Quality Assessment of Quality Learning

Quality Assessment of Quality learning:

The use of digital portfolio in elementary school

Paper presented at the Learning Communities and Assessment Cultures Conference organised by the EARLI Special Interest Group on Assessment and Evaluation, University of Northumbria at Newcastle, 28-30 August 2002

Kari Smith

Oranim Academic College of Education

Israel]

E-mail:

Introduction

Please don’t tell me what I can or cannot do in English. I know that myself. I want to know what I need to do so I can improve my English.

This request coming from a 12-year-old quality language-learner is a request for quality assessment and feedback.

Gipps (1994) sees three main functions of assessment. The first function is accountability. Learner assessment is used by the institution for accountability purposes to decision and policy makers. This type of learner assessment is often superficial, and in most cases, external. The assessment is of the product and is timed at the end of the learning process. There are usually only external assessors involved.

The second function of assessment is for certification purposes, creditation. The learners are assessed so they may be given a formal document as evidence of course participation and of meeting required standards of that specific certificate. The type of assessment used here is usually a more in-depth examination of the learner’s achievements, which often applies a combination of internal and external assessment elements. The third function of assessment, as seen by Gipps (1994) is assessment for encouraging and promoting learning. This type is mainly internal, takes place in the classroom and is ongoing. It is a formative type of assessment that provides learners and teachers with informative feedback, which serves as input when planning future learning and teaching. The learner uses assessment to monitor the learning process.

The importance of these functions depends on the educational settings in which assessment is carried out. The topic this paper explores is the function of assessment of younger learners.

In elementary school I believe that the main purpose of assessment is to promote learning. Younger learners need not only to create a solid basis of information on which they can base further learning, but they also need too develop learning strategies which enable them to become efficient, independent and motivated learners. They have a long life of learning ahead of them, and in order not to waste time and unnecessary effort on how to learn later in life, the main objective of teaching in elementary school should be to provide learners with tools for life long learning.

Built-in components of the learning process are pupils’ choice of tasks, developing a learning dialogue with teacher and peers, ongoing revisions and reflections.

Quality assessment of quality learning includes three main elements; assessment of the three Ps: Assessment of the individual learning process, assessment of the progress of the individual learner, and assessment of the learning product.

Traditional assessment methods focus on assessment of product, tested at a given time. Quality assessment, on the other hand, examines process and progress in addition to the product. The learning process is formed through the teacher’s informative feedback. The objective of achieving a high quality product is maintained, and by examining the process and the progress we learn about application of individual learning strategies. Good learning strategies are needed to function in a world with creates information more quickly than it can be documented.

The digital portfolio simplifies the learning, teaching, and the assessment process. The portfolio offers the opportunities for developing a learning dialogue and built-in self-assessment in terms of ongoing reflections, whereas the computer simplifies the process by offering technical solutions to processes which otherwise would have been extremely complicated.

Quality learning

Quality learning means self-regulated learning or meta-cognitive learning of cognitive as well as affective aspects of the learning process. Examples of cognitive aspects of learning are structuring, in which the learner looks for relations between “old” and new information, analyzing in which the language learner is, for example, capable of breaking a sentence into its various parts or to analyse a reading passage by breaking it into main and subordinate ideas. Additional cognitive aspects of language learning is conscious application of language learnt by following grammatical rules or by applying recently acquired vocabulary items which have been memorized. When the learner selects what language to use in a specific situation or reaches a conclusion based on critical processing, the cognitive sides of learning are activated as well (Vermunt and Verloop, 1999).

Affective aspects of learning are related to activities learners employ to monitor emotions they have during the learning process. Motivation is one of them. Motivation is the price learner are willing to pay to engage in a learning activity, in terms of time, effort, difficulties, failures, etc. Motivation is related to the expectations the learners have of a learning situation and to the effort they are willing to put into learning. An additional side of affective learning is the attributions put to the learning outcome: To what extent are learners themselves responsible for the outcome, or is success or failure attributed to causal factors. This is related to self-evaluation, and the learner’s ability to accurately assess personal learning effort and outcome. An additional element in the affective aspect of learning is the learner’s ability to deal with emotions such as being able to restore self-confidence after failure, to cope with disappointment, frustrations, anger, etc. (Vermunt and Verloop, 1999).

Meta-cognitive regulation of learning refers to the way in which the learners control the cognitive and the affective aspect of learning as described above. Quality learning is related to the personal monitor system of the learner.

