Issue essays are particularly harder for me than argument essays for some reason. Does anyone else feel the same? Anyways, for this essay I ran out of time towards the end and didn’t get a chance to proof-read, so there are more grammar errors than usual. The thing I’m most concerned with are my examples. Were they any good?
[color=blue][b]Educators should base their assessment of students’ learning not on students’ grasp of facts but on the ability to explain the ideas, trends, and concepts that those facts illustrate.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, describe specific circumstances in which adopting the recommendation would or would not be advantageous and explain how these examples shape your position.[/b]
A topic that is often greatly contested in the field of pedagogy is accurately measuring how much a student has learned. Some say that learning should be assessed based on the facts that the students grasp, while other argue that educators should assess learning on students’ ability to explain the ideas, trends and concepts that the facts illustrate. I believe that students should not be assessed based on the facts they memorize but on how well they can explain the concepts behind them.
Understanding facts only, and not the ideas that cause them, severly limits a students ability to transfer knowledge between different areas of subject matter. For example, a student may memorize the fact that hot water will always rise to the top of a container, while colder water will sink. What if they were then asked whether steel ball bearings would rise to the top or sink to the bottom in a container filled with sand? The student might not be able to answer with certainty because there initially seems to be no connection between water temperature and steel balls in sand. However if the student understood the concept in the first fact, then then it would easy to answer the question. Higher temperature means higher average kinetic engery in the water molecules. Kinetic energy is energy associated with movement molecules in warmer water are farther apart from each other than those in colder water. Since there is more space between the molecules, warmer water is less dense and, assuming equal volumes, is lighter than colder water. Heaver colder water then sinks to the bottom of the container. In the same way, steel ball bearings are denser than sand and would clearly sink to the bottom in a container of sand. Had the student only memorized the fact about water and not understood the cause, they could not answer this question about the steel ball bearings. Clearly it is a better measure of learning to assess a student’s ability to explain concepts rather than their ability to memorize facts as it allows them to transfer what they learn in one field to another and make logical inferences.
Proponents of assessing students based on their grasp of facts argue that testing for facts is easier than testing for concepts, ideas and concepts. For example, to test a fact all an educator has to do is create an exam with multiple choice questions or fill-ins and run the exam through a computer to grade it. An exam that tests for concepts requires the educator to read through responses critique them individually. If an educator cannot be expected to do the latter, then there is no point in sending students to school and it would be more efficient to have them stay in their homes and memorize facts from books. Furthermore, testing facts doesn’t necessarily mean that students even remember the facts; they could guess answers. With testing concepts, students cannot make up answers without backing them up with evidence which clearly separates the students that understand from those that have learned nothing. When faced with new problems, students can extrapolate on concepts and ideas to come up with solutions. If all they know if facts, they can’t hope to solve new problems that don’t directly use those facts. In short, while testing students on ideas, trends and concepts may be more difficult for the educator, it will more definitively show if the student has learned something and is capable of solving new problems. A student that only knows facts is not an asset to a changing world and workforce. Who would hire them to solve problems already solved?
In conclusion, educators should assess students not on their grasp of the facts but on their ability to explain ideas, trends and concepts. Doing so shows that students can extend what they’ve learned in one area to other fields and that they are prepared to solve problems they have not yet encountered. Knowing cold hard facts, while useful is not the only thing that will help a student succeed.