Tools for diagnosing students’ abilities and difficulties

Traditional teaching is focused on the educational material. The conventional visual image depicts the teacher facing the blackboard and “delivering” the lesson, exercise or chapter in the book, while the students are expected to understand on their own and pass the test successfully at the end of the semester. This is a caricature of an “industrial” approach, in which the students who have difficulty drop out through natural selection, with only the survivors remaining in the classroom.

In order to assist teachers who are interested in taking responsibility for reducing the dropout rate, they require a different pedagogical approach – one that is clinical, meaning focused on the students’ learning. This approach relies on diagnostic instruments that teachers use to evaluate the abilities, difficulties, thinking and progress of each student in real time. Based on this evaluation, teachers may want to develop individualized goals and personalized learning program for each student, adapt their teaching and provide constructive, reinforcing feedback.