- The characteristics of this new concept of Educational Assessment are:
- Subject who
will be diagnosed:
It can be any person, group, class or institution whose condition is the object of study. Our Educational Assessment deals with individual and institutional aspects, including the subjects and the family, school and social context, in order to predict behaviour and facilitate psychopedagogical intervention.Our assessment is addressed to all the subjects, and not only to the problematic subjects as traditional assessment models stemming from medicine and psychology did. That is the reason why personalization becomes necessary. It means knowing all the significative variables related to the subject/s or to the pedagogical, psychological, sociological or any other context. Educational Assessment is no longer "the art of discovering and interpreting the signs of a disorder" but the way of knowing the learners within their own context.
Since it considers subjects as total and complex entities, Educational Assessment cannot be limited to taking into account only intellectual/cognitive and learning variables, or any other taken isolately in which some limitation or disability has been detected. This is so because we think that behaviour is not only the manifestation of psychological features (organismic or personality) but it also includes contextual and interpersonal variables, motivation, self-concept, values, etc. That is to say: it includes all the indicators and relevant variables that determine learning.
The object of study of EducationalAssessment is:
Educational situations, the study of any educational fact, not only of the student but of all those variables that allow and define teaching.The object of study is not only the educational object but also the context in which the educational process takes place, either the school with its organization, didactic methodology, staff and resources, etc, ot its education professionals. Moreover, the object of study extends to the family, the community or any other socialising element. That is: endogenous/personal and exogenous/environmental factors.
A new purpose:
The purpose of Educational Assessment is to offer suggerences and "remedial activities" both to remedy educational disabilities or problems and to develop non-problematic educational situations.
The aim is to help the development of the educational process in order to improve both the process itself and the educational results.
A remedial programme is included:
The Educational Assessment process includes a remedial programme and the following evaluation of the results that the remedial program has achieved.The diagnostic process consists of a series of sequential and interdependent stages. One of these stages is the remedial programme, which is interdependent with the other stages. Our diagnostic process is not only the description of a problem but it intends to improve the educational process and to suggest a remedial programme with the subsequent evaluation of its own results.
The methodological process of Educational Assessment:
Our diagnostic activity follows an accurate and systematic methodological process which turns it into a scientific and professional activity.The main feature of our methodological process is the fact that it is based on the ordinary applied research methodology. Its goal is the immediate appliance of the diagnostic results.
The Definition of Educational Diagnostic:
Scientific and professional activity placed within the teaching/learning process, which includes measurement, assessment and evaluation activities. It is an accurate and systematic research process, with an epistemological basis, aimed to know and assess any educational fact in order to take a decision which causes a change or an improvement within the teaching/learning process.
The research process of Educational Assessment consists of the following procedure guide:
- Collecting information
- Analysing information
- Assessing information (its reliabilty and validity) for decision taking
- Remedial program
- Evaluating the process
The epistemological conclusions of my work lead us to a comprehensive methodology of the different diagnostic perspectives and paradigms. This comprehensive view asks for paradigmatic complementarity, which would be the best way for diagnostic knowledge to develop.
Our conception of Educational Assessment takes into account a multipilcity of variables and dimensions and this multiplicity implies the mulidisciplinarity of these variables and dimensions.
This multilevel nature of our diagnostic research must not be omitted in the design and in the different analysis of the diagnostic research. And the most appropiate methodological resource to analyse this multilevel nature is the interactive model, in its mediational perspective, which allows the understanding of the complex and multidisciplinary educational reality and facilitates the keys to the remedial programme.
