The design and evaluation of a cognitive skills assessment checklist for educators

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT:Post-apartheid South Africa has seen a shift to process-centred, outcomesbased(OBE) education. Within this paradigm much has been written andrecommended as regards assessment, specifically authentic assessment,which needs to be continuous. Within this transformatory model of teachingand assessment, it is vital for the educator to understand how the learnerlearns in order to assess him/her authentically.Because cognition has to do with how learners acquire, store and utilizeinformation, the best way to assess cognitive ability is to assess those thoughtprocesses that are involved in arriving at the products of cognition directly.Being process-based and judging the learners' responsiveness to instruction,it becomes important for the educator to examine how a learner learns, beforeeducators can hope to categorise and analyse the learners' ability to learn.The paucity of the data base search revealed that the design of such acognitive checklist was imperative. The checklist had to be easily understood,practical and easily impiementabie.The researcher based the checklist on Feuerstein's (1980) model, which isunderpinned by the concepts of structural cognitive modifiability (SCM) andthe mediated learning experience (MLE).SCM is based on the assumption that human beings have the capacity tomodify their cognitive functions and adapt to life's changing demands. Theyare thus open systems which are amenable to cognitive changes. Structuralchanges are pervasive and determine cognitive function in a broad series ofmental activities. Feuerstein has suggested a list of deficient cognitivefunctions at the input, elaboration and output phases of the mental act. Theseserve as guidelines for observational and mediational efforts. Theidentification of the deficient cognitive function, the level of modifiability andthe mediation required to change them are considered to be of vitalimportance to predicting future learning. This basic assumption shifts theresponsibility for a person's modifiability from that individual to the mediator oreducator.The basic parameters of the cognitive process are subsumed into thecognitive map. These include: content; operation; modality; phase (input,elaboration, output); level of complexity; level of abstraction and level ofefficiency.The present researcher reframed all the basic components of the learningphases into easily accessible English and provided examples of sub-skills(150) necessary for the successful acquisition of learning at that phase of thelearning process.The literature study was followed by a pilot-study. This was carried out inorder to refine the checklist and make sure that it was, indeed, user-friendly,easily understood, impiementabie without training and that it yieldedinformation which the educators found to be professionally beneficial andenriching. The results of the pilot-study were incorporated into The ChecklistTo Assess Cognitive Skills' (Chapter 4).The result of the research was unanimous as regards the above-mentionedgoals. The educators all realised the necessity of linking assessment toinstruction and understood how crucial it is that educators understand andappreciate how a learner learns and hence, develops.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University