Criteria and Validity

During the whole learning process teachers have to evaluate and assess students´ performances. At the same time teachers need to be precise in their evaluations to not being only focused on performances. The main idea is to measure from the objectives and understandings to be more effective. Therefore before assessing, the idea of determine clear guidelines are important components to analyse the evidence of students` results. In other words, criteria is the necessary element to be "consistent and fair"(Wiggins, 2005) in the process of asessing learners. Criteria is the platform to establish the requirements in the elements of assessment. With criteria teachers can observe their tasks from the beggining as tools to meausre understandings, but also criteria represents the opportunity to know what is needed to success in the process, it helps teachers to obtain a more valid element to measure.

As a fundamental point in criteria, rubric is the internal element that gives a different perspective but also it complements the process, because rubric determines the variations of quality and understandings(Wiggins,2005) Teachers have to use rubrics as much as possible to develop accuracy in their performances, besides rubrics give a point of reference to measure not only performance but also understanding. At the same time rubrics are effective methods to measure understanding as a constant phenomenon. With a rubric teachers can acquire more information about what they are assessing and the results of those evaluations.

In the evaluative process, students can have different understandings of ideas which means that criteria and rubrics have to analyse those variations deeply. In fact, the transference of information on students is a clear demonstration of how they acquire knowledge and the use of it. For a task, criteria means the first stage to generate better pieces of evaluation from the beggining. At the same time, the more you use criteria to analyse student`s understandings the better they will develop their ideas into practice besides, as a valid element, tests and tasks would be more connected with goals that teachers have determined for their projects of learning.

Gaining Clarity on Our Goals.

Learning is a complex and deep area where teachers have to assume a new perspective to improve education and their own qualities of teaching. The idea of helping students to achieve their goals is more than an external mechanism to support their needs and problems, it is beyond traditional stereotypes assumed by generations that have been ineffective. The idea of this proposal is to assume that " our goals are often not as clear as they might be..."( Wiggins, 2005) From this point of view, goals appear not only as the final stage but also as the central element for designing our plan, because our perspective has to be wide and precise in terms of how we develop and apply our goals into practice.

While Understanding implies to comprehend and transfer information in real situations, knowlegde means apprehend the processes of data(Dewey) This idea is fundamental when we talk about Essential Questions which are commonly used by teachers in the classrooms, but it doesn`t mean that those questions are well guided. In fact, it is common that the direction of these questions and its aims are not clear and not well guided by teachers. For that reason is fundamental that teachers identify "explicit learning goals"(Wiggins, 2005) in order to analyse and determine what they have to manage and apply. However, teachers are always facing a problem of amount called " overload problem"( Wiggins,2005) This common difficulty where teachers have to decide the topics and how to do it in a short period of time, it is a common scenario where the best idea is to be focus on quality more than quantity, to help students to make the correct click.

As Wiggins states, " ...big ideas are inherently transferable, they help connect discrete topics and skills". Teachers´ ideas are not commonly bigger than their desires, in other words, their ideas are not so efffective. The problem is that teachers are not able to help students realize about the priorities that the task has in its spirit. Moreover, there is a wall for students between the goal and the challenge to identify that goal. As Wiggins says, "big ideas are the core of the subject"(2005) mainly because students have to discover it to understand the implicit message. These big ideas are representative of what teachers are finding out and reflecting to help students to transfer ideas effectively to avoid misleading and irrelevant processes of learning.