Journal of the Mathematics Council of the Alberta Teachers’ Association
Volume 34 Issue 2, September 1997
23 – 28
Assessing Mathematical Processes: The English Experience
Malcolm Swan
Historically, assessment has been concerned with measuring how completely students have mastered knowledge and skills. More recently, however, increasing attention is being placed on how effectively students can tackle unstructured problems and investigate novel, open-ended situations. Here, the focus of assessment is on how well students have acquired those processes or strategies that guide the choice of appropriate skills and enable students to explore unfamiliar situations. In short, we are becoming more aware of the need to assess how well students perform as mathematicians in addition to how well they have learned mathematics.
