It is certainly true that assessments and evaluations have to be oriented for real understanding and not only aimed to evaluate knowledge. But what is the difference between these concepts? Well, most of the time understanding and Knowledge are used as synonyms and confused by teachers and students. However, it is very important to have clear these concepts, when evaluating. First of all we must be aware that knowledge refers to facts, information or specifics details about a topic, whereas understanding is a mental construct made by human brain to make sense of different kind of knowledge. Therefore, we can say that Knowledge and understanding are closely related but they are not the same.
Understanding includes to know how something occurs or operates, what are the consequences and how to resolve problems in different contexts. In other words, understanding requires the ability to transfer or actively do , justify and applying an specific knowledge. Therefore, education for understanding asks to examine prior knowledge. Well, as you have experienced, the problem starts when teachers are obligated to cover a demanded content and students don´t have the same prior knowledge. We must spend time to level our students and we don´t have enough time to cover the annual contents. So, in your opinion what is better?
I agree with checking students' prior knowledge. Taking into account the kind of education we have as a country, it is damn hard to teach students how to understand and transfer knowledge. Teachers always help students so they can understand-as in learning by heart- only for short-term purposes, like tests.
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