Week 2 - Discussion 1 for class EDU695: MAED Capstone
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3Assessment in the 21st Century
© Rachel Frank/Corbis
Learning Objectives After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
1. Explain the purpose and importance of classroom assessment in a climate of high-stakes stan- dardized testing and accountability.
2. Formulate a realistic plan for involving parents and students in assessing learning, including self assessment and monitoring growth.
3. Describe the basics of assessment literacy for teachers and school leaders and offer a plan for professional development to enhance that literacy in professional learning communities.
4. Apply at least three principles of effective feedback in responding to student work and judge its effectiveness.
5. Experiment with a grading system that separates product, process, and progress criteria.
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Chapter Introduction
Chapter Introduction A teacher constructs a “pop quiz” for her sixth grade social studies class to determine whether they have read the chapters in the text and how well they have learned the material. When she scores the quizzes, more than half of the students have failed. She is perplexed and unhappy. “Isn’t this what assessment looks like for good teachers?,” she wonders.
For decades, teachers have been using many traditional means, such as pop quizzes, to assess learning. Recently though, assessment has assumed more visibility and importance in education as high-stakes testing geared toward standards assumes a place in the public domain as well as policy arenas. Teachers and school leaders now must balance the persistent demand for data on student achievement at the district, state, and national levels with the continuing need for classroom and content-specific information about how and what students are learning. The field of assessment is now multilayered, dynamic, potentially innovative, clearly contextual, and more complex than ever.
Over the past 30 years, standardized tests have served as the foundation for elaborate scoring systems to evaluate education outcomes in schools, districts, states, and the nation as a whole. Standardized tests are also now being used in some states as a contributor to teacher evalua- tion processes that are tied to merit pay (McDonnell, 2012). Since the passing of the No Child Left Behind legislation in 2001, the federal government has increasingly influenced the states’ accountability procedures, and local schools have little power to determine assessment tools (Manna, 2006). Teachers and school leaders must adapt to this demanding arena as they learn to collect evidence of student progress on a yearly basis. Often, however, little attention is paid to the assessments at the individual student and classroom levels that are essential for student learning.
Understanding the climate of accountability is important as background for this chapter in which the authors invite leaders, researchers, and practitioners to consider the responsibilities of learners, teachers, and school administrators to learn about and implement assessment that is close to the subjects being taught, close to the students’ own needs and interests, and close to the community in which the teaching and learning take place. The articles outline the trends in meaningful assessment and the elements of assessment literacy that teachers and leaders should know and use in order to give feedback, collect useful information about student learn- ing, and provide the data needed for classrooms and schools to continually improve. The chapter is less about the data warehouse and macrolevel assessment data collected and analyzed at the state or national levels; rather, the authors address educators who are close to the process where students and teachers engage in learning.
Sue Brookhart (2004) conducted a literature review of research focused on classroom assess- ment over the past 20 years. She maintains that classroom assessment literature is “all over the map” (p. 429) and lacks an identity, because the topic sits at the intersection of theory and prac- tice and cannot be discussed as merely one or the other. Brookhart’s review of 40 studies revealed that all the studies discussed classroom practices of assessment. Brookhart further explains:
Twelve (30%) discussed classroom assessment practices and related instruc- tional issues. Seven (18%) discussed classroom assessment practices, instruc- tional practices, and classroom management issues. The remaining 21, roughly half, of the articles discussed classroom assessment practices without reference to related instructional or management practices. (p. 433)
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Chapter Introduction
Further, Brookhart found that the 40 studies reviewed reflected different theoretical frame- works drawn from the fields of psychology, measurement, the study of groups, and the study of individual differences. Thus, although the field of classroom assessment is rich and diverse, it is also difficult to define precisely with respect to how assessment practice, instruction, and man- agement can be integratively learned by teachers.
This chapter begins with two articles that describe the lack of attention to and knowledge of assessment on the part of many educators. Rick Stiggins and W. James Popham both criticize col- leges of education and teacher professional development programs for their lack of coursework, experiences, internships, and general preparation in the field of assessment.
Popham asserts that teachers need to develop solid assessment literacy skills through profes- sional development. It seems that the role of assessing student learning has largely been appro- priated by the large-scale, standardized testing firms, while teachers are taught to adjust their curriculum and teaching to more successfully meet the objectives of those statewide, national, or even international measures of achievement.
Stiggins and Popham both propose that teachers turn to classroom assessment, because it is more reliable for judging student progress and success. The authors in this chapter all affirm that assessment in the 21st century will be valuable for all students only if it is embraced by individual teachers.
Assessment at the local level, whether in a bricks and mortar classroom or in an online learning environment, involves formative tools and measures, including teacher feedback that is mean- ingful, targeted, and largely nonevaluative. Grant Wiggins provides specific suggestions for the types of feedback and presents the idea that teachers need to teach less in order to provide more feedback for students, because it is feedback that will help students improve their performance.
Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey also support the importance of feedback and the value of formative assessment that must by definition be grounded at the individual and small-group, or classroom, levels. They claim that providing feedback can then lead to data collection focused on patterns that teachers can use to rethink curriculum and reteach specific elements of a lesson.
Thomas Guskey and Lee Ann Jung discuss the larger issue of grading and the need for reform in this century to replace traditional summative, letter grades with more meaningful and com- municative progress, process, and product grades in a subject area. Clearly, teachers who pro- vide feedback, opportunities for formative assessment, and meaningful follow-up will be more prepared to provide such multiple grades for students and families. McDonald’s article reviews literature on the impact of self-assessment as part of this rich, in-depth learning experience that teachers and students design, document, and report together.
The chapter concludes with a compelling and unusual piece by Zierer, who asks the question, “What is a good school?” in the context of using objective data to assess effectiveness while ignoring other dimensions of quality in a “good” learning environment.
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Section 3.1 Five Assessment Myths and Their Consequences
3.1 Five Assessment Myths and Their Consequences, by Rick Stiggins
Introduction Rick Stiggins is a well-known consultant and expert in the field of assessment. He founded the Assessment Training Institute, which provides professional development in assessment for teach- ers and school leaders. He has served on the faculty at Michigan State University, the University of Minnesota, and Lewis and Clark College. Stiggins has also served as director of the American College Testing Program.
Stiggins’ article emphasizes the importance of paying attention to assessment at the classroom level. He notes that in the current educational climate, there is huge investment in yearly stan- dardized tests rather than daily assessments that are a part of teaching. Stiggins states, how- ever, that teachers are not well-prepared to assess effectively and have not had much assessment training in their teacher education programs.
Stiggins’ article about the myths that drive assessment is especially important because of his attention to students and their role in assessment. He laments that nowhere in the assessment literature over the past 60 years do we find reference to students as “users” and “instructional decision makers.” Finally, the author describes the power of assessing for learning rather than relying on grades and test scores to motivate students.
Voices From the Field: Moving From Common Practice to Innovation
Dr. Melissa Parks is a fifth-grade teacher in Broward County, Florida. She is also an adjunct profes- sor teaching undergraduate introduction to teaching courses and a graduate class in documenta- tion and assessment at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida.
Current classroom practice of assessment is just standard assessment—multiple-choice and short-response questions, worksheets, paper-based projects in the form of book reports, and maybe an oral report. It is something tangible that teachers send home to parents to convey student progress according to a standard grading system.
If I had my way, I would like to see more project-based learning using rubrics as sets of expectations. The problem, though, that I see with that is that parents are so unfamiliar with rubrics that they would be taken aback with the loss of paper-based information. They don’t know how to equate rubrics with the standard A, B, C grading system.
If I had my way, I would like administrators to (a) be a voice for students by encouraging teachers to rethink how they assess learning, (b) support teachers as they try alternative assessments, and (c) express support for alternative assessments to parents.
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Section 3.1 Five Assessment Myths and Their Consequences
Excerpt The following is an excerpt from Stiggins, R. (2007). Five assessment myths and their conse- quences. Education Week, 27(8), 28–29. Reprinted with permission from the author.
