I'm getting a bit baffled by this concept of assessment. I mean, I thought I had this down prior to joining the MAT program. You teach students a small chunk of your content, and then you test them on it: multiple choice, a few well-stated true/false questions, and some short answer questions. If need be, punctuate the times between tests with a quiz here and there. Now, I understand, those methods are right out. Mostly.
Part of the problem is that I've never taken a course that covered assessments as a core topic of the class. I'd love to take one class entirely on assessment (a class on creating lesson plans would be nice as well), but assessment shows up in each class, briefly, touched on in relation to whatever the class is about. What I end up getting is a lot of disconnected snippets: quotes from published articles or texts, the informed opinion of a professor, and anecdotes from my classmates. I'm slowly putting together a meaningful picture about assessment and how I should assess my students, and I understand that traditional testing has taken a backseat to new models of assessment, but I'm still baffled as to what those are.
Tovani, for instance, cites a guy named Grant Wiggins who writes, “the aim of assessment is primarily to educate and improve student performance, not merely to audit it.” Wait, wait, wait. Doesn't the word assessment mean “to evaluate, to audit?” Hasn't the point of assessment always been to gauge student learning? If you're going to expand what assessment means beyond the limits of the word, at least give it a new name!
Tovani's citation adequately sums up my confusion about assessment. How is assessment supposed to improve student performance while you attempt to audit it? How does assessment educate a student while at the same time testing their knowledge on a subject? If not traditional tests, then what? Maybe I'm just not imaginative enough.
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Tim, I thought I knew everything there was to know about assessment before any of these classes. I thought I would test my students as I was tested in high school. Come to find out, testing now is more provoking of deeper thinking. I took multiple choose tests ALOT in high school but now they want to get away from the "memorize and gurgitate" and work on higher level thinking skills. Honestly, I am so afraid of this. High school students, most of them anyway, want things handed to them. Its not that I'm afraid of deeper thinking, I'm afraid of the frustration getting my students to think deeply. I completely understand your concerns about assessments.
ReplyDeletethe assessment idea has got me a bit confused too. my understanding is that they what us to produce test that make the students think. these test should move away from the true/false, mutiply choice form, to more short answer, and critical thinking questions. however, i what i have seen in my observation are the true/false, mutiply choice form. students still seem to have a problem with them types of test. just more questions arise once you think you understand it all.
ReplyDeleteI think that the oppinion that traditional testing is taking a backstep is wrong. In the class, a lot of the assessments are still done with test and quizes. I think what we are suppose to get out of this is that those should not be the only form of assessment. I think that as teachers we should supplament different types of assessments so that the student with test taking problems can find another way to show they understand the material. Do not give up on traditional testing. This is my opinion and what I see in the classroom. Or in my classroom.
ReplyDeletePerformance based assessments do continue to educate the students while at the same time give you an indication of their knowledge. For instance, my content area is Marketing. I give standardized tests on some material but some material I assess the students with performance based projects. The students have to show me they understand the material by applying it to the assigned project. While the students are doing their projects, I have a chance to observe, evaluate, and instruct them. This is an assessment that allows the student to further their knowledge at the same time I am auditing their knowledge. A standard test with mult. choice, T/F, or fill in the blank questions only gives you an audit of their knowledge. I believe WIggins is saying if we only give these types of assessments then we are truly doing a disservice to our students. The Pedagogy class I took this summer used Understanding by Design. A textbook written by Wiggins. I will let you borrow it if you would like. I firmly believe that we as educators have to vary our style of assessment and not rely solely on the type of tests we were given when we were in school.
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