Thanks for such a lively discussion on assessment today. Hard to believe this is our last blog entry. :( I have truly enjoyed reading your postings. Please complete today's posting (scroll down to leave feedback for our last group) and then e-mail one document to me with all your blog comments by next Tuesday, July 24. There should be ten postings, eleven if you count the introduction after our first class.
I will continue to post information here for our class and you are welcome to share any comments as well.
9 comments:
ASSESSMENT….a scary word sometimes for educators! I know during both my practicum experiences I struggled with both assessment and developing marking criteria. I think it is critical to make students accountable for their work by monitoring their progress and engagement. For example in my English 11 Lord of the Flies unit, students were responsible for completing Chapter Questions, a Character Development Chart and a Symbolic Devices Chart as ongoing assignments throughout the unit. I set the students up for success by structuring these assignments to generate ideas, collect quotations and reflect on significant concepts for their final in-class essay. Students at the end of the unit for their summative assessment were comfortable writing their essay.
Assessment to students can also be quite scary. I believe that the educator’s role is to encourage students to monitor their own work and to support formative assessment to see where students are at in their learning is important. In my practicum experience, I encouraged students to monitor their own work by practicing self-assessment through rubrics. For example, the grade 8s were invited to not only complete a personal self-assessment to monitor their own progress in a group project, but also complete a peer evaluation. Reflecting on both formative assessment and summative evaluation, I was able to direct my design of the curriculum to promote student success. I also believe that educators must also take learning differences into account when creating assessment. Because students communicate their learning differently, it is important to use varied assessment (self assessment, peer assessment/feedback, oral presentations, multiple choice tests, written tests, short answer, matching and written assignments etc.) to account for the diversity of learners.
Assessment is difficult, frustrating and at times seems like a necessary evil. I also struggled with it in my practicums and had the dubious situation of having an SA who had, literally, written the book on assessment! Needless to say, I faced some serious criticism at times. I have to confess that, although I accept the need for assessment, I at times question the need for such a formulaic approach to the process. I know from experience that many teachers do take a much more holistic approach when marking, judging the student based on overall work and the total sense or feel of a student's work. I tend to feel this is a better approach than the current system, but I am a humble student teacher so I am probably speaking hot air. Nonetheless, I must contend that the current system, in my opinion focuses students attention on the numbers, and grades, and less on the overall benefit of what they are learning, and how they are learning it. I often had the experience, during my 405, that I had made up a lesson that could have been a fun learning experience, only to have the students ask me about the marks, and the grades they would receive for doing it. I had not intended there to be that kind of focus, but the students were so trained to look for the formulaic assessment mark that they had difficulty just accepting a task for the value of doing it. Yes, assessment is necessary, but I am not wholly convinced that the current formula is the best system. I shall now step down from my soapbox, thank you.
I agree that assessment is a scary word. I have not experienced much in the way of different rubrics and using them to mark student papers. In the 401/402 practicum, my teaching partner, Sarah, and I had the opportunity to create our own rubric. At first it was a daunting task, but it appears as though we did alright in the end. The rubric that we created aligned more with the provincial rubrics instead of the holistic ones. I am still grappling with this concept now because I am not sure how a teacher would apply a holistic marking strategy to a project. This strategy does not take in to consideration the different aspects of the project. By grouping all the marks under one category, I think that you are doing a disservice to one's students. If you have a student that is not well developed in grammatical skills, but excellent in developing ideas and content they would be greatly affected by placing everything on an equal standing.
I personally thought that marking was a way of checking for student understanding and showing them where they stand on the grade scale. Marking gives students information about where they could improve and what they are doing well. Holistic marking would only reveal where they were on an overall standing and not depict the aspects that the teacher focused on teaching them. In order to acquire good marks, the students may then spend as much time editing their work as they do infusing content. I think that there needs to be more of a balance in assessment; I still have a lot to learn in terms of assessment and I am sure that I will continue to learn more in 405.
We had some discussion around assessment in class. Sue was arguing that as a teacher we will acquire a certain ability to assess "qualitatively". There seemed to be some uncomfortability around this issue. I think I can understand why this is. As teachers we always need to be able to justify, or at least explain, what we do. None of us want to be faced with an angry parent or administrator and not have some kind of objective grading standard to explain a poor mark. It would be uncomfortable, to say the least, that we simply say we graded the assignment "qualitatively".
Yet, the fact remains that a large component of any assessment necessarily has to grade things that are not easily quantifiable; some things are impossible to do so. How do you quantify student interest, passion, engagement, attention, or social interaction? Even things like learning and knowledge are much more slippery, ambiguous, and qualitative in nature than we normally like to think. Explain quantitatively the difference between an A and an A- essay. This is an extremely difficult, if not impossible, thing to do. You can point to a standard, rubric, or criteria, but the fact remains to 1 or 2 percentage points between the 2 grades was probably decided by a 'feel' you got from the assignment. I think this really was all Sue was trying to get across to us: that all assessment has an intuitive, qualitative element on the part of the teacher. And that this intuition is something we will develop and hone with more experience.
I agree with John's comments, about the inherent ambiguity of assessment, and turning student learning into some kind of quantitative value. But I think this is a problem with assessment in general, which is why I am not overly concerned with including creativity or originality in the mark (as discussed in last week's blog regarding the "conflict" lesson).
I feel that assessment is still probably the area of education that I know least about (especially experience-wise), but I have begun learning more (i.e. formative vs. summative assessment, and assessment of/for/as learning). This was interesting, however, because it gave me the opportunity to focus specifically on assessment issues English Language Arts (e.g. when to use rubrics, etc.).
Much like everyone else, I find assessment is one of the hardest tasks for teachers. It creates a strange dynamic with students, almost a reward system effect if you like. Some students are so fixated on the marks they wish to attain that the substance of what they are actually learning takes a back seat.
At the same time, as a student myself, I find a rubric, or at the very least a syllabus, essential so that I have a general idea of what is expected. That framework helps me to know that I am on the right track and feel able to succeed. Just as most students function best with routine, they react equally well when expectations are stated outright and not left to guesswork. If it is clear what is expected, then assessment should become easier too.
Though it may seem in opposition, I think that the ‘intuitive’ part of assessment that Sue spoke of is also relevant. Whether it is that an experienced teacher knows himself or herself so well that these expectations become internalized or it is that niggling ‘feel’ John referred to, what I like to call the ‘wow factor’, intuition also has a part to play.
I too have some questions about holistic marking. It seems an easier and faster way to mark for the teacher, but will it help the student learn from their mistakes? If we are to assess for learning, it would seem best to not mark holistically, especially if the piece being marked is of significant value. I believe holisitc marking might be best for smaller assignments, where the student might not need as much feedback.
I believe there is a time for both rubric and intuitive marking. For me, as a pre-service teacher inexperienced in marking, I feel it is to my student's benefit that I use a rubric, as this will help me have definitive grounds to defend my marking. However, for some assignments, rubrics are extremely hard (for example, creative writing). In this case, we can often see/feel if the student "got it" or not, and here is were I would be more inclined to mark intuitively.
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