America has spent 60 years building layer upon layer of district, state, national, and international assessments at immense cost—and with little evidence that our assessment practices have improved learning. True, testing data have revealed achievement problems. But revealing problems and helping fix them are two entirely different things.
As a member of the measurement community, I find this legacy very discour- aging. It causes me to reflect deeply on my role and function. Are we helping students and teachers with our assessment practices, or contributing to their problems?
My reflections have brought me to the conclusion that assessment’s impact on the improvement of schools has been severely limited by several widespread but erroneous beliefs about what role it ought to play. Here are five of the most problematic of these assessment myths:
Myth 1: The Path to School Improvement Is Paved With Standardized Tests.
Evidence of the strength of this belief is seen in the evolution, intensity, and immense investment in our large-scale testing programs. We have been rank- ing states on the basis of average college-admission-test scores since the 1950s, comparing schools based on district-wide testing since the 1960s, com- paring districts based on state assessments since the 1970s, comparing states based on national assessment since the 1980s, and comparing nations on the basis of international assessments since the l990s. Have schools improved as a result?
The problem is that once-a-year assessments have never been able to meet the information needs of the decisionmakers who contribute the most to determining the effectiveness of schools: students and teachers, who make such decisions every three to four minutes. The brief history of our invest- ment in testing outlined above includes no reference to day-to-day classroom assessment, which represents 99.9 percent of the assessments in a student’s school life. We have almost completely neglected classroom assessment in our obsession with standardized testing. Had we not, our path to school improve- ment would have been far more productive.
Myth 2: School and Community Leaders Know How to Use Assessment to Improve Schools.
Over the decades, very few educational leaders have been trained to under- stand what standardized tests measure, how they relate to the local cur- riculum, what the scores mean, how to use them, or, indeed, whether better
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Section 3.1 Five Assessment Myths and Their Consequences
instruction can influence scores. Beyond this, we in the measurement com- munity have narrowed our role to maximizing the efficiency and accuracy of high-stakes testing, paying little attention to the day-to-day impact of test scores on teachers or learners in the classroom.
Many in the business community believe that we get better schools by com- paring them based on annual test scores, and then rewarding or punishing them. They do not understand the negative impact on students and teachers in struggling schools that continuously lose in such competition. Politicians at all levels believe that if a little intimidation doesn’t work, a lot of intimidation will, and assessment has been used to increase anxiety. They too misunder- stand the implications for struggling schools and learners.
Myth 3: Teachers Are Trained to Assess Productively.
Teachers can spend a quarter or more of their professional time involved in assessment-related activities. If they assess accurately and use results effec- tively, their students can prosper. Administrators, too, use assessment to make crucial curriculum and resource-allocation decisions that can improve school quality.
Given the critically important roles of assessment, it is no surprise that Amer- icans believe teachers are thoroughly trained to assess accurately and use assessment productively. In fact, teachers typically have not been given the opportunity to learn these things during preservice preparation or while they are teaching. This has been the case for decades. And lest we believe that teachers can turn to their principals or other district leaders for help in learning about sound assessment practices, let it be known that relevant, helpful assessment training is rarely included in leadership-preparation pro- grams either.
Myth 4: Adult Decisions Drive School Effectiveness.
We assess to inform instructional decisions. Annual tests inform annual deci- sions made by school leaders. Interim tests used formatively permit faculty teams to fine-tune programs. Classroom assessment helps teachers know what comes next in learning, or what grades go on report cards. In all cases, the assessment results inform the grown-ups who run the system.
But there are other data-based instructional decisionmakers present in class- rooms whose influence over learning success is greater than that of the adults. I refer, of course, to students. Nowhere in our 60-year assessment legacy do we find reference to students as assessment users and instructional deci- sionmakers. But, in fact, they interpret the feedback we give them to decide whether they have hope of future success, whether the learning is worth the energy it will take to attain it, and whether to keep trying. If students conclude that there is no hope, it doesn’t matter what the adults decide. Learning stops. The most valid and reliable “high stakes” test, if it causes students to give up in hopelessness, cannot be regarded as productive. It does more harm than good.
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Section 3.1 Five Assessment Myths and Their Consequences
Myth 5: Grades and Test Scores Maximize Student Motivation and Learning.
Most of us grew up in schools that left lots of students behind. By the end of high school, we were ranked based on achievement. There were winners and losers. Some rode winning streaks to confident, successful life trajectories, while others failed early and often, found recovery increasingly difficult, and ultimately gave up. After 13 years, a quarter of us had dropped out and the rest were dependably ranked. Schools operated on the belief that if I fail you or threaten to do so, it will cause you to try harder. This was only true for those who felt in control of the success contingencies. For the others, chronic failure resulted, and the intimidation minimized their learning. True hopelessness always trumps pressure to learn.
Society has changed the mission of its schools to “leave no child behind.” We want all students to meet state standards. This requires that all students believe they can succeed. Frequent success and infrequent failure must pave the path to optimism. This represents a fundamental redefinition of produc- tive assessment dynamics.
Classroom-assessment researchers have discovered how to assess for learn- ing to accomplish this. Assessment for learning (as opposed to of learning) has a profoundly positive impact on achievement, especially for struggling learners, as has been verified through rigorous scientific research conducted around the world. But, again, our educators have never been given the oppor- tunity to learn about it.
Sound assessment is not something to be practiced once a year. As we look to the future, we must balance annual, interim or benchmark, and classroom assessment. Only then will we meet the critically important information needs of all instructional decisionmakers. We must build a long-missing foun- dation of assessment literacy at all levels of the system, so that we know how to assess accurately and use results productively. This will require an unprec- edented investment in professional learning both at the preservice and in- service levels for teachers and administrators, and for policymakers as well.
Of greatest importance, however, is that we acknowledge the key role of the learner in the assessment-learning connection. We must begin to use class- room assessment to help all students experience continuous success and come to believe in themselves as learners.
Source: Stiggins, R. (2007). Five assessment myths and their consequences. Education Week 27(8), pp. 28–29. © Rick Stiggins. As first appeared in Education Week, October 16, 2007. Reprinted with permission from the author.
Summary Stiggins offers five myths regarding assessment. He then suggests the consequences that teachers and leaders face when the educational community apparently believes these myths. The author
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Section 3.2 Assessment Literacy for Teachers: Faddish or Fundamental?
challenges the myth that standardized testing can be the path to school improvement, noting that classroom assessment has much more power over student learning. He asserts, contrary to popular opinion, that most teachers and leaders do not know how to use assessment data to improve schools, nor are teachers adequately prepared to assess productively.
Educators and the general public appear to believe that grades and test scores motivate student learning, despite the evidence that classroom-based assessment for learning is actually what promotes student success. Finally, Stiggins debunks the myth that adult decisions drive school effectiveness and reminds readers of the role the students themselves play in the process.
Critical Thinking Questions 1. To what degree do you believe students play a pivotal role in school effectiveness as “assess-
ment users” and “instructional decision makers”? How might that role be strengthened for students in schools?
2. How would you evaluate your own assessment knowledge and preparation for teaching and leadership in assessment? How would you characterize the gaps in your knowledge about assessment?
3. Imagine that you are speaking to a group of parents of students in a middle school. Explain how you would assess students daily in order to improve your teaching.
4. Discuss Rick Stiggins’ assertion that school improvement is not informed by standardized test results. What are some of the problems with relying on yearly standardized tests to drive cur- riculum and teaching in a school?
3.2 Assessment Literacy for Teachers: Faddish or Fundamental? by W. James Popham
Introduction W. James Popham is an emeritus professor in the graduate school of the University of California, Los Angeles. He is considered one of the premier researchers in the field of assessment and is the founder of IOX Assessment Associates, a research and development organization.
This article introduces the concept of assessment literacy as a fundamental task for professional development in schools, especially in the current context in which teacher preparation assess- ment programs may be viewed as inadequate. Popham claims that teachers know very little about assessment beyond the administration of traditional tests, and in this piece he describes 13 “must understand” assessment topics for teachers, including the difference between forma- tive and summative assessment tools. He also differentiates between classroom assessments and accountability assessments in terms of their goals and uses by teachers and administrators.
