17 October 2010

Assessment Objectives Guide Teachers in Preparing Students for External Assessment.

Assessment objectives should be put into consideration.Students' work or performance is judged and desired outcome of an effort has been achieved.It is now the question of how assessment objective guide teachers in preparing students for external assessment.Later we discuss the assesment objectives for ordinary level course in Zimbabwe when meeting the syllabus and national examinations in Food and Nutrition.
According to Farrant(1980)"assessment is the process by which a quality of an individual work or performance is judged." Gay (1979) defines objectives as,"the desired outcomes of an effort ,the results intended at the end of a series of activities."
Therefore assessment objectives help the teacher in the coverage of the syllabus content.The teacher is guided in a way that can make use of topics and introduced in a sequential manner and that consider actions of the level of the pupils as well as the degree of difficulty has be given.
Assessment objectives is the candlelight for the teacher to break down concepts into weekly objectives and by so doing the teacher can formulate daily objectives.These daily objectives ensures effective break down of concepts into teachable units on the assessment objectives.
When formulating the weekly objectives ,from the assessment objectives in conjunction with the syllabus content, the teacher will be constructing the school syllabus, and the school syllabus is a mechanism that the teacher uses to ensure the proper implementation of the official syllabus.
The assessment objective is the yard stick for the teacher to develop necessary skills for the pupils ,as per according to the assessment objectives.These skills are later going to be tested in the external examination and it is the right of teachers to make sure that these skills have been achieved by pupils so that will not be difficulties in applying these skills in an examination situation.
Assessment objectives can be known as process objectives.This is because these are on going process that the teacher uses.These process objectives describe outcomes desired during the excution of the effort.In other words tey relate to development and excution, and then at the end when these efforts are achieved then these assessments objectives ,according to Gay(1979)can be called product objectives.
These product objectives describ outcomes intended as a result of the effort.Process objectives don't typically involve student behaviour ,desired student outcomes are almost ,always product oriented.Process objectives deal with strategies and activities when are intended to result in an achievement of the pupil's skills.These assessment objectives give direction to all subsequent activities and achievement of these objectives is ultimately measure .Ways of measuring these assessment objectives will later to be discussed.
Assessment objectives give to the demands of assessment of degree of progress at any point in time ,facilitate communication concerning an effort's purposes and form the basis for assessment of an effort's achievements. Thus ,it is critical that the best possible objectives both technically and interms of content be selected or developed .It is on the assessment objectives that at the end of the achieving process or assessment objectives ,skills should have been developed in pupils.
Assessment objectives also serve as the guide line for both the learners and the teacher.Students do what axactly expected of them ,thus allowing pupils to focus their efforts appropriately .They give direction to all instructions and to the subsequent measurement of these assessment objectives, in such a way that they will be able to evaluate themselves, to check whether what they would have taught is correct.

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