Abstract
Assessment plays a critical role in teaching and learning. Continuous assessment advocates for a sustainable learner engagement in a cyclical manner that provides information on performance, feedback, as well as critical support that serves to engender mastery of skills. Continuous assessment encapsulates the use of both formative and summative assessment. COVID-19 compelled teachers as agents of educational change to fundamentally rethink the enactment of assessment within the context of remote teaching and learning. This chapter reflects the transformation of assessment practices adopted by purposively selected teachers at South African schools in response to formidable instructional challenges induced by COVID-19. The empirical inquiry is underpinned by the technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) framework. While teachers expressed fundamental appreciation of the key pedagogical affordances of technology integration in remote teaching and learning, they bemoaned the lack of professional capacity required for a meaningful enactment of technology-mediated assessment.
TopBackground
The COVID-19 pandemic posed formidable challenges to teaching and learning in a global sense. At another pragmatic level, the pandemic critically exposed the prevailing socio-economic disparities in various vital sectors such as education and training in South Africa. The prevalence of the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the provision of quality education due to the lockdown imposed by the South African government to curb infection. While a substantial number of school learners have been left behind due to lack of access to appropriate bandwidth or technological devices, others have been able to accelerate their digital learning through sophisticated software, access to high-performing devices, and highly trained teachers. The COVID-19 pandemic compelled teachers to embrace digital transformation to make a transition to remote teaching and learning. In addition, the provision of social interaction opportunities that essentially allow learners to stay in contact with their peers is psychologically crucial during this crisis (UNICEF, 2020).
By its very nature, transition to remote teaching and learning requires teachers as crucial agents of educational change to harness key pedagogical affordances of technology-mediated assessment. Harnessing key pedagogic affordances of technology integration in teaching and learning remains a key strategic imperative. However, the South African education system was inadequately prepared for the disruption brought about by the prevalence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, remote teaching and learning took hold in various schools in South Africa to ðnd alternative ways that technology could help navigate the disruption induced by the COVID-19 pandemic (Mhlanga & Moloi, 2020). By extension, the disruption induced by the COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on the meaningful enactment of assessment as a critical component of teaching and learning within the broader South African context.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Technology: Technology is machinery and equipment that uses the application of scientific knowledge in a particular area for practical purposes, using technical processes, methods, or knowledge with, a function, purpose, or benefit, to improve human life.
Assessment: Assessment is the systematic process of collecting empirical data (knowledge, skill, attitudes, and beliefs), reviewing (identify weaknesses and strengths), and using the empirical data for the purpose of improving learning and development.
Pedagogy: Pedagogy refers to the science of teaching, methodology and practice of an academic subject or theoretical concept and, how the educator’s teaching beliefs and, concerns the interplay between culture and different ways to learn.
Remote Teaching: Remote teaching, synonymous with e-learning is the transitioning of instruction delivery that occurs outside of an on-campus course to online. Educators are separated from their learners in time and distance and interact via two-way communication technologies.
Pandemic: A pandemic is a severe outbreak of a disease occurring worldwide rapidly affecting a large number of people and takes more lives than an epidemic.
4IR: 4IR or the Fourth Industrial Revolution describes the age of intelligence where the continuing development of disruptive technologies and automation has changed conventional manufacturing and industrial processes. This has impacted the way we live, work, and relate to one another.
Remote Learning: Remote learning also referred to as distance education occurs during emergency situations where educators and learners are distanced from each other but remain connected and engaged with the content while working from their homes virtually or with no technology. Remote learning can occur synchronously or asynchronously.