Integrating Performance Assessment into Senior High School Unit Whole Teaching in China

Unit whole teaching is a teaching reform and innovation which emphasizes holistic curriculum integration to foster systematic knowledge acquisition. However, traditional assessment methods often fail to comprehensively evaluate students’ learning outcomes and literacy development in unit whole teaching. Performance assessment, as a process-oriented and competency-focused approach, aligns with unit whole teaching to address these gaps. By integrating performance assessment into unit whole teaching, teachers can provide timely feedback and engage students actively. This study clarifies the theoretical connections between performance assessment and unit whole teaching, and demonstrates their integration through a case study of Unit 1 (“Lights, Camera, Action!”) from the Yilin Edition Senior High School English textbook. This case study reveals that performance assessment enhances unit whole teaching by determining assessment objectives, designing performance tasks and developing scoring rules, ultimately promoting students comprehensive development in language ability, cultural awareness, thinking quality, and learning ability.