In more practical terms we can say that quality learning is the type of learning undertaken by a learner who:

Knows the importance of information

Knows learning means hard work

Seeks information and explanation

Is not afraid to apply new knowledge

Knows that learning means making mistakes

Is aware that learning is an ongoing process

Realizes that the product of her/his own learning process is unique

Is able to accurately assess both process and product of personal learning.

Quality Assessment

Assessment of the type of learning described in the above needs to be comprehensive and ongoing. It has to reflect the learners’ mastery of basic information such as basic language structures, lexis and use of register. Assessment also has to reflect the effort the learner has put into the process of learning in terms of seeking knew information. Quality assessment examines the learner’s ability to reflect on the learning process, and how to use mistakes and failures as springboards for further learning. Assessment needs to be verbalized and extensive so it provides the learner with information about what the problems are, and how to go about solving them. Part of the assessment needs to be individualized, and the process as well as the product is assessed based on individualized criteria. However assessment cannot disregard the need for assessing a standardized product as well. Quality assessment not only invites the learner to become active in the assessment process, but also to play a decisive role when summative assessment is given.

Quality assessment is an ongoing process of examination of the learning process which provides the teacher with information of how to guide the learner, of how to teach. Thus learning, teaching and assessment is, in my view, one integrated process which cannot or should not be separated from each other.

There are, at least, three main parties involved in this process as assessors: the learner, the teacher, external examiners (in some cases also peers). Quality assessment of quality learning requires multiple assessment approaches and multiple assessors.

External and internal fairness

If all learners are assessed in a similar way, and there is similar treatment of all learners, external fairness is being used. This happens when all the pupils are given the same test and it is being marked according to a fixed answer key. The child behind the test paper is not of importance, the content of the test paper is the only concern.

Internal fairness means that the learner’s work is assessed in light of the context in which it has been produced, and if a group of learners, or an individual learner, were disadvantaged at the time of performance, this is taken into consideration when the performance is being assessed (Leach, Neutze and Zepke, 1999).

There are certain situations which require external fairness only, especially when a person’s professional skills are being assessed. I would certainly not feel safe in a plane with a pilot who has been found unreliable in stress situations, and this disadvantage was taken into consideration when he was given his pilot certificate. I would not want to undergo surgery carried out by a surgeon who has a shaky hand, but he worked so hard during training that he deserves to be given his license. So, there are situations in life in which external fairness is essential.

However, in school, with children who are developing, who are not yet given professional responsibilities such as a pilot’s license, with children who are going through a process of learning about themselves, their talents and abilities, we need to take their differences into consideration.

Assessment paradigms

The issue of what is meant by external and internal fairness can be explained by looking at assessment in light of various assessment paradigms. Linda Mabry in her book: Portfolio Plus- A Critical guide to Alternative Assessment (1999) discusses three assessment paradigms; the psychometric, the contextualised and the personalised (ipsative) paradigms:

Psychometric /

Contextual

/

Personal

Standardised in content and administration / Curriculum sensitive and group sensitive / Student sensitive: Content, setting and time vary
Objective items and formats / Objective and subjective items and formats / Subjective items and formats. Student involved in selection
External marking (machine) / Teacher marking / Teacher marking
No self-assessment / Self-assessment important / Self-assessment essential
Summative, no feedback beyond score / Formative use of results.
Can be used summatively / Formative use of results.
Can be used summatively

Mabry, 1999.

The psychometric paradigm serves purposes of external fairness, whereas the two other paradigms, contextual and ipsative, serve purposes of internal fairness. The contextualised paradigm looks at the individuality of the group and in the context of teaching, whereas the ipsative paradigm looks at the individuality of each learner, and how the individual learner progresses in comparison to her/himself. My claim in this presentation is that when professional skills are assessed for high stakes selection purposes, the psychometric paradigm seems to be more suitable, but when the rights of the individual child and the child’s best interest are of concern, other assessment paradigms need to be applied.

