Testing and Teaching Alignment

This will be a short post as my point is going to be a simple one. For the most part I am in complete agreement with Scott Howell. However there is something I want to add to the discussion.

For sure, assessment should be a priority, and ought to be correctly designed before instruction is designed. There is one major step missing (which may have been assumed by Scott, but I still think it should be clear).

Before even thinking about assessment, learning objectives should be clearly understood and articulated. These should clearly show what learners should be able to do or be able to show by the end of the learning experience. Objectives should have real life meaning to the learners and it should be simple to show how the objectives are linked to their current life or immediate future.

Assessments/measurements should be designed and aligned based on the clear learning objectives.

Instruction should be aligned with the assessments/measurements which are aligned with the objectives.

In effect, this means that we would be "teaching to the test". I feel that teaching to the test is perfectly reasonable as long as the test and the objectives are correctly developed, aligned, and meaningful.

It my view, which is similar to Scott's, instruction should be subservient to assessment/measurement which should be subservient to learning objectives, which should be subservient to real life requirements.