What is the role of assessment in learning? Is assessment a tool for the teacher or student? How can assessment be both?
I am of the opinion that the more reflective the learning process is, the more effective it can be all around (for teachers, students, etc.). One of the roles of assessment, I think, should be to give rise to opportunities for reflection. There are assessments that are just designed to demonstrate what learners know (high-stakes standardized testing, for example), but not necessarily what they have learned. Assessment should be ongoing, in order to gauge student learning before, during, and after new information is introduced.
Assessment is an opportunity for students to demonstrate what they know, what they've learned, and misunderstandings they might have about new information. Teachers can then take that data and apply it to future teaching/learning activities. When assessment is ongoing and takes a variety of forms, I think it can lower the pressure on students. Having the opportunity to demonstrate what you know and what you're confused about as an ongoing part of learning is so different than a culminating, summative, standardized test. As with other areas of teaching, assessments need to be tailored to individual learners' needs.
Postscript: I wrote the above before I started reading my fellow bloggers' posts on this subject. So now I have new ideas...
Okay, now I'm really thinking about this standardized/not-standardized assessment issue. I realize that standardizing assessments make them more useful as a data collection tool, but are they useful to students this way? Or perhaps it depends on the age of students? I come at all of this with a K-12 lens but I know some of the other comments referred to university-level students and assessments, so perhaps that accounts for the difference. I'm curious about what you all think about this. If we take the learner into account when designing instruction, and agree that best practices involve individuating instruction based on our learners, do the same ideas hold true for assessment? I thought so, initially. but maybe not. What do you think?
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Rebecca, I like your comment about lowering the pressure on students when assessment is ongoing because then they are less likely to "perform" at a snapshot as opposed to critically analyze and continually churn through a concept such as through a scrapbook, as Wiggins and McTighe write.
ReplyDeleteIn response to your last question I'm a little unsure. It makes me think about the continuum of assessments in Understanding by Design.
You bring up a good point Rebecca about the difference between K-12 and university level assessment. Although, I don't have any experience as a teacher in the K-12 setting, as a parent of a 5th grader, I have witnessed how assessment is carried out. It's a mixed bag. In a private elementary school, assessment tools are vastly different than in a public school. The IOWA test is given every year at my son's school and every year he fails to do well. I don't think this particular assessment is a good benchmark for his abilities. In my mind, the Woodcock-Johnson is a much more accurate assessment tool in his case. This all goes back to the "fitting a square peg in a round hole" assumption that each student will have differing abilities, skills, knowledge-base and learning preferences. I think teachers in a private or public K-12 setting are far more restricted in administering assessments than at the university level. In a private university, we have more latitude in terms of how we assess students and subsequently refresh our curriculum to match student learning profiles. Therefore, I feel that assessments are really for the student to know where what their strengths and weaknesses are and for the teacher to utilize the student's strengths to shore up their weaknesses.
ReplyDeleteI think that there is a convolving of assessment and grading. Standardized assessments (i.e SAT; STAR, IOWA, etc.) are grading not assessments. Too often the data is received too late, and the tests have a flawed design. There is NO way to tell if a kid can write by a multiple choice test. Knowing writing conventions does not mean you can apply them. In terms of information literacy, unless you can follow the process of applied searching or evaluating it is the same thing - knowing the markers doesn't mean you know how to apply the markers.
ReplyDeleteNow local assessments; those doen in a classroom or a school, that we have control over can be authentic, thoughtful and provide relevant data and information to students and teachers. There is plenty of research that suggests that authentic, relevant formative and ongoing assessment throughout a learning process is a powerful learning tool. Think about how a kid masters a video game - they fail at a level and so they try something different, each time learning more until they master that level and move to the next. Ideally assessment in the classroom should provide the same opportunity.
Geri, I believe your comment:
ReplyDelete"I feel that assessments are really for the student to know where what their strengths and weaknesses are and for the teacher to utilize the student's strengths to shore up their weaknesses,"
is at the heart of what assessment should be. We're supposed to be measuring mastery, when many assessments only prove that a student knows how to take a test. But beyond the measuring the level of transference that student attains, the assessment should be able to illuminate for an instructor where his or her skills might be failing the student. Thus, assessment shows both the student and instructor where lie their strengths and their weaknesses.
Okay, this is good. This is helpful. Mary Ann, thank you for your thoughts about grades vs. assessments. I particularly like the idea (and Geri metioned this as well) that assessments can be useful to students as well as teachers. Perhaps this is a measure of whether an assessment is useful-- does it inform the students' learning as well as the teacher's teaching?
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