Recommendation 4: Key challenges and potentials for future research

Current assessment practices do not necessarily reflect the complexities and nuances of work and learning requirements. Singapore’s initial foray into assessment of work and learning (via national programs like ACTA and DACE) drew reference from assessment at school. The initial ideas and frameworks about assessment (e.g. norm and criterion referencing, standard assessment tools, etc.) were perhaps “transferred” into assessment at work. While assessment performs a crucial public function for certification and quality assurance via “testing” and “measuring” a degree of conceptual and technical know-how, current (assessment) practices tend to serve some jobs and sectors better than others. Vocational occupations in sectors like manufacturing, retail, food and beverages etc. are underserved by some of these approaches and learning strategies. Problems associated with “authenticity” (please see pp. 46–47 of this report) thus arise and they signal broader perspectival changes about learning and assessment, and better understanding of the context of work, professional knowledge and practices in relation to learning and assessment.

With the notion of “changing nature of work”, educators, curriculum designers and policy makers need to take a reflexive stance to relook at assessment and ask themselves why assess in the first place, and hence, the changing purposes/roles of assessment:

Assessment should fit the purpose/role – we no longer want to assess just to prove a level of skill attainment for measurement or verification purposes, we want to assess for job readiness, or job performance over a period of time, or in-depth grasp of a new skill for example, and the different purposes would shape the design of assessment. Then, to take it one step further, assessment’s role at work could take on a different tack, because done right, assessment has the potential to contribute to a person’s growth at work, so it can be an aid to skills deepening and more importantly, the being and becoming of a worker as he moves through his job. Assessment then has a dual role – for “assessment” (fit for purpose) and then “growth” . (Renee Tan, Deputy Director, LPDD)

Here, seminars, workshops and practitioners guide for AEs and training providers can be planned and organised based on the six dimensions of assessment design (see Chapter 5 of this report) to further the discussion and enhance the continuing professional development of CET practitioners.

Recommendation 4: Key challenges and potentials for future research

The focus group workshop on 21 September 2016 brought educators, training providers and industry experts to discuss assessment for the changing nature of work. Our research and findings formed the basis as well as material for discussion. Participants not only provided new insights but also highlighted challenges and opportunities for the way future research might be strategised.

Prof. Lim Y. K. (Air Transport and Training College), who was one of the participants at the workshop, succinctly highlighted the challenge posed by technology at one of the table discussions. He said:

Technology is doing the opposite of what the assessment project is doing – it is disassociating the mind and body. The intent of mechanization e.g. McDonalds is to reduce the skill to as low as possible. But it is neither a good nor bad thing, it depends on how the human race respond to it and how society evolves.

David Kwee (Training Vision) added: “

Technology in the context of training de-segregates the knowledge from the skills because training has traditionally focused on the skill to operate the piece of machine or technology for example, and it negates the fact that the learner needs to have some underpinning knowledge

79