When I drew your attention to John Holt saying …
“when we keep trying to find out what our students understand we are more likely than not to destroy whatever understanding they may have”
… I wasn’t suggesting there’s no point in trying to find out what kids know so you can relax and forget about assessment.
No. The point I was trying to make was that we need to broaden our conception of what assessment is and what it’s for, and thus how we approach it.
The best ‘reads’ I got on what a learner understood was when I observed or participated in their doing. It took me a long time to realise that the information I glimpsed and gleaned through those strategies was assessment.
And once I realised that, things got morally uncomfortable. You see, the understandings revealed to me through these methods invariably showed the kids were more ‘able’ than they were deemed to be when the assessment was approached ‘front on’.
John Holt says people are intelligent, we just need to stop doing the things that make them stupid.
If the way we assess consistently tells people they’re less capable than they actually are, isn’t the cumulative effect to make most people doubt their ability?
And don’t discount the impact of this: the assessments show us the kids are less able than they actually are, and we act accordingly.
As a way to make people stupid, it’s a hard combo to beat.