O’Donnell, Educational Psychology Ch13 Classroom Assessment 13-62
Chapters on Assessment from
Educational Psychology: Reflection for Action
Angela O’Donnell, Johnmarshall Reeve, Jeffrey K. Smith
In Press, John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
What follows are two chapters on assessment issues from a textbook currently in press with John Wiley and Sons, Publishers. Since these are chapters going into production, they contain notes and abbreviations that are sometimes not intuitively comprehensible. All figures referred to in the text are contained at the end of the chapter. For example, the opening piece in each chapter contains a vignette that sets the stage for the chapter. To see the illustrative material for the vignette, you have to go to the end of the chapter. Also, there are notes such as “For Margin” or “RFA Icon.” These are intended for the production department who are designing the layouts of the individual pages. Even with these small obstacles, I think the chapters will provide a sound basis for looking at the important issues in assessment that we are going to cover in the workshop, and will be a useful resource down the road.
The textbook is written for an undergraduate teacher education audience with the anticipation that these chapters will be the only material they will receive on assessment. All material is protected by copyright and is used here with the permission of the publisher.
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Chapter 13
Classroom Assessment
Mr. Antoine, Ms. Baldwin, and Mrs. Chambers have all just finished teaching The Scarlet Letter in their ninth-grade English classes. Their classes are filing into their rooms to receive the assessments that their teachers have developed. This is what they see:
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[RfA ICON] REFLECTION FOR ACTION
Each of these assessments might be criticized for one reason or another. What strengths and weaknesses do you find in each of them? After you read the chapter, return to these assessments and answer the questions again. Have your answers changed?
Guiding Questions
· What is the role of assessment in the instructional process?
· How can teachers devise assessments that facilitate instruction and at the same time provide information about students’ progress?
· Of the many options teachers have for assessment, which are the best?
· How can a teacher develop a grading system that is fair and that lets students take responsibility for their own learning?
· How can assessment help students learn about their own strengths and weaknesses?
· How can teachers continually improve assessment and grading practices?
· How can teachers create and modify assessments to include learners who face special challenges?
· How do cultural differences among students and their parents affect the process of communicating progress?
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CHAPTER OVERVIEW
Classroom assessments are an important form of communication. They inform teachers about student progress. They help students understand what the teacher values in the class and what she thinks of their progress and abilities. When used well, they also give the teacher insight about the efficacy of her teaching and help students develop the skills to assess their own abilities. Carefully considered and well-constructed assessments promote the notion that classroom assessment is not just assessment of learning; it is assessment for learning. This chapter examines the critical issues of classroom assessment: It looks at reasons for assessment, assessment options, evaluation of results, and the relationship between assessment and instruction and chapter concludes with a discussion of communicating with parents. In Chapter 14, we will focus on standardized and standards-based assessment; here we will concentrate on assessments used in the classroom.
Assessment for Instruction: Roles, Goals, and Audiences
Student, Parent, and Teacher Concerns in Assessment
Other Audiences and Areas of Concern
Diversity Among Students and Their Parents
Formative and Summative Assessment
Principles of Assessment and Grading
Communication
Fairness
Growth
Options for Assessment
Recognition Format
Generative Format
Alternative Formats
Developing and Using Assessments
Determining What Is to Be Assessed
Rubrics
Determining the Best Assessment Format
Assessing Students with Special Needs
Administering, Scoring, and Communicating Assessment Results
Interpreting Classroom Assessments
Comparing Performance with Expectations
Reflecting on Assessments in Order to Improve Them
Developing a Grading System
Options for Grading Systems
Record-Keeping for Grading
Communicating with Parents
Parent/Teacher Conferences
Maintaining Communication
ASSESSMENT FOR INSTRUCTION: ROLES, GOALS, AND AUDIENCES [1-head]
In everyday life, assessment involves taking stock of the current situation and determining the best course of action for the future. A painter makes a brush stroke or two and then assesses their effect on the overall composition. A lawyer pursues a negotiation for her client and then stops to consider whether the counteroffer is sufficient. A family gathers to weigh the pros and cons of moving to a larger home in a neighboring town.
In education, assessment is the process of coming to understand what a student knows and can do with regard to instructional material. Not only does the teacher gain this information, but in strong assessment programs, the student does as well. Assessing students in classrooms is one of the most important activities that teachers undertake. Assessment reflects the nature of the unique learning community established in each classroom and provides the tangible outcomes of the productivity of that community.
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Chapter Reference
Chapters 10 and 11 discuss classrooms as communities for learning.
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Teachers want students to take pride in their work, to feel a strong sense of responsibility for it, to enjoy the efforts they put into it, and to learn about themselves as a result. When assessments provide the opportunity for students to rise to a challenge, cognitive and emotional growth results. Because of its potential to enhance or detract from instruction, assessment must be carefully considered, planned, and executed. It should address the needs of students, parents, other educators, and the teacher in a fashion that is caring, respectful, and professional. Developing an assessment program takes hard work, considerable thought, openness to new ideas, and the courage to reflect upon and be critical of one’s own ideas and actions.
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Chapter Reference
Chapter 9 includes an extensive presentation of material concerning goals and objectives.
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Student, Parent, and Teacher Concerns in Assessment [2-head]
The fundamental role of assessment in classrooms is to provide feedback to students, their parents, the teacher, other educators, and the larger community. The three primary audiences are students, parents (or guardians), and teachers. Members of each group are likely to have different concerns about assessment.
Student Concerns in Assessment. [3-head] Questions or concerns that students might have as they approach an assessment include the following.
· Is test/quiz/activity going to be fun?
· Am I going to do well on it?
· How am I going to do in comparison to other students?
