Initial Assessment: some guidelines and Exemplars

This is a crucial aspect of RARPA practice. Without an initial assessment of participants’ knowledge, skills and experiences, it is impossible to measure ‘distance travelled’ or ‘value added’. It is also potentially the most problematical and difficult stage to implement since you don’t want to alienate people by highlighting their deficiencies. Tutors/leaders must have a good understanding of people’s needs and sensitivities. What may be appropriate in one context will not be in another. They also need to attempt to establish a balance between participants’ capabilities and areas for development. Good practice includes:

• Talking to people about previous experience/knowledge/skills.
• Building positive approaches based on previous successes and reducing the fear factor
• Developing activities that encourage people to talk to each other about experiences/knowledge/skills.
• Giving people a practical task early on to provide feedback on skill levels
• Encouraging people to reflect and self assess from the outset.
• Ask people to self assess themselves against a given set of criteria.

Examples of how to explore initial assessment:

Example 1:
Participants complete a sheet which asks them to indicate whether they have a lot/some/little experience in a particular area.

Example 2:
People indicate on a scale, say from 1-6, their perceived levels of confidence, knowledge or skills in a particular area (with 1 = very low in confidence, knowledge or skills to 6 = very high in confidence, knowledge or skills

Example 3:
‘Looking back, I’m best at/not so good at/need help with’ A reflective approach to initial assessment and needs identification

Later in the learning process, these initial scores can be compared with current scores and comparisons made. The difference between the two represents ‘distance travelled’ or ‘value-added’

It is essential that tutors/leaders set up simple measures like this to identify starting points and ‘distance travelled’.

Formal assessment of Basic Skills may produce negative reactions from fragile adult learners. Basic Skills assessment therefore needs to be handled very sensitively.