Teachers Conceptualizing Student Achievement

Although teachers vary widely in their perceptions of education, student achievement, and methods of assessment, more than psychometricians and other people they concentrate on student performance of tasks. To the teacher, grades are an indication of successful acquisition of particular knowledge and an increase in skill. Achievement is not thought of so much as enhancing a trait or increasing an ability, but as successfully completing the task. They visualize the experience, more so than the competence. When emphasis is given to standardizing curricula and testing, even though goals and standards can be expressed as task performance, the technology of testing and school reform devises indicators of success in terms of human ability. Ability is generalized; task performance is particularized, contextualized. When the success of teaching or schooling is interpreted in terms of test scores, the teacher is pressed to reconceptualize teaching and, directly or indirectly, to teach for the test.