A key concept offered in this article is the idea that assessment approaches that are instruction- ally sensitive can be directly related to good teaching or, conversely, poor teaching. Popham maintains that teachers need to know the basics of the content area of assessment, including reliability, the three types of validity, types of test items, and the development and scoring of alternative assessments such as portfolios, exhibitions, peer, and self-assessments.
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Section 3.2 Assessment Literacy for Teachers: Faddish or Fundamental?
Teachers and leaders also need to be able to interpret standardized test results and use them meaningfully to improve instruction, because they are a key feature of today’s data-driven prac- tice in many schools and districts.
Finally, the article reminds readers that assessment of English-language learners and students with disabilities remains an essential content field for all teachers.
Excerpt The following is an excerpt from Popham, W. J. (2009). Assessment literacy for teachers: faddish or fundamental? Theory Into Practice, 48, 4–11.
In recent years, increasing numbers of professional development programs have dealt with assessment literacy for teachers and/or administrators. Is assessment literacy merely a fashionable focus for today’s professional developers or, in contrast, should it be regarded as a significant area of pro- fessional development interest for many years to come? After dividing edu- cators’ measurement-related concerns into either classroom assessments or accountability assessments, it is argued that educators’ inadequate knowl- edge in either of these arenas can cripple the quality of education. Assessment literacy is seen, therefore, as a sine qua non for today’s competent educator. As such, assessment literacy must be a pivotal content area for current and future staff development endeavors. Thirteen must-understand topics are set forth for consideration by those who design and deliver assessment literacy programs. Until preservice teacher education programs begin producing assessment literate teachers, professional developers must continue to rectify this omission in educators’ professional capabilities.
For the past several years, assessment literacy has been increasingly touted as a fitting focus for teachers’ professional development programs. The sort of assessment literacy that is typically recommended refers to a teacher’s familiarity with those measurement basics related directly to what goes on in classrooms. Given today’s ubiquitous, externally imposed scrutiny of schools, we can readily understand why assessment literacy might be regarded as a likely target for teachers’ professional development. Yet, is assessment lit- eracy a legitimate focus for teachers’ professional development programs or, instead, is it a fashionable but soon forgettable fad?
The Consequences of Omission
Many of today’s teachers know little about educational assessment. For some teachers, test is a four-letter word, both literally and figuratively. The gaping gap in teachers’ assessment-related knowledge is all too understandable. The most obvious explanation is, in this instance, the correct explanation. Regret- tably, when most of today’s teachers completed their teacher-education pro- grams, there was no requirement that they learn anything about educational assessment. For these teachers, their only exposure to the concepts and prac- tices of educational assessment might have been a few sessions in their edu- cational psychology classes or, perhaps, a unit in a methods class (La Marca, 2006; Stiggins, 2006).
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Section 3.2 Assessment Literacy for Teachers: Faddish or Fundamental?
Thus, many teachers in previous years usually arrived at their first teach- ing assignment quite bereft of any fundamental understanding of educa- tional measurement. Happily, in recent years we have seen the emergence of increased preservice requirements that offer teacher education candidates greater insights regarding educational assessment. Accordingly, in a decade or two, the assessment literacy of the nation’s teaching force is bound to be substantially stronger. But for now, it must be professional development— completed subsequent to teacher education—that will supply the nation’s teachers with the assessment related skills and knowledge they need.
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A Quick Content Dip
Professional development programs focused on assessment literacy need to be tailored. Such a program designed for school administrators is likely to be similar to an assessment-literacy program for teachers, in the sense that many of the topics to be treated would be essentially identical, but some salient con- tent differences would—and should—exist. To conclude this analysis, I would like to lay out the content that should be addressed—in a real-world, practical manner rather than an esoteric, theoretical fashion—during an assessment- literacy professional development program for teachers. This will only be a brief listing of potential content, but those who are interested in a closer look at possible content for such programs will find more detailed treatments of potential emphases in the list of references.
Those considering what to include in an assessment literacy professional development program for teachers should seriously consider focusing on a set of target skills and knowledge dealing with the following content:
1. The fundamental function of educational assessment, namely, the col- lection of evidence from which inferences can be made about students’ skills, knowledge, and affect. A common misconception among educa- tors is to reify test scores, as though such scores are the true target of an educator’s concern. In reality, the only reason we test our students is in order collect evidence regarding what we cannot see—under- standing, skill development, and so on. Almost all of our educational goals are aimed at unseeable skills and knowledge. We cannot tell how much history a student knows just by looking at that student. Thus, we must rely on students’ overt test performances to produce evidence so we can arrive at defensible inferences about students’ covert skills and knowledge.
2. Reliability of educational assessments, especially the three forms in which consistency evidence is reported for groups of test-takers (stabil- ity, alternate-form, and internal consistency) and how to gauge consis- tency of assessment for individual test-takers. Many educators place absolutely unwarranted confidence in the accuracy of educational tests, especially those high-stakes tests created by well-established testing companies. When educators grasp the nature of measure- ment error, and realize the myriad factors that can trigger inconsis- tency in a student’s test performances, those educators will regard
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Section 3.2 Assessment Literacy for Teachers: Faddish or Fundamental?
with proper caution the imprecision of the results obtained on even some of our most time-honored assessment instruments.
3. The prominent role three types of validity evidence should play in the building of arguments to support the accuracy of test-based interpreta- tions about students, namely, content-related, criterion-related, and construct-related evidence. Anytime an educator utters the phrase a valid test, that educator is—at least technically—in error. It is not a test that is valid or invalid. Rather, it is the inference we base on a test- taker’s score whose validity is at issue. Moreover, the types of validity evidence we collect are fundamentally different. As a consequence, for example, classroom teachers need to know that the chief kind of validity evidence they need to attend to should be content-related.
4. How to identify and eliminate assessment bias that offends or unfairly penalizes test-takers because of personal characteristics such as race, gender, or socioeconomic status. During the past two decades, the measurement community has devised both judgmental and empiri- cal ways of dramatically reducing the amount of assessment bias in our large-scale educational tests. Classroom teachers need to know how to identify and eliminate bias in their own teacher-made tests.
5. Construction and improvement of selected-response and constructed- response test items. Through the years, measurement specialists have been assembling a collection of guidelines regarding how to create wonderful, rather than wretched, test items. Moreover, once a set of test items has been constructed, there are easily used procedures available for making those items even better. Educators who gener- ate tests need to be conversant with the creation and honing of test items.
6. Scoring of students’ responses to constructed-response tests items, especially the distinctive contribution made by well-formed rubrics. Although constructed-response test items such as essay and short answer items often provide particularly illuminating evidence about students’ skills and knowledge, the scoring of students’ responses to such items often goes haywire because of loose judgmental proce- dures. Teachers need to know how to create and use rubrics, that is, scoring guides, so students’ performances on constructed-response items can be accurately appraised.
7. Development and scoring of performance assessments, portfolio assessments, exhibitions, peer assessments, and self-assessments. Gone are the days when teachers only had to know how to score tests by distinguishing between a circled T or F for students’ answers to true– false items. Given the current use of assessment procedures calling for students to respond in dramatically diverse ways, today’s teach- ers need to learn how to generate and perhaps score a considerable variety of assessment strategies.
8. Designing and implementing formative assessment procedures con- sonant with both research evidence and experience-based insights regarding such procedures’ likely success. Formative assessment is a process, not a particular type of test. Because there is now substan- tial evidence at hand that properly employed formative assessment
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Section 3.2 Assessment Literacy for Teachers: Faddish or Fundamental?
can meaningfully boost students’ achievement (Black & Wiliam, 1998a), today’s educators need to understand the innards of this potent classroom process.
