Many years ago, when I was still fairly new at teaching, I attended a course on assessment for History. The course was meant to provide teachers with a better understanding of the marking of student’s History essays. This was before the days of the current History syllabus with the incorporation of the thinking skills. It was conducted at the National Institute of Education (NIE).

What I remembered most of the experience was the lecturer telling us that there wasn’t much to discuss as we all should know how the marking should be done and we would already know what is a good essay. He said that by just reading a good essay we should “know”. Of course, I immediately felt that I had wasted my time coming for the session and it turned out to be just that.

Several years later, when I was with the Educational Technology Division (ETD), I was asked to chaperoned some foreign guests from the ASEAN countries to the NIE. The visitors were all officers from educational institutions from the ASEAN countries. We were going to look at NIE‘s use of discussion forums in their teacher training. We were given an overview by one of NIE‘s lecturers and at the Q&A after the overview, a Malaysian guest asked the NIE lecturer how they assessed the students learning on the forum. The lecturer rather flippantly said that they just read the comments and contributions of the students on the forum and have a “feel” for the correct marks. I remember cringing and shifting uneasily in my seat, when the Malaysian who had asked the question, looked at me and whispered, “What he means is that he is just doing impression marking?” I also remember just smiling sheepishly at him. I was at a loss for words as I knew what the Malaysian guest meant.

A few days ago, I was at a meeting between teachers and parents of my son’s class. Just before the actual meeting started, a teacher for Design and Technology, was complaining to a parent about her son’s portfolio work that was due to be submitted for the GCE O levels. The parent accepted that her son was not doing what he should and asked the teacher what was lacking in her son’s work. All the teacher said was that her son was not doing “enough”. The teacher proceeded to say that her son was over-confident and had thought that he was doing a good job. The parent asked again what was lacking and again the teacher only said that he was “over-confident” and that her son had thought that he had done enough when in reality it was far short of acceptable standards. It, perhaps, never crossed his mind that it wasn’t a case of over-confidence at all but rather the student not knowing how to assess his own performance.

As I watched this last incident, the first two incidents came to my mind. I have come to the conclusion that students in Singapore are, in general, not taught how to assess their own learning and performance.In the first two examples, it seems that even the teachers concerned have no clear inkling of how the assessment of learning is to be done. If teachers have no idea of how assessment is to be done, we can safely assumed the students have even less of an idea of how to do it.

The sad thing is that, the last incident showed that it is still happening today. Teachers mark with some hazy idea in their heads about the assessment standards. Because they are hazy about it, they cannot transfer their knowledge to the students. Students will, therefore, always be dependent on the teacher to assess their performance. The students cannot do it on their own. I suspect this haphazard approach to assessment is still prevalent in Singapore schools. I am sure many students, for example, don’t know why their English language essay is considered good or bad. Sure there will be marks and some comments made on the student’s essay paper but rarely is the student given clear criteria for what constitutes a good essay. Writing essays is a hit-and-miss affair. Students who do well, don’t really know why their essay is good. The poor essay writer also does not know why his essay is good. They are all dependent on the teacher.

Now this might seem normal to some of us but at a time when schools are spouting slogans like “independent learners” and “life-long learning”, how do we expect students to display such characteristics when they are not taught to assess their own learning? How are they going to be taught this if teachers themselves are hazy and vague?

In my view, independent learning and life-long learning will not happen as long as this state of affairs continue. It is just as bad for students to be waiting for an “assessment” from the teachers about their learning, as waiting for the teachers to provide them with ready-made notes.

The independent learner needs to be taught how to assess his own learning. He has to be his own “man in the mirror.” He must be able to reflect accurately on his own abilities and decide what he lacks and what he is good at. Without this skill and attitude, independent learning will only remain an illusion.

I’m Starting With The Man In

The Mirror

I’m Asking Him To Change

His Ways

And No Message Could Have

Been Any Clearer

If You Wanna Make The World

A Better Place

(If You Wanna Make The

World A Better Place)

Take A Look At Yourself, And

Then Make A Change

(Take A Look At Yourself, And

Then Make A Change)

- “Man in the mirror” by Michael Jackson

There is a driving school in Singapore where they don’t give you a chance to drive a car. The only instruction that you will get from them is when they will ONLY TELL you how to drive. Will you enroll in such a driving school? I think the answer is clear. Yet there are many such schools in Singapore, where the teaching of skills is just by mere telling.

Recently, my son who is studying in one the polytechnics in Singapore, had an assessment for a communications module in his course. In the assessment, he was required to speak for about three minutes. I believe he was able to do that quite easily but he also described how some of his classmates struggled with the assessment. He described how they struggled for words, spoke in monotones, in short end up looking like very incompetent speakers. That got me and my son into a discussion about the module and the assessment.

I asked if they were taught how to speak during the course of the module. He initially told me that they were taught to speak but when I probed further it was clear that they weren’t. What actually happened was that the lecturer only outlined what are the aspects of good communication. The lecturer only gave an outline of the art of speaking but in theory only. When I probed my son, there was no opportunity to practise what they had learned during the module. Yet the students were assessed through an actual public speaking exercise.

