RSTAQ: Tips

Using an interactive approach to assessment and teaching

The expanded view of the nature of diagnostic information encourages a teacher to assess the abilities a student brings to learning on conjunction with the task requirements. The teacher interacts with the learner in such a way that the learner participates with as little or as much support as is necessary. The teacher offers the minimum amount of assistance to enable a student to successfully complete the task at hand. Through this testing/teaching process, a student should develop knowledge in the following areas:

Knowledge of a task (that is, a clear understanding of what the task is); how to go about doing this task (procedure); and when and why such a task should be performed, (knowledge, skills and processes necessary to complete a designated task). For example, when required to summarise a text book chapter for a class project, a student realises that he or she needs to locate the main ideas, and knows how to achieve this. He or she also needs to know that the mastery of other defined skills, knowledge, and processes, needs to be achieved in order for him or her to develop independence when undertaking a particular task.

The confidence that he or she will be able to do such a task once the requisite knowledge, skills and strategies are learned.

The social abilities to work with other students to acquire and implement the strategies that are in the process of being learned.

The interactive approach to teaching as described above demonstrates that traditional diagnostic procedures, while providing information about a students’ current learning status, ‘do little to estimate potential and discover the circumstances under which learning occurs’.