9. How to collect and interpret evidence of students’ attitudes, interests, and values. When considering the importance of students’ acquisition of cognitive versus affective outcomes, it could be argued that inat- tention to students’ attitudes, interests, and values can have a lasting, negative impact on those students. Teachers, therefore, should at least learn how to assess their students’ affect so that, if those teach- ers choose to do so, they can get an accurate fix on their students’ affective dispositions.
10. Interpreting students’ performances on large-scale, standardized achievement and aptitude assessments. Because students’ perfor- mances are of interest to both teachers and students’ parents, teach- ers must understand the most widely used techniques for reporting students’ scores on today’s oft-administered standardized examina- tions, including, for example, what is meant by a scale score.
11. Assessing English Language Learners and students with disabilities. Although most of the measurement concepts that educators need to understand will apply across the board to all types of students, there are special assessment issues associated with students whose first language is not English and for students with disabilities. Because today’s educators have been adjured to attend to such students with more care than was seen in the past, it is important for all teachers to become conversant with the assessment procedures most suitable for these subgroups of students.
12. How to appropriately (and not inappropriately) prepare students for high-stakes tests. Given the pressures on educators to have their students shine on state and, sometimes, district accountability tests, there have been reports of test-preparation practices that are patently inappropriate. In many instances, such unsound practices arise simply because teachers had not devoted attention to the ques- tion of how students should and should not be readied for important tests. They should be prepared to do so.
13. How to determine the appropriateness of an accountability test for use in evaluating the quality of instruction. It is not safe to assume that, because an accountability test has been officially adopted in a state, this test is suitable for evaluating schools. More than ever before, educators need to understand what makes a test suitable for apprais- ing the quality of instruction.
All but a few of these 13 content recommendations are applicable to both classroom assessments and accountability assessments. The recommenda- tions regarding the determination of an accountability test’s evaluative appro- priateness and interpreting students’ performances on large-scale, standard- ized tests, of course, refer only to accountability assessments. Conversely, the recommendation regarding learning about formative assessment procedures clearly deals with classroom assessments rather than accountability assess- ments. Beyond those dissimilarities, however, a professional development
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Section 3.2 Assessment Literacy for Teachers: Faddish or Fundamental?
program aimed at the promotion of teachers’ assessment literacy should show how the bulk of the content recommended here has clear relevance to both classroom assessments and accountability assessments.
Of particular merit these days is the use of professional learning communi- ties as an adjunct to, or in place of, more traditional professional develop- ment activities. Such communities consist of small groups of teachers and/ or administrators who meet periodically over an extended period of time, for instance, one or more school years, to focus on topics such as those identi- fied above. If such a group consists exclusively of teachers, then it is typically referred to as a teacher learning community. If administrators are involved, then the label professional learning community is usually affixed. Given access to at least some written or electronic materials as a backdrop (e.g., Popham, 2006, which is available gratis to such learning communities), collections of educators with similar interest can prove to be remarkably effective in help- ing educators acquire significant new insights.
Fad-Free Focus?
The presenting question that initiated this analysis was whether professional development programs aimed at enhancing teachers’ assessment literacy were warranted, either in the short-term or long-term. I identified two sets of teachers’ assessment-related decisions that could be illuminated by such pro- grams, namely, those decisions related to classroom assessments and those decisions related to accountability assessments. Although, at the current time, teachers are surely faced with assessment-dependent choices stemming from both of these sorts of assessments, will both types of assessments be with us over the long haul?
The answer to that question is, in my view, an emphatic Yes. With regard to classroom assessments, the influential work of Black and Wiliam (1998a, 1998b) lends powerful empirical support attesting to the learning dividends of instructionally oriented classroom assessment. When classroom assess- ments are conceived as assessments for learning, rather than assessments of learning, students will learn better what their teacher wants them to learn. Not only is the evidence supporting such a formative approach to classroom assessment demonstrably effective, but there are—happily—diverse ways to implement an instructionally oriented approach to classroom assessment. As the two British researchers point out:
The range of conditions and contexts under which studies have shown that gains can be achieved must indicate that the principles that underlie achievement of substantial improvements in learning are robust. Significant gains can be achieved by many different routes, and initiatives here are not likely to fail through neglect of delicate and subtle features. (Black & Wiliam, 1998a, pp. 61–62)
It appears, then, that teachers who want to be optimally effective ought to be learning about the essentials of classroom assessment for a long while to come.
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Section 3.2 Assessment Literacy for Teachers: Faddish or Fundamental?
Turning to accountability assessment, there seems little reason to believe that the demand for test-based evidence of teachers’ effectiveness will evap- orate—ever. Accountability pressure on educators springs from taxpayers’ doubts that their public schools are as effective as they ought to be. It will take decades of consistent educational success stories before the public is dis- abused of its skeptical regard for public schools. Even if the public were ever to relax its demands for educational accountability evidence, thoughtful edu- cators still ought to insist on the collection of such evidence. That is the kind of requirement that any self-respecting profession ought to impose on itself.
Thus, it seems that assessment literacy is a commodity needed by teachers for their own long-term well-being, and for the educational well-being of their students. For the foreseeable future, teachers are likely to exist in an environ- ment where test-elicited evidence plays a prominent instructional and evalu- ative role. In such environments, those who control the tests tend to control the entire enterprise. Until preservice teacher educators routinely provide meaningful assessment literacy for prospective teachers, the architects of professional development programs will need to offer assessment-literacy programs. We can only hope they do it well.
References Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998a). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education:
Principles, Policy, and Practice, 5(1), 7–73.
Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998b). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 80(2), 139–148.
La Marca. P. (2006). Assessment literacy: Building capacity for improving student learning. Paper presented at the National Conference on Large-Scale Assessment, Council of Chief State School Officers, San Francisco, CA.
Popham, W. J. (2006). Mastering assessment: A self-service system for educators. New York: Routledge.
Stiggins, R. J. (2006). Assessment for learning: A key to student motivation and learning. Phi Delta Kappa Edge, 2(2), 1–19.
Source: Popham, W. J. (2009). Assessment Literacy for Teachers: Faddish or Fundamental? Theory Into Practice 48: 4–11. Taylor and Francis. Copyright © 2009 Routledge.
Summary Popham’s article presents a range of assessment topics that teachers and leaders should be knowledgeable about; he terms competence in these content areas as “assessment literacy” and asserts that professional development in school districts should focus explicitly on these areas in order to improve schools and enhance student learning.
The author asserts that the word assessment, for most teachers, is synonymous with the word test. He poses the critical question, “What kinds of assessments do teachers most need to under- stand?” and responds with a list of 13 topics.
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Section 3.3 Seven Keys to Effective Feedback
The article suggests that teachers and leaders need to be able not only to apply meaningful and varied assessments but also to understand and be “literate” in the field of assessment itself. The author claims that standardized testing in the United States tends to be “instructionally insen- sitive,” meaning that the results have little or no relationship to how well students are taught.
Finally, the author challenges professional development leaders to consider how to embed these important concepts and practices into ongoing teacher learning venues in schools, and he men- tions professional learning communities (PLCs) as a promising approach.
Critical Thinking Questions 1. Design a year of PLC meetings in which teachers engage in conscious assessment literacy
learning. What would such meetings look like? How would teachers engage with each other in learning more about assessment in PLCs?
2. Popham writes that school administrators need assessment literacy training that is, in some ways, like the professional development needed by teachers. He then mentions that there would be some differences in terms of what administrators need to know. What might those differences be?
3. One of the 13 “must understand” topics refers to eliminating assessments that offend or penalize students because of race, gender, or socioeconomic status. Discuss this topic in terms of your experience and the students you have encountered. How might schools and teachers work toward bias-free assessment?
4. This article briefly refers to the need for teachers to assess students’ affect, that is, their atti- tudes, interests, and values. Why is this important, and how might teachers do this as part of their practice?
5. What is your overall impression of this article and the author’s presentation of the tenets of assessment literacy?
3.3 Seven Keys to Effective Feedback, by Grant Wiggins
Introduction Grant Wiggins has been a central contributor to the field of assessment in the last 25 years, due in part to his landmark book, Educative Assessment: Designing Assessments to Inform and Improve Student Performance, as well as his work with Jay McTighe. Wiggins and coauthor McTighe have written many books and articles focused on backward design for curriculum and assessment. Used in hundreds of school districts around the country, backward design is a pro- cess of planning curriculum from the goals or aims “backwards.”