In my view, this is just like learning driving through verbal instructions and perhaps some written notes. It would be unheard of and no one will take such a driving school seriously. Yet similar practices are being done in Singapore’s “educational” institutions. Worse no one seems to take notice of it, much less mind it. The situation is just incredible. You don’t need to be an expert on education to know that in order for someone to master a skill, you need lots of practice in that skill. Such skills are known as “procedural knowledge”. Robert Marzano et. al. in Dimensions of Learning says:

“Learning procedural knowledge requires the learner to perform a process or to demonstrate a skill, that is , to take some action.”

These skills can be mental or physical skills but the teaching of such skills are characterised by a breaking down of the skills into logical smaller steps and the learning and teaching of these steps are accompanied by repeated practice until mastery is achieved.

What had happened in my son’s class was a pretense at teaching a skill. If my son did well, it is IN SPITE of the teaching. If the other students struggled with the assessment, it is because of the poor teaching. No excuses ought to be given for this.

This may not happen in some aspects of the Singapore school experience. We know Singapore teachers are good at drilling the students to the test. But this applies I believe only to the acdemic subjects where they will face written examinations at the end of the year. However, where the soft skills are concerned, usually, it is a case of the “non-driving” driving school. Yet, it is these soft skills that at the most basic level, employers are seeking from the graduates of Singapore’s educational institutions.

Even local Singapore employers have been complaining of graduates who are academically bright but unable to fit into the work environment which demands skills far beyond the rote-learning and memorizing often demanded in Singapore’s educational institutions.

In case, you are still wondering if such a driving school exist in Singapore, the answer is they don’t. But you can find similar ones in our highly rated educational institutions.

There is an interesting article in the Straits Times today, 1 July 2009, by Dr Lee Wei Ling, the Director of the National Neuroscience Institute, Singapore. She was giving her views on “herd mentality” and “free will”.

In her article, she gave the current measure of taking temperature to screen for the H1N1 flu virus as an example of a herd mentality. Her argument is that despite evidence to show that it has not worked well citing Japan as an example where such measures were taken and yet it has the second highest number of confirmed cases in Asia despite its efforts at temperature screening. She reminded us that even without a temperature, a person can be carrier of the virus and such people would think they are healthy when in fact they can be dangerous transmitters of the flu.

In the educational field, the clamor for international examinations like the IGCSE, iPSLE or IB has never been louder. This is especially true in the Southeast Asian region where Singapore’s neighbors have been envious of Singapore’s reputation for an excellent education system. Many have seen Singapore’s reputation as due to its known reliance on examinations from international examinations syndicate like UCLES or the CIE. Many schools among Singapore’s neighbors now want similar examinations because of the prestige that such examinations can give to them. They feel that if they have international examinations, then they can be become “good” too.

In this rush to get themselves accredited to international examinations, few actually ask if such high stakes examinations can do what they should be doing, which is, whether it can assess students learning well. The assumption is that these established international examination syndicates know what they are doing as they have been in the business for a long time. But do their clients stop to think what IS BEING assessed in such international examinations? What kind of learning is being assessed? Is the area of learning being assessed just a narrow spectrum of skills and abilities, and intelligence?

Many educational experts have decried the dependence on such examinations to assess learning. This is because there is so much learning to be assessed and the different kinds of learning cannot be assessed in a one-size-fits-all way, that is through largely written examinations. Yet schools are rushing to get into the high stakes international examinations bandwagon.

Like the temperature-taking measures for the H1N1 virus, high stakes examinations are a very ineffective way of measuring what it is supposed to measure. It doesn’t take into account too many aspects of assessment in learning. Worse, it is also like the same example cited by Lee, it is also dangerous. It is dangerous because those who do well in such examinations will think they are intelligent and those who don’t will think that they are not when in reality many of the former are just examinations-smart and the latter are not.

It is also dangerous because it doesn’t assess people for the skills and knowledge that is required for adult life. The economy for example gets conned into accepting people who are examinations-smart as good and suitable workers. The loud complaints of employers about the quality of workers they get from schools and universities tell us the real story.

Dr Lee also had this conclusion about “free will”. She said:

“…the option to make a decision unconstrained by any circumstance. In many situations we cannot expect total free will. But where decision-making is constrained by mere social convention, we do have the choice to ignore conventions. More importantly, when decision-making is influenced by herd mentality, we should consciously avoid following the herd and make decisions based on logic.

If we fail to do so, we risk making the wrong decisions, sometimes with catastrophic consequences.”

I feel her conclusion should also be useful warning for all schools in the region about adopting the herd mentality with regards to the adoption of international examinations. The adoption of international examinations is not a silver bullet or panacea. It can actually be a trojan virus in disguise and undermine much that education really stands for. Instead of education, this virus will change the programming to give you examination-preparedness instead.