HKIER

Abstract

Target Oriented Curriculum (TOC) has been described as one of the major educational reforms in Hong Kong in the last 20 or 30 years. Among the many changes to be implemented, the emphasis on performance (authentic/alternative) assessment is of top priority, which includes the use of more practical work, essays, open-ended problems, and portfolios of student work. Though most teachers are now only using self-constructed performance tasks, there have been research and recommendations to examine how such assessment can be linked to high-stake student selection decisions. It is likely that classroom performance assessment of the pupils will be used for accountability (e.g., comparison of school effectiveness) and secondary school place allocation (SSPA) purposes. However, there are already challenges from principals, teachers and educational bodies on the TOC and its related assessment. It is argued here that such a movement towards inter-school comparison of performance task results will lead to the demands for greater specifiity in the assessment criteria, extra time spent on assessment, higher comparability in tasks for all students, and more reliable tasks. All of these will in turn cause greater resistance from teachers and the general public and hence will defeat our original good intention to emphasize more performance-based assessment.

摘要

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