This article directs readers’ attention to feedback as a means of providing learners with infor- mation about how they are doing in their efforts to reach a specific goal. Wiggins is clear about the need for a goal in order for feedback to be meaningful to learners. The author also asserts that feedback is not evaluative or judgmental, nor is it advice-driven. Effective feedback is user- friendly, timely, ongoing and consistent.
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Wiggins also calls attention to the responsibilities of the learner to be open to and use feedback. He writes: “If I am not clear on my goals or if I fail to pay attention to them, I cannot get helpful feedback” (p. 18). Finally, Wiggins explains that research shows the power of teaching less in order to provide more feedback. A careful consideration of this concept may be the essential next step in improving assessment practices.
Excerpt The following is an excerpt from Wiggins, G. (2012). 7 keys to effective feedback. Educational Leadership, 70(1), 10–19.
Who would dispute the idea that feedback is a good thing? Both common sense and research make it clear: Formative assessment, consisting of lots of feedback and opportunities to use that feedback, enhances performance and achievement.
Yet even John Hattie (2008), whose decades of research revealed that feed- back as among the most powerful influences on achievement, acknowledges that he has “struggled to understand the concept” (p. 173). And many writ- ings on the subject don’t even attempt to define the term. To improve forma- tive assessment practices among both teachers and assessment designers, we need to look more closely at just what feedback is—and isn’t.
What Is Feedback, Anyway?
The term feedback is often used to describe all kinds of comments made after the fact, including advice, praise, and evaluation. But none of these are feed- back, strictly speaking.
Basically, feedback is information about how we are doing in our efforts to reach a goal. I hit a tennis ball with the goal of keeping it in the court, and I see where it lands—in or out. I tell a joke with the goal of making people laugh, and I observe the audience’s reaction—they laugh loudly or barely snicker. I teach a lesson with the goal of engaging students, and I see that some students have their eyes riveted on me while others are nodding off.
Here are some other examples of feedback:
• A friend tells me, “You know, when you put it that way and speak in that softer tone of voice, it makes me feel better.”
• A reader comments on my short story, “The first few paragraphs kept my full attention. The scene painted was vivid and interesting. But then the dialogue became hard to follow; as a reader, I was confused about who was talking, and the sequence of actions was puzzling, so I became less engaged.”
• A baseball coach tells me, “Each time you swung and missed, you raised your head as you swung so you didn’t really have your eye on the ball. On the one you hit hard, you kept your head down and saw the ball.”
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Section 3.3 Seven Keys to Effective Feedback
Note the difference between these three examples and the first three I cited— the tennis stroke, the joke, and the student responses to teaching. In the first group, I only had to take note of the tangible effect of my actions, keeping my goals in mind. No one volunteered feedback, but there was still plenty of feed- back to get and use. The second group of examples all involved the deliberate, explicit giving of feedback by other people.
Whether the feedback was in the observable effects or from other people, in every case the information received was not advice, nor was the performance evaluated. No one told me as a performer what to do differently or how “good” or “bad” my results were. (You might think that the reader of my writing was judging my work, but look at the words used again: She simply played back the effect my writing had on her as a reader.) Nor did any of the three people tell me what to do (which is what many people erroneously think feedback is—advice). Guidance would be premature; I first need to receive feedback on what I did or didn’t do that would warrant such advice.
In all six cases, information was conveyed about the effects of my actions as related to a goal. The information did not include value judgments or recom- mendations on how to improve.
Decades of education research support the idea that by teaching less and providing more feedback, we can produce greater learning (see Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Hattie, 2008; Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001). Compare the typical lecture-driven course, which often produces less-than- optimal learning, with the peer instruction model developed by Eric Mazur (2009) at Harvard. He hardly lectures at all to his 200 introductory physics students; instead, he gives them problems to think about individually and then discuss in small groups. This system, he writes, “provides frequent and continuous feedback (to both the students and the instructor) about the level of understanding of the subject being discussed” (p. 51), producing gains in both conceptual understanding of the subject and problem-solving skills. Less “teaching,” more feedback equals better results.
Feedback Essentials
Whether feedback is just there to be grasped or is provided by another per- son, helpful feedback is goal-referenced; tangible and transparent; actionable; user-friendly (specific and personalized); timely; ongoing; and consistent.
Goal-Referenced Effective feedback requires that a person has a goal, takes action to achieve the goal, and receives goal-related information about his or her actions. I told a joke—why? To make people laugh. I wrote a story to engage the reader with vivid language and believable dialogue that captures the characters’ feelings. I went up to bat to get a hit. If I am not clear on my goals or if I fail to pay attention to them, I cannot get helpful feedback (nor am I likely to achieve my goals).
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Section 3.3 Seven Keys to Effective Feedback
Information becomes feedback if, and only if, I am trying to cause something and the information tells me whether I am on track or need to change course. If some joke or aspect of my writing isn’t working—a revealing, nonjudgmen- tal phrase—I need to know.
Note that in everyday situations, goals are often implicit, although fairly obvi- ous to everyone. I don’t need to announce when telling the joke that my aim is to make you laugh. But in school, learners are often unclear about the specific goal of a task or lesson, so it is crucial to remind them about the goal and the criteria by which they should self-assess. For example, a teacher might say,
• The point of this writing task is for you to make readers laugh. So, when rereading your draft or getting feedback from peers, ask, how funny is this? Where might it be funnier?
• As you prepare a table poster to display the findings of your science project, remember that the aim is to interest people in your work as well as to describe the facts you discovered through your experi- ment. Self-assess your work against those two criteria using these rubrics. The science fair judges will do likewise.
Tangible and Transparent Any useful feedback system involves not only a clear goal, but also tangi- ble results related to the goal. People laugh, chuckle, or don’t laugh at each joke; students are highly attentive, somewhat attentive, or inattentive to my teaching.
Even as little children, we learn from such tangible feedback. That’s how we learn to walk; to hold a spoon; and to understand that certain words magically yield food, drink, or a change of clothes from big people. The best feedback is so tangible that anyone who has a goal can learn from it.
Alas, far too much instructional feedback is opaque, as revealed in a true story a teacher told me years ago. A student came up to her at year’s end and said, “Miss Jones, you kept writing this same word on my English papers all year, and I still don’t know what it means.” “What’s the word?” she asked. “Vag-oo,” he said. (The word was vague!)
Sometimes, even when the information is tangible and transparent, the per- formers don’t obtain it—either because they don’t look for it or because they are too busy performing to focus on the effects. In sports, novice tennis play- ers or batters often don’t realize that they’re taking their eyes off the ball; they often protest, in fact, when that feedback is given. (Constantly yelling “Keep your eye on the ball!” rarely works.) And we have all seen how new teachers are sometimes so busy concentrating on “teaching” that they fail to notice that few students are listening or learning.
That’s why, in addition to feedback from coaches or other able observers, video or audio recordings can help us perceive things that we may not per- ceive as we perform; and by extension, such recordings help us learn to look
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for difficult-to-perceive but vital information. I recommend that all teachers videotape their own classes at least once a month. It was a transformative experience for me when I did it as a beginning teacher. Concepts that had been crystal clear to me when I was teaching seemed opaque and downright confusing on tape—captured also in the many quizzical looks of my students, which I had missed in the moment.
Actionable Effective feedback is concrete, specific, and useful; it provides actionable infor- mation. Thus, “Good job!” and “You did that wrong” and B+ are not feedback at all. We can easily imagine the learners asking themselves in response to these comments, what specifically should I do more or less of next time, based on this information? No idea. They don’t know what was “good” or “wrong” about what they did.
