Exploring Alternative Assessment in Education from Different Lenses

INTRODUCTION ssessment has necessarily become the vehicle and engine that drives the delivery of education and other related educational processes. It is a truism that ‘what is assessed becomes what is valued, which becomes what is taught’(Broadfoot, 2004). Governments across the globe have realized the potential of educational assessment in engendering the much coveted educational goal of enhanced pupil learning. Impact of alternative assessment forms on pupils learning can be discerned from the fact that this framework of assessment is popularly called as assessment for learning. Recent decades have witnessed marked changes in the assessment perspective, assessment systems and assessment regimes. These changes entail integration of assessment in the teaching-learning process, making students partners in the learning process, empowering teachers to make judgments about their pupils’ progress, and motivating teachers to provide their learners with individualized and qualitative feedback which could purposefully inform the next steps in learning. As pointed out by Birenbaum (1996), the term alternative assessment is like a large umbrella,‘a generic term currently used in assessment literature’(p. 3) that shelters multitude of potential alternatives to traditional tests, such as, performance based assessment, authentic assessment, self-peer assessment, inquiry based learning projects, portfolios, etc.(Fox, 2008). Gardner (2012) further suggesting the centrality of learning emphasized in alternative assessment framework suggested that it is popularly called as ‘assessment for learning’(Gipps et al., 1997).