· How will it affect my grade?
· How will it be graded?
· How will it affect what the teacher thinks of me?
· How much work is it going to be?
· If I work hard on it, will I succeed?
· Will being successful be worth the effort?
Of course, students at different levels have different concerns. Young children seek their teacher’s approval. A smile, a “good job,” a sticker, a star, or a pat on the back can mean everything in the world to a young child. As children grow older, they still desire approval, but they also begin to develop concerns about grades. This development is not always simple, however. As discussed in Chapter 6, some students, or even a whole class, might wish to avoid publicly demonstrating a strong performance. In other cases, the desire for good grades becomes the primary motivation for students to achieve, crowding out any intrinsic love for learning.
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Chapter Reference
Chapter 6 discusses issues of motivation related to achievement and rewards.
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Parent Concerns in Assessment. [3-head] Some of the major questions and concerns that parents and caregivers bring to assessments are
· How is my child doing?
· What can I do to help?
· What are my child’s strengths and weaknesses?
· How is my child getting along socially?
· How is my child doing compared to the other children (in the class, in the school, in the nation)?
· Is my child working up to his/her potential?
Teacher Concerns in Assessment. [3-head] When considering assessment, teachers have to evaluate the progress of individual children as well as the class as a whole. They need to decide whether to move on to the next topic or to spend more time reviewing the current one. They are concerned with how to assess a child with special needs who has an individualized education program (IEP) that requires different assessment procedures from those of the rest of the children in the class. In addition to knowing how well children are doing on a specific task, teachers need to know if they are developing broad skills that are transferable to a wide variety of tasks. Furthermore, teachers need to help children develop the ability to assess their own strengths and weaknesses. Some questions and concerns that teachers have about assessment are
· Which assessment option would work best in this situation?
· When should assessment take place—before, during, or after instruction?
· How can this assessment promote students’ ability to evaluate their own progress?
· How well does it match the statewide standards or assessments?
· How will I communicate the results to students and parents?
· How much work will it take to construct or select the assessment and to grade it?
· How is this assessment related to others in the class?
· How can students learn that they need to work more in this area without making them feel like failures?
· What if the results are really poor?
· How can this information improve instruction?
· Should this assessment count as part of the students’ grades?
Other Audiences and Areas of Concern [2-head]
Teachers also have to consider their responsibility to other audiences that receive and use assessment information. For example, colleges use high school transcripts to make admissions decisions. What should they expect from a course grade? What should employers expect? Should schools use eighth-grade report cards to determine who to place in regular or in honors English classes in ninth grade?
There is substantial change and uncertainty in assessment today, not just for classroom assessment, but for annual standardized assessment state-mandated tests as well (Cizek, 2001). State and federal concerns for educational achievement, and the funding tied to that achievement, have become matters of increasing concern for local school districts. The No Child Left Behind federal legislation mandates not only standardized assessment, but regular progress of all groups of children on those assessments. State legislators, as representatives of the citizens who pay for schools, have a legitimate interest in how well students are doing (Phelps, 1998). Concerns from outside the school influence classroom decisions on curriculum, time spent in preparation for standardized assessments, and, frequently, in pressures to have classroom assessments resemble standardized assessments.
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Chapter Reference
Chapter 14 has extensive coverage on standardized assessment.
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[S Icon] Diversity Among Students and Their Parents [2-head]
Not all students are the same. The student in a high school English class whose world will be crushed if she does not get into the Ivy League school of her dreams is sitting next to the boy who may be the first in his family to go to college. He is wondering if instead of going to college, he should get a job to help his family. Next to them is a boy with special needs and next to him a girl for whom English is a second language. Their teacher is responsible for assessing each of these students fairly. That teacher must understand that children come from different cultural backgrounds that will influence not only their performance but also their parents’ aspirations for them.
Increasingly, teachers work with students who are new arrivals to the United States. Parents who have recently immigrated to the United States may not understand our grading system. That may not realize that homework is expected of students or that parents are expected to be involved in education and may not be aware of what their rights are as parents (Almarza, as cited in Schneider, 2005).
Issues of enculturation and sensitivity to home cultures are important. Talking with parents about goals for their children go can a long way to establishing a strong basis for working with a child. A reference on an assessment to the child’s home country tells the child that the teacher is thinking about her. Making sure the student understands assessments if the student is not a native English speaker is also essential.
Formative and Summative Assessment [2-head]
Assessments can serve several purposes in instruction. Michael Scriven (1967) developed one of the most useful ways of distinguishing among assessments. He distinguished between assessments used primarily to help guide instruction and provide feedback to the teacher and the learner, and assessments used for grading or determining the amount of learning on an instructional unit. Formative assessments help to form future instruction, whereas summative assessments sum up learning. Formative assessments help us on our way, and usually are not used for grading. Summative assessments determine whether a student has achieved the goals of instruction and are usually part of the grading system. When students engage in formative assessment not used as part of the grading system, they realize that the purpose of the assessment is to help them in their learning. Their reactions to this type of assessment are usually much more positive than with summative assessments, which frequently involve a level of anxiety (Wolf & Smith, 1995). Furthermore, formative assessments help students understand their own strengths and weaknesses without the pressures associated with grading. The following table can help in differentiating formative and summative assessment:
Formative Assessment
· Given prior to, or during, instruction.
· Information the teacher can use to form forthcoming instruction.
· Information used to summarize students' strengths and weaknesses.
· Not graded.
Summative Assessment
· Given after the conclusion of instruction/lesson.
· Information the teacher can use to evaluate what students accomplished.
· Information used to diagnose what students have accomplished.
· Graded.
PRINCIPLES OF ASSESSMENT AND GRADING [1-head]