Backward design

As in the article is stated, we are not only professionals whose mission is to check the stipulated contents for each level, but we have the responsibility to guide the students’ learning towards the total fulfillment of the expected goals. Off course this only can be possible through the design of the different units, which gives the guidelines to be clear on what we want to get, and how we might get it. These are the two most important factors that must be taken into account at the moment to start any teaching process. Personally I consider that if we have in mind both, the expected results will be come true more easily, because we will be ready to face any unforeseen event, applying the experience gained in the previous years. The idea is to make students aware about what is the purpose of the class and work together in order to achieve it, however for this sake, there must be coherence between the proposed goals and how they can be reached. It means that we always have to keep in mind what to teach and how to teach all the time, focusing our teaching practices on this logic.
The framework of our teaching and learning priorities will help us to design our lessons respecting the established standards as well as to respond to the demands made by the different students. However the problem is that there is not a real match between what teachers are looking for and what the curriculum says because the latter is more worried about the coverage of the contents (quantity) than the use that students can give them in a real context (quality). Therefore the question is how we can open the door to understanding if the government policies state other goals as ideal. This is the mismatch that the current system shows, which provokes confusion especially during the design stage, constraining us to design our contents, regarding the curriculum expectations. Obviously this incoherence affects the fulfillment of the expected goals, because the application of what we have learnt through the reading of the different chapters can not be carried out in the classroom. For example: the use of tasks which guide students to get a real understanding from the contents , the use of assessment as a way to collect enough evidences to say whether the students achieved the expected results or not , and the procedures that can fulfill them.
Undoubtedly we need to make a shift related to work for goals in common, which point to plan tasks based on their application and not only on their coverage, making the learning a more meaningful process by the students what would bring as a consequence the improvement of the current educational system.

validity

Since we have a deep notion of what Assessment involves, it seems to be more than just a mean to grade students. According to the chapter, we must focus on the kind of assessment that provides the necessary evidences to see whether the students achieved the desired results or not. Therefore we need to plan the different assessment instruments, based on tasks in which the students can apply their knowledge in a real context. It means that we need to change the current aim that Chilean education has, which is entirely focused on teaching isolated pieces of information, and start thinking how we can make students understand from an application view. The idea is not longer consider contents as abstract units, but as concrete tools that may allow them to solve any problem in their lives. Personally I think that this particular way of teaching might produce the easiest engagement of the students with the task proposed, what would facilitate its understanding. It is produced because those tasks are closer to what they have learnt or seen in the reality (personal background), allowing them to make their own connections, in order to face challenges.
Another aspect that assessment involves is how reliable and valid an instrument could become. At the first sight there is not difference between the concepts of reliability and validity but there is. According to what we have learnt in class the first one is regarded as the way of getting concrete results (marks), and the second one is regarded as the interpretation that teachers give to those results. In spite of their differences, both are essential at the moment of assessing, because we need to be one hundred percent sure that that method applied will reflect the required evidences, based on the different student performances. This is crucial, in order to have a general outlook related to the operation of our teaching practices. That is why the use guidelines or criteria to evaluate, specifically non- productive skills are really important because they allow collecting evidences by means of an accurate process. For example, rubrics and specification tables help to measure not only the results, but all the variables which are involved in the learning process, giving real evidences of the level of understanding achieved by the students. Obviously the interpretation of that data is in charge of the teacher who will have to consider as the external factors as the internal ones, in order to make the necessary adjustments which help to enhance the level of feedback between the parts.