102-12 OVERCOMING PEOPLE’S FEAR OF ASSESSMENT

Community Learning Development Resource 101 – 12

OVERCOMING PEOPLE’S FEAR OF ASSESSMENT

           

SUMMARY

Working within community settings with non-confident and inexperienced adult learners, it is important that if they have problems with relating to the assessment of learning, that we seek to address these problems. One of the common problems is a fear of assessment, linked either to earlier learning assessment experiences or to their lack of understanding of the process.

 

WHY IS THERE A FEAR OF ASSESSMENT?

  • If learning has been a negative past-experience for many non-confident adult learners, then it is likely that their experience of assessment will feature amongst their worst memories
  • We know that many adults are not confident or comfortable to participate in formal group learning experiences. We are aware that many have a fear of failure or of being exposed or humiliated for what they can’t do or don’t know
  • For many adults, their previous experience of assessment has been of a process that comes at the end of a period of learning, within statutory education, and rather than being ‘the icing on the cake’ it has been a ‘the bitter cup of failure’
  • From their past experience, assessment will mean – the formality of exams, tests, questions, 11+, GCE, CSE, – barriers and hurdles to overcome – pass or fail, and the experience of being a failure.
  • In the last fifty years, more people in the general population, have failed within the statutory education assessment system, than have been successful.

 

ADDRESSING THE FEAR OF ASSESSMENT

  • The formal tools of assessment from education and training are often not helpful in adult and community learning, where building learner capacity can be about learner gains that are more than the knowledge and skills of a subject. The personal growth of the learner, in their confidence and self-esteem, is difficult to measure through formal processes.
  • The adult and community learning outcomes, that we and the learners should be most interested in assessing, are evidenced in how the learner values and uses their learning, and how it impacts on their lives and within community activities – regeneration, etc. Not in the classroom!
  • We must also find ways of assessing learning so that the processes are positive experiences for adult learners, ones that signal success for them – not failure and that give them the encouragement and support to participate as equal partners in assessment. We need to focus on celebrating success, not reviewing failure.

 

WHY WE NEED TO BE SENSITIVE ABOUT HOW WE USE ASSESSMENT WITH MANY ADULT LEARNERS:

  • Assessment is perceived by many as being instrumental in failing them or closing doors to their success and progress
  • Assessment can have an adverse effect on learners due to stress, anxiety, frustration, the notion of competition, and expectations or fears about failure
  • Some adult learners expect to be criticised, their failures exposed and corrected publicly.

 

GOOD PRACTICE TIPS

  • Don’t use the word assessment – it’s ‘education-speak’ and may not be understood or may be associated by the learner with bad learning experiences in the past.
  • Think about the learner and their ‘comfort-zone’ if you are seeking evidence of their learning – you are asking them to share something that they own with you.
  • Always manage the recording of evidence and judgements so that there is the least interference with the evidence source.
  • Gaining and recording the evidence is essential but these processes must be shared, negotiated and agreed with the learner.
  • Put the celebration of learning success at the top of your feedback agenda.

 

‘ The only assessment that is educationally justifiable is that which promotes the individual learning process.  Measurement for this purpose is objective, criterion-referenced and formative

                                                                               (Frith & Macintosh 1990)