Tikva Zohar

The Education of Prospective Teachers: the Education of Prospective Teachers in the Use of Classroom Based Alternative Assessment Tasks Tikva Zohar

Since the 1970s,traditional methods of evaluating educational achievement have received severe criticism. The criticism voiced against the intensive use of standardised multiple-choice external tests that resulted in closing pupils? minds and lowered the status of teachers. Challenged by such criticism, significant change in the examination practice of educational systems in many countries has taken place in the last two decades mainly with the aim of enhancing the use of assessment to inform teaching and so improve learning. One manifestation of these changes is a substantial reduction in the exclusive use of multiple-choice examinations to assess academic achievements of pupils,and a tendency to increase the teachers? role in using and developing open, authentic alternative assessment tasks. This change is currently being introduced in Israel through the development of school-level assessment based on kits of assessment tasks(KATs). What is evaluated here is a newly developed course within a newly designed assessment framework intended to produce reflective teachers in autonomous schools. The results of this study will mainly impact teacher-training programs in institutions throughout Israel.