Actionable feedback must also be accepted by the performer. Many so-called feedback situations lead to arguments because the givers are not sufficiently descriptive; they jump to an inference from the data instead of simply pre- senting the data. For example, a supervisor may make the unfortunate but common mistake of stating that “many students were bored in class.” That’s a judgment, not an observation. It would have been far more useful and less debatable had the supervisor said something like, “I counted ongoing inat- tentive behaviors in 12 of the 25 students once the lecture was underway. The behaviors included texting under desks, passing notes, and making eye contact with other students. However, after the small-group exercise began, I saw such behavior in only one student.”
Such care in offering neutral, goal-related facts is the whole point of the clinical supervision of teaching and of good coaching more generally. Effective super- visors and coaches work hard to carefully observe and comment on what they observed, based on a clear statement of goals. That’s why I always ask when visiting a class, “What would you like me to look for and perhaps count?” In my experience as a teacher of teachers, I have always found such pure feed- back to be accepted and welcomed. Effective coaches also know that in com- plex performance situations, actionable feedback about what went right is as important as feedback about what didn’t work.
User-Friendly Even if feedback is specific and accurate in the eyes of experts or bystanders, it is not of much value if the user cannot understand it or is overwhelmed by it. Highly technical feedback will seem odd and confusing to a novice. Describing a baseball swing to a 6-year-old in terms of torque and other physics concepts will not likely yield a better hitter. Too much feedback is also counterproduc- tive; better to help the performer concentrate on only one or two key elements of performance than to create a buzz of information coming in from all sides.
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Section 3.3 Seven Keys to Effective Feedback
Expert coaches uniformly avoid overloading performers with too much or too technical information. They tell the performers one important thing they noticed that, if changed, will likely yield immediate and noticeable improve- ment (“I was confused about who was talking in the dialogue you wrote in this paragraph”). They don’t offer advice until they make sure the performer understands the importance of what they saw.
Timely In most cases, the sooner I get feedback, the better. I don’t want to wait for hours or days to find out whether my students were attentive and whether they learned, or which part of my written story works and which part doesn’t. I say “in most cases” to allow for situations like playing a piano piece in a recital. I don’t want my teacher or the audience barking out feedback as I per- form. That’s why it is more precise to say that good feedback is “timely” rather than “immediate.”
A great problem in education, however, is untimely feedback. Vital feedback on key performances often comes days, weeks, or even months after the performance—think of writing and handing in papers or getting back results on standardized tests. As educators, we should work overtime to figure out ways to ensure that students get more timely feedback and opportunities to use it while the attempt and effects are still fresh in their minds.
Before you say that this is impossible, remember that feedback does not need to come only from the teacher or even from people at all. Technology is one powerful tool—part of the power of computer-assisted learning is unlimited, timely feedback and opportunities to use it. Peer review is another strategy for managing the load to ensure lots of timely feedback; it’s essential, how- ever, to train students to do small-group peer review to high standards, with- out immature criticisms or unhelpful praise.
Ongoing Adjusting our performance depends on not only receiving feedback but also having opportunities to use it. What makes any assessment in education for- mative is not merely that it precedes summative assessments, but that the performer has opportunities, if results are less than optimal, to reshape the performance to better achieve the goal. In summative assessment, the feed- back comes too late; the performance is over.
Thus, the more feedback I can receive in real time, the better my ultimate per- formance will be. This is how all highly successful computer games work. If you play Angry Birds, Halo, Guitar Hero, or Tetris, you know that the key to sub- stantial improvement is that the feedback is both timely and ongoing. When you fail, you can immediately start over—sometimes even right where you left off—to get another opportunity to receive and learn from the feedback. (This powerful feedback loop is also user-friendly. Games are built to reflect and adapt to our changing need, pace, and ability to process information.)
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Section 3.3 Seven Keys to Effective Feedback
It is telling, too, that performers are often judged on their ability to adjust in light of feedback. The ability to quickly adapt one’s performance is a mark of all great achievers and problem solvers in a wide array of fields. Or, as many little league coaches say, “The problem is not making errors; you will all miss many balls in the field, and that’s part of learning. The problem is when you don’t learn from the errors.”
Consistent To be useful, feedback must be consistent. Clearly, performers can only adjust their performance successfully if the information fed back to them is stable, accurate, and trustworthy. In education, that means teachers have to be on the same page about what high-quality work is. Teachers need to look at stu- dent work together, becoming more consistent over time and formalizing their judgments in highly descriptive rubrics supported by anchor products and performances. By extension, if we want student-to-student feedback to be more helpful, students have to be trained to be consistent the same way we train teachers, using the same exemplars and rubrics.
Progress Toward a Goal
In light of these key characteristics of helpful feedback, how can schools most effectively use feedback as part of a system of formative assessment? The key is to gear feedback to long-term goals.
Let’s look at how this works in sports. My daughter runs the mile in track. At the end of each lap in races and practice races, the coaches yell out split times (the times for each lap) and bits of feedback (“You’re not swinging your arms!” “You’re on pace for 5:15”), followed by advice (“Pick it up—you need to take two seconds off this next lap to get in under 5:10!”).
My daughter and her teammates are getting feedback (and advice) about how they are performing now compared with their final desired time. My daughter’s goal is to run a 5:00 mile. She has already run 5:09. Her coach is telling her that at the pace she just ran in the first lap, she is unlikely even to meet her best time so far this season, never mind her long-term goal. Then, he tells her something descriptive about her current performance (she’s not swinging her arms) and gives her a brief piece of concrete advice (take two seconds off the next lap) to make achievement of the goal more likely.
The ability to improve one’s result depends on the ability to adjust one’s pace in light of ongoing feedback that measures performance against a concrete, long-term goal. But this isn’t what most school district “pacing guides” and grades on “formative” tests tell you.
They yield a grade against recent objectives taught, not useful feedback against the final performance standards. Instead of informing teachers and students at an interim date whether they are on track to achieve a desired level of student performance by the end of the school year, the guide and the
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Section 3.3 Seven Keys to Effective Feedback
test grade just provide a schedule for the teacher to follow in delivering con- tent and a grade on that content. It’s as if at the end of the first lap of the mile race, my daughter’s coach simply yelled out, “B+ on that lap!”
The advice for how to change this sad situation should be clear: Score stu- dent work in the fall and winter against spring standards, use more pre- and post-assessments to measure progress toward these standards, and do the item analysis to note what each student needs to work on for better future performance.
“But There’s No Time!”
Although the universal teacher lament that there’s no time for such feedback is understandable, remember that “no time to give and use feedback” actu- ally means “no time to cause learning.” As we have seen, research shows that less teaching plus more feedback is the key to achieving greater learning. And there are numerous ways—through technology, peers, and other teachers— that students can get the feedback they need.
References Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.). (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind,
experience, and school. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Hattie, J. (2008). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York: Routledge.
Marzano, R., Pickering, D., & Pollock, J. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: Research- based strategies for increasing student achievement. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Mazur, E. (2009, January 2). Farewell, lecture? Science, 323, 50–51. Source: Wiggins, G. (2012). 7 keys to effective feedback. Educational Leadership. 70(1), 10–19. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Copyright © Grant Wiggins.
Summary Wiggins calls for feedback to be stable, accurate, and trustworthy. He highlights the difference between feedback, evaluation, and grading, implicitly challenging teachers to expand their rep- ertoire to include all three processes on a regular basis.
Wiggins also calls for frequent feedback, claiming that the more feedback students receive, the more learning will occur. He concludes the article by acknowledging the difficulty of finding the time to provide such feedback in today’s classrooms; he suggests that teachers consider teaching less and providing more feedback through technology, peers, and other educators. If the goal is to enhance and improve learning, then time providing direct feedback is well spent.
Wiggins also proposes more pre- and postassessments, more item analysis on tests in which students are provided specific information about their errors, and more early practice testing (i.e., in the fall for spring tests) that could provide individualized feedback as part of classroom practice.
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Section 3.4 Feedback and Feed Forward
Critical Thinking Questions 1. What do you think about the concept of teaching less in order to provide more feedback?
