Assessing Student Performance

Assessing Student Performance

That subject matter is an essential component of teacher knowledge is neither a new nor a controversial assertion. After all, if teaching entails helping others learn, then understanding what is to be taught is a central requirement of teaching. The myriad tasks of teaching, such as selecting worthwhile learning activities, giving helpful explanations, asking productive questions, and evaluating students' learning, all depend on the teacher's understanding of what it is that students are to learn (Yorke, 2002).

Helping students learn subject matter involves more than the delivery of facts and information. The goal of teaching is to assist students in developing intellectual resources to enable them to participate in, not merely to know about, the major domains of human thought and inquiry. These include the past and its relation to the present; the natural world; the ideas, beliefs, and values of our own and other peoples; the dimensions of space and quantity; aesthetics and representation; and so on. Understanding entails being able to use intellectual ideas and skills as tools to gain control over every day, real-world problems. Students should see themselves, either alone or in cooperation with others, as capable of figuring things out--of using mathematics to define and reason through a problem; of tracking down the origins of current social policy; of interpreting a poem or story, of understanding how physical forces operate; of recreating in writing a feeling, idea, or experience (Sadler, 2003). They should both be able and inclined to challenge the claims in a politician's speech, to make sense of and criticize presentations of statistical information, and to write an effective letter to the editor. A conceptual mastery of subject matter and the capacity to be critical of knowledge itself can empower students to be effective actors in their environment.

To design and improve ...