Changes in assessment practices. The principles of traditional assessment based on the results of final grades are drawing much criticism now. Teachers do not provide any feedback to their students because they only report on the final grades what does not improve students’ progress (Xxxxx & Xxxxxxx, 2009). Moreover, traditional assessment focuses only on controlling the results for the term, year or final exam, what firstly, compares students’ works, and then, leads to categorizing students on “excellent” and those, who “failed” to be excellent (Xxxxxxx, XxXxxxxx & Xxxxxxxxxx, 2012). As Shamatov (1998) stated such comparisons between students result in competitions between them, what soon leads to negative classroom environment. Thus, because of many drawbacks of traditional assessment, the necessity to change it has arisen. New approaches to assessment such as asking open- ended questions or set open-ended issues help teachers not only check students’ comprehension but develop their critical thinking and problem solving skills as well as to assess their progress. Moreover, such tasks help to organize differentiation, and assess students’ achievements objectively (Xxxxxxxx, 2008; Xxxxxx & Xxxxxxxxxx, 2008; Xxxxx, Xxxxxxx & Xxxxxxx, 2013; Xxxxxxx, 1995). Over time, the assessment practices within both teaching and learning experienced many changes. As a result of these changes it became necessary to integrate different types of assessment into classroom practice. Xxxx (2001) stated that changes in assessment practices tend to improve learning and teaching by means of establishing specific methods of assessing learning. Sometime later Black and Xxxxxxx (2009) came to the same idea in their research works. Furthermore, Xxxxx (2003) states that large-scale assessment tests do not assess higher cognitive processes, and it is necessary to introduce the alternative methods of assessment. For example, changes in assessment practices of Australian school education system integrated three specific components of the educational process such as students’ outcomes, teaching and learning activities, and assessment tasks (Xxxxx, 2003). In China, teachers had to ensure that their curricular assessment practices correspond to the new assessment policy (Yung, 2001). Meanwhile, in New Zealand teachers were adapting to change from formative assessment to continuous assessment, which is based on conceptual development (Xxxxx & Xxxx, 1999). Contrary to the above mentioned examples, other researchers consider ...