What might that look like in today’s classrooms, whether face to face or online? 2. Providing feedback that actually contributes to learning is not easy and is not a skill that
educators necessarily learn through preservice teacher education. How do teachers learn to provide feedback that is useful?
3. Wiggins claims that feedback is not the same as evaluation. Yet, feedback can be part of a formative assessment process that does provide information to learners before it is too late. When should evaluation or judgment be avoided, and when is it important to give evalua- tive comments that help students learn from their mistakes?
4. Design a research study in which you and your colleagues would examine feedback to stu- dents provided online. Determine how you would explore the connections between feedback provided and subsequent student work improvement.
3.4 Feedback and Feed Forward, by Nancy Frey and Doug Fisher
Introduction Nancy Frey and Doug Fisher are both professors of educational leadership at San Diego State University. They are the founders of Literacy for Life and have written and presented about read- ing, collaborative learning, and, most recently, the common core English language arts stan- dards in PLCs. They are also the authors of the 2011 text, The Formative Assessment Action Plan: Practical Steps to More Successful Teaching and Learning.
The evocative title of this article indicates a new perspective on what happens after teachers provide feedback to individual students. Frey and Fisher propose that it is not enough to monitor at the individual level; rather, teachers need to look for patterns across students’ work in order to design interventions and targeted teaching approaches to address group needs.
Frey and Fisher make the connection between feedback, assessment, and “feeding forward” to inform instruction. In their view, any one of these practices is incomplete without the other two. The authors also discuss the issue of the focus of feedback, noting that feedback about the assigned task is the most familiar to teachers and students. Other types of feedback, from the work of Hattie and Timperley (2007) include feedback about the process, about self-regulation, and about “the self as a person” (p. 90).
Excerpt The following is an excerpt from Frey, N., & Fisher, D. (2011). Feedback and feed forward. Prin- cipal Leadership, 11(9), 90–93.
Internet searches often yield surprising results. In preparation for writing this column, we searched one of our favorite sayings: “You can’t fatten sheep by weighing them.” One of the results was an article from the April 1908 issue of the Farm Journal on early spring lambs. Among the advice to sheep farmers was to take care in apportioning their rations so as not to overfeed, to provide
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Section 3.4 Feedback and Feed Forward
healthy living conditions so they can grow, and to take careful measure of their progress—and this piece of wisdom: “Study your sheep and know them not only as a flock but separately, and remember that they have an individual- ity as surely as your horse or cow” (Brick, 1908, p. 154).
Students are not sheep, of course, but our role as cultivators of young people has much in common with that of livestock farmers. As educators, we recog- nize the importance of a healthy learning climate and seek to create one each day. In addition, we apportion information so that students can act upon their growing knowledge. And we measure their progress regularly to see whether they are making expected gains. As part of effective practice, teachers rou- tinely check for understanding through the learning process. This is most commonly accomplished by asking questions, analyzing tasks, and adminis- tering low-stakes quizzes to measure the extent to which students are acquir- ing new information and skills. But it’s one thing to gather information (we’re good at that); it’s another thing to respond in meaningful ways and then plan for subsequent instruction.
Without processes to provide students with solid feedback that yields deeper understanding, checking for understanding devolves into a game of “guess what’s in the teacher’s brain.” And without ways to look for patterns across students, formative assessments become a frustrating academic exercise. Knowing both the flock and the individuals in it are essential practices for cultivating learning.
Knowing the Individual: Effective Feedback
Most of us have received poor feedback: The teacher who scrawled “rewrite this” in the margin of an essay we wrote. The coach who said, “No, you’re doing it wrong; keep practicing.” The coworker who took over a task and did it for us when our progress stalled. The frustration on the learner’s part matches that felt by the teacher, the coach, or the coworker: why can’t he or she get this? That shared vexation produces a mutual sense of defeat. On the part of the learner, the internal dialogue becomes, “I can’t do this.” The teacher thinks, “I can’t teach this.” Over time, blame sets in, and the student and the teacher begin to find fault with each other.
Hattie and Timperley (2007) wrote about feedback across four dimensions: “Feedback about the task (FT), about the processing of the task (FP), about self-regulation (FR), and about the self as a person (FS)” (p. 90). For example, “You need to put a semicolon in this sentence” (FT) has limited usefulness and is not usually generalized to other tasks. On the other hand, “Make sure that your sentences have noun-verb agreements because it’s going make it easier for the reader to understand your argument” (FP) gives feedback informa- tion about a writing convention necessary in all essays. The researchers go on to note that feedback that moves from information about the process to information about self-regulation is the best of all: “Try reading some of your sentences aloud so you can hear when you have and don’t have noun-verb
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Section 3.4 Feedback and Feed Forward
agreement.” The researchers go on to say that FS (“You’re a good writer”) is the least useful, even when it is positive in nature, because it doesn’t add any- thing to one’s learning.
Done carefully, FT can have a modest amount of usefulness, as when editing a paper. Yet feedback about the task is by far the most common kind we offer. The problem is that the task offers only end-game analysis and leaves the learner with little direction on what to do, particularly when there isn’t any recourse to make changes. Most writing teachers will tell you that it is not uncommon for students to engage in limited revision, confined to the spe- cific items listed in the teacher feedback—more recopying than revising. But feedback about the processes used in the task and further advice about one’s self-regulatory strategies to make revisions can leave the learner with a plan for next steps.
Consider the dialogue between English teacher John Goodwin and Alicia, a student in his class. Alicia has drafted an essay on bullying, and Goodwin is providing feedback about her work. Careful to frame his feedback so that it can result in a plan for revision, he draws her attention to her thesis statement and says, “It’s helpful for writers to go back to the main point of the essay and read to see if the evidence is there. I highlight in yellow so I can see if I’ve done that.” The two of them reread her first three paragraphs and highlight where she has provided national statistics and direct quotes from teachers she knows.
Goodwin goes on to say, “Now what I want you to do is look for ways you’ve provided supporting evidence, like citing sources. Let’s highlight those in green.” Alicia quickly notices that while she has made claims, she hasn’t capi- talized on any authoritative sources. And by confining her direct quotes to teachers at her school, she has limited the impact of her essay by failing to quote more widely known sources. The little bit of green on her essay illus- trates what she needs to do next: strengthen her sources. Goodwin ends the conversation by saying, “It sounds like you have a plan for revising the content. Let’s meet again on Wednesday and you can update me on your progress.”
Feedback of this kind takes only a few minutes, yet it can add up in a crowded classroom. For this reason, many teachers rely on written forms of feedback instead of direct conversations. Even in written form, the guidelines about feedback remain the same: focus on the processes needed for the task, move to information about behaviors within the student’s influence to make changes, and steer clear of comments that are either too global or too minute to be of much use. Wiggins (1998) advises constructing written feedback so that it meets four important criteria: first, it must be timely so that it is paired as closely as possible with the attempt; second, it should be specific in nature; third, it should be written in a manner that it understandable to the student; and fourth, it should be actionable so that the learner can make revisions.
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Section 3.4 Feedback and Feed Forward
Knowing the Flock: Feed Forward
Although feedback is primarily at the individual level, feed forward describes the process of making instructional decisions about what should happen next (Frey & Fisher, in press). Data about student progress is commonly gath- ered using common formative assessments—either commercially produced or made by the teacher. In addition, many school teams engage in consen- sus scoring with colleagues to calibrate practices, especially with tasks that have a significant qualitative component, such as writing (Fisher, Frey, Farnan, Fearn, & Petersen, 2004). Lack of time to work with other colleagues can limit these practices, however. The good news is that a teacher’s own classroom can serve as the unit of analysis as well.
With all the solid feedback provided to students, it seems natural to take it one step further by recording results and some pattern anaIysis. For example, mathematics teacher Ben Teichman keeps track of student progress across several dimensions of instruction. As he provides written or verbal feedback to his students, he notes which skills they have mastered and which ones are still proving difficult for them. His error analysis record sheet enables him to make decisions about who needs reteaching and when it needs to occur (see Figure 3.1). “All the feedback in the world isn’t going to do much good if what they really need is more instruction,” said Teichman, an insight Hattie and Timperley (2007) share.
