like. A rubric is not complete until to have a deep analysis of the work identifying the main ideas of the author and may be go deeply in what are the really intentions of him/her and why express each idea in the way he/she does. It also necessary to clarify that each learner has a different point of view t see and understand things.
Validity is present in this chapter reviewed as the way to gain the results of a work based on concrete evidence. Some teachers base their corrections of tests or exams only in the precision of the answers than in the process students use to solve the problem. When students’ results of a test are good according to the teacher expectations and those expectations are based on just the precise answers as a book says, it does not really mean that the students understand. The idea here is to know how students go to gain that information and how they express it in their own words providing critical thinking.

In conclusion, students’ performances will depend on the process of assessment based on valid rubrics and a continuous understanding. Besides, the process of understanding goes accompanied with mental development.