The Social Purposes of Learning Assessment

Abstract

Assessment has been studied by many researchers and educators from the prism of educational theories viewed purely from an instructional or pedagogical analysis, but there is an open space in which learning assessment could be further scrutinized using sociological perspective so as to explore its social roles. The paper analyzes the social consequences of assessment and its resistances from the various participants of teaching and learning process. Assessment has been widely used for accountability, control, and sorting mechanism of society to distribute the limited available social positions. Thus only those students properly equipped with knowledge, values and competencies excel in the assessment devices. Students in the lower echelon of society, however, are left with few opportunities for social mobility and employment due to their limited capacity to pass through this filtering machine called assessment. Teachers and student demonstrate some manifest and latent resistances to the negative consequences of assessment. Hence, assessment both serves as a system to improve learning or account teachers and schools and as an instrument for academic segregation and tracking. It should be viewed beyond the walls of classroom by looking at the close, but intricate linkage of assessment to society.