The instructional encounter

The use of different assessment paradigms in education leads to the question of how teachers view teaching, learning, and assessment. Are these three processes viewed as separate processes, or are they viewed as one integrated process? The view taken in this paper is that the three activities integrate in an ongoing process, which can be called the instructional encounter. The concept, instructional encounter, is illustrated in the following model:

The instructional encounter

1st layer:

choice of taskfirst draftrevisionfinal product

2nd layer:

guidance in choice of task feedbackfeedback summative assessment

formative assessment

3rd layer:

reason for choicereflection on content -reflection on process self-assessment

(4th layer):

teacher’s reflections

The learner is given a choice of tasks, and he/she makes a first attempt at the task which he/she later revises until he/she feels happy with it, and decides to hand in the final version. That is the first layer of the instructional encounter.

The second layer is related to the teacher. The teacher guides the learner in choosing tasks, but the teacher does not make the final decision which remains with the child. The teacher provides formative feedback on the various versions of the child’s work who makes the revisions based on the teacher’s informative, formative feedback. Peers can also be involved in giving feedback to the learner, and all this is taken into consideration when the summative assessment of the product is given. Teaching means, in this case, to provide formative feedback and to guide the child in her/ his individual learning process. Learning, teaching, and assessment are thus integrated into one process.

The third layer is the child’s reflection, self-awareness of the learning process. The child is asked to reflect on why he/she chose to work on the task, and also to reflect on the content of the task, the quality of the product, as well as on the learning process. The reflective process helps the child develop the skill of self-assessment, which is seen as an essential skill of an active and independent learner. It is also one of the child’s rights (see paragraph 13 on page 4), and is an integral part of the contextualised and personalised assessment paradigms.

The fourth layer in the instructional encounter is related to the teacher’s reflection and learning about the learning process of the individual child and about the instructional encounter with this specific child.

To recap the meaning of the concept ‘instructional encounter’ we can say that there is an integration of learning, teaching and assessment which takes place when the opportunity asks for it. Furthermore, there is a combination of formative and summative assessment, of teacher, peer, and self-assessment. The instructional encounter is carried out with the individual learner and serves ipsative assessment purposes.

The portfolio

The theory described in the above is not very useful unless it is possible to put it into practice. So, how can this be done? The best tool I know of is the portfolio which can be defined as “a purposeful collection of a student’s work over a period of time”.

There are many forms and faces of the portfolio, a portfolio is like a tailor made dress. It has to fit the context in which it is being used, which means the teaching situation, the subject, the age of the pupils, the individual learner and the teacher.

The portfolio may have a compulsory part which includes tasks all learners have to do. These activities reflect the core part of the course or the unit on which the learners compile a portfolio. The teacher mainly decides which assignments to include. The tasks included in the personal choice are many and varied, some of them might even be suggested by the individual pupil. All tasks in this part of the portfolio are also related to the course or unit, but the child chooses what to work on.

Each task has to be completed by reflection on the learning process as well as on the content and quality of the product as viewed by the learner. Peers can also be invited to write comments if the class atmosphere allows for it.

The teacher develops a learning dialogue with each learner, (second layer of the instructional encounter) in which the main aim is to work with the child at a level that suits her/him, improving the level as the learning dialogue develops. The teacher starts off the learning dialogue at the level which the learner presents in the first draft of the task. The level will naturally differ from child to child.

The digital portfolio

There is much revision and rewriting when working with a portfolio, and this might weaken the child’s stamina with the tasks. However, a solution to simplify the whole process is to use the computer and to work with the individual child on a digital portfolio. Here are some of the advantages of the digital portfolio:

The computer simplifies the learning dialogue for the teacher and the learner. There is less copy-work and more real revision.

The feedback is personalised and focused on a specific problem.

The computer is, in itself, motivating for many learners, and for some, it is even more natural to work with a computer than with a pen or pencil and paper.

The computer allows for interaction with the electronic corpora which serves the need to use resource material when this is asked for (instead of having to run to the library to find it).

It is not necessary to work with the computer in order to work with portfolios, but it simplifies the whole process for everybody involved, and it is therefore recommended if the facilities allow for it.

The case of Nathan

The last part of this paper illustrates an instructional encounter carried out with the help of the digital portfolio.

Nathan is a young learner of English, ten years old. His first language is Hebrew, and Nathan is now in his second year of learning English. Last year he had two weekly hours of English which were mainly spent on creating a basic oral vocabulary and to teach the reading and writing in the English alphabet. For Hebrew speaking learners (and many with them, including Arab learners of English) one of the first major difficulties is to get used to reading from left to right instead of from right to left, and to read in a language which has no vowels as part of the alphabet.

Nathan was given the task to write a short essay in English about something that occupied his mind. This is Nathan’s first draft: