Disadvantages of Traditional/Standardized Assessment
Other disadvantages of traditional ways of testing include only a fraction of what we want to produce can be done. As a result, there is a high possibility that a large number of students will be left behind and not given proper attention to achieve the aims of Social Studies objectives. Traditional tests also play a judgmental role and not a developmental one. They are used to make judgments about success or failure, to select or exclude students which will lead to further education gaps. Besides, traditional test are summative and usually designed and administered by people outside the learning process which hardly know anything about what assessment should be achieved. Traditional tests also take up a lot of teaching time and are very often not followed up as a basis for future teaching. Tests are more concerned with the provision of discriminative numerical marks, useless descriptions rather than the provision of formative feedback and tend to treat learners as powerless victims rather than active participants in the learning process. Teachers are in charge of test and give limited time frames as it is seen as a “one shot” event that gives the learner only one chance to show competence. It is either students make it or break it. Since tests are administered to large groups of students, they are not individualized and cannot be tailored to the needs of individual learners. As a result, tests are not always fair as they do not account for individual differences (multiple intelligences / different learning styles, etc.
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