Capturing Teachers' Knowledge: Performance Assessment

Abstract

When we conceive of knowledge as what is created in discourse, the role of interpretation in the assessment of complex performances becomes critical. Since an assessment system is always defined within an ideology, we discuss the possibility of framing interpretations within that ideology to produce consistent judgments. We propose ways of structuring and formulating interpretations within a dimensional framework and of making them explicit and visible in the writing of interpretive summaries. The discussion in this article reflects the constant tension between the requirement to make assessment decisions and the fact that the performances and their assessment are considered to be acts of interpretation which do not easily accommodate the notion of correctness.