Exploratory Study of Alternative Procedures for Embedded Assessment in Secondary School Geography in Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria

Abstract

The need for school accountability accompanied by demands that teachers must take responsibility for improving students’ performance on standardized test made educators to search for new ways to teach. Assessment is a key process in education and an essential ingredient of accountability. This study explored the effect of embedded assessment on secondary school students’ performance in geography. A set of embedded assessment procedures was developed and used among SS1 students. The objective of this study was to find out whether embedded assessment will be effective in the teaching and learning of geography among SS1 students. The pretest, posttest quasi-experimental research design was used for the study. Two public senior secondary schools were randomly selected from a total of 27 public senior secondary schools in Ilorin-west local government area of Kwara state. Instrument used were practical exercises, tests and quizzes as well as projects assignment were developed and embedded into classroom instructions in geography for experimental group while the regular continuous assessment was used in the control group. Analysis of Covariance was used to test the hypotheses formulated. A significant difference was observed between the performance of geography students exposed to embedded assessment and those exposed to the traditional assessment method. This was because the mean performance of experimental group was 31.06 while the mean performance of control group was 20.33. The implication for this study is that embedded assessment brings about better understanding of the subject content and assessment is done as the instruction takes place.