For a behaviorist, assessing learning would involve requiring students to reproduce facts and concepts as they were given to them. There is a huge drill and (s)kill mentality to this perspective. Learning is also organized in a very linear fashion and students would be discouraged from moving on until they master those concepts. Mistakes must be fixed straight away so that the child does not form a bad habit. Perhaps the most discouraging idea to this idea of learning and assessing of learning is how much emphasis there is on motivation coming from outside forces. Overall, I am quite pleased this is not a very popular theory of learning anymore.
Cognitive psychologist look at learning and
assessing quite differently. Children are viewed as active learners with power
to build their own knowledge base. It is understood that children and learners
will often times categorize the world in very broad terms and then as they
learn more see more discrete pieces and differences. They believe children to
need more of a guide to help them by asking questions and then letting them
learn by self discovery. Motivation to learn comes from being confused but then
gaining new understanding. In this theory, I would argue that assessment is
more about tracking progress, letting the learners also self evaluate and from
there gauging how to proceeded.
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