Figure 3.1: Error analysis sheet in Algebra II: Introduction to complex numbers
Teachers can use an error analysis sheet to record the initials of students who have not mastered instructional goals.
SS, LH
RA, EO, LH
OS, SM, VR, EO, LH
JV, EO, KL, KD, NO, TO, MA, LH, VZ, UC, AZ
OJ, IH, SR, MM
IH, SR, RD, MM
PL, GT, DM, SS, WB, CJ, LI, NH, RR, PF, DE, WR
YV
RC, NS, SA, JC, SZ
NS, JC, SZ
NS, NH, CC, GT, JO, DD, SZ, WK, FL, BB, TR, FD, BH
HG, FR, SL, VG, CC, KY, SD, KJ, NJ, FE, HU, YS
KI, DR, SD, CG, OG, QE, WN, RT, JK, FT, PD, NM, ER
BB, QE
HG, FD, LK, VL, NK, DZ, SW, RY, HU, QE
Can explain what an imaginary number is, and can contrast it with real numbers
Can reduce imaginary numbers to their simplest radical form
Can cite at least two applications for imaginary numbers
Understands the relationship between Cartesian, polar, and exponential forms (Euler’s formula) of representation for imaginary numbers
Period 1 Period 3 Period 4Period 2SS, LH
RA, EO, LH
OS, SM, VR, EO, LH
JV, EO, KL, KD, NO, TO, MA, LH, VZ, UC, AZ
OJ, IH, SR, MM
IH, SR, RD, MM
PL, GT, DM, SS, WB, CJ, LI, NH, RR, PF, DE, WR
YV
RC, NS, SA, JC, SZ
NS, JC, SZ
NS, NH, CC, GT, JO, DD, SZ, WK, FL, BB, TR, FD, BH
HG, FR, SL, VG, CC, KY, SD, KJ, NJ, FE, HU, YS
KI, DR, SD, CG, OG, QE, WN, RT, JK, FT, PD, NM, ER
BB, QE
HG, FD, LK, VL, NK, DZ, SW, RY, HU, QE
Can explain what an imaginary number is, and can contrast it with real numbers
Can reduce imaginary numbers to their simplest radical form
Can cite at least two applications for imaginary numbers
Understands the relationship between Cartesian, polar, and exponential forms (Euler’s formula) of representation for imaginary numbers
Period 1 Period 3 Period 4Period 2
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Section 3.4 Feedback and Feed Forward
Unlike a checklist to track mastery, Teichman’s error analysis sheet is used to identify the students who are struggling. He logs the initials of students in each period who are still having difficulty with major concepts after initial instruction, then makes decisions about follow up and reteaching. For exam- ple, the error analysis sheet shows that all of his classes are still having dif- ficulty with understanding the relationship between different forms of repre- senting imaginary numbers. That tells him that reteaching to the whole group is in order. On the other hand, smaller groups of students are having trouble with other concepts. “I need to pull those students into small groups, because the majority of the class is doing fine otherwise,” he said. Fourth period is another story. “I’ve got lots of students all across the board who are struggling with this whole unit,” he said. “Time for me to take a few steps back and revisit what they know already about radicals before we dive back into imaginary numbers.”
Conclusion
“To be successful, [the sheep farmer] must also be gentle, with a watchful eye for little things . . . and a hundred minor details upon which success depends,” wrote Brick (1908, p. 154) more than a century ago. Feedback and feed- forward processes in the classroom should be used to cultivate learning, and not just simply measure it. By providing students with feedback they can use to revise and by tracking student progress to determine who needs subse- quent instruction and when it should occur, educators can ensure that they feed and not merely weigh.
References Brick, H. (1908). Early spring lambs. The Farm Journal, 32(4), 153–154.
Frey, N., & Fisher, D. (in press). The formative assessment action plan: Practical steps to more successful teaching and learning. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Fisher, D., Frey, N., Farnan, N., Feam, L., & Petersen, F. (2004). Increasing writing achievement in an urban middle school. Middle School Journal, 36(2), 21–26.
Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77, 81–112.
Wiggins, G. (1998). Educative assessment: Designing assessments to inform and improve student performance. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Source: Frey, N. & Fisher, D. (2011). Feedback and feed forward. Principal Leadership, 11(9), 90–93. Copyright (2014) National Association of Secondary School Principals. For more information on NASSP products and services to promote excellence in middle level and high school leadership, visit www.nassp.org.
Summary Frey and Fisher provide specifics on one type of data regarding feedback that teachers would find beneficial. They suggest that teachers keep checklists or error analysis sheets in order to determine the types of feedback they have provided to individual students as well as the types of errors that students make.
Collecting these data, however, is only the first step. Frey and Fisher challenge teachers to then use these data to determine their next steps in teaching, reteaching, or other follow-up steps.
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Section 3.5 Four Steps in Grading Reform
Although the article does not provide great detail in terms of the implications for planning, the authors claim that simply measuring learning without considering what those measurements mean for teaching will not lead to improved learning. Frey and Fisher note that these practices can work for individual teachers but would be even more effective if shared across class sec- tions or schools. Finally, these authors remind readers of the value of verbal as well as written feedback.
Critical Thinking Questions 1. The notions of feedback and feed forward are unique in the literature on assessment. What
are the implications for this concept for online teaching and learning? How can feedback (given and received) in an online environment contribute to instructional design?
2. What’s the difference between feedback concerning a task and feedback concerning the pro- cess of completing the task? Give an example from your own experience or subject context.
3. Research is beginning to emerge concerning the connections between assessment data (usu- ally with respect to standardized test performance) and instruction, although there are few studies that demonstrate effective and intentional connections that teachers make between assessments and what they do in the classroom (Conderman & Hedin, 2012; Watts-Taffe et al., 2012). How might teachers explore these connections as a PLC or grade-level team? What might the evidence of follow-up and reteaching and use of assessment data look like?
4. Make the argument that teachers almost intuitively give this kind of verbal and written feed- back followed by feeding forward to inform their teaching. Then, counter that argument and suggest, as Frey and Fisher do, that teachers in fact don’t do this enough and that they need to be taught to connect assessment and design of their instruction.
3.5 Four Steps in Grading Reform, by Thomas Guskey and Lee Ann Jung
Introduction Thomas Guskey is a well-known professor and expert in the area of professional development for educators. Guskey and co-author Lee Ann Jung maintain a teacher-learning lens in this article that focuses on four proposals for meaningful grading.
Grading students’ performance is seldom written about or discussed, though it is usually the cul- mination of the assessment process in classrooms and schools. Educators and leaders in schools assume that teachers know how to determine the letter grades that appear on report cards each term. Guskey and Jung challenge that assumption. They call for reform and rethink grading practices at the school and classroom levels.
The authors note that there is great variety in the ways that teachers determine grades. More- over, there is seldom a clearly stated purpose for the grades printed on the report card for par- ents and students to see. The article discusses an alternative to just one letter grade for a subject or content area and instead discusses the value of process, progress, and product grades to fully represent students’ learning during the term.
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Section 3.5 Four Steps in Grading Reform
Finally, Guskey and Jung propose a means of grading students who are not currently on grade level, reminding us that the standards movement offers great potential for gain for students who are struggling and need feedback based on exactly where they are in their learning.
Excerpt The following is an excerpt from Guskey, T. R., & Jung, L. A. (2012). Four steps in grading reform. Principal Leadership, 13(4), 22–28.
The field of education is rapidly moving toward a standards-based approach to grading. School leaders have become increasingly aware of the tremendous variation that exists in grading practices, even among teachers of the same courses in the same department in the same school. Consequently, students’ grades often have little relation to their performance on state assessments— an issue that has education leaders and parents alike concerned. Such incon- sistencies lead many to perceive grading as a distinctively idiosyncratic pro- cess that is highly subjective and often unfair to students.
Complicating reform efforts, however, is the fact that few school leaders have extensive knowledge of various grading methods, the advantages and short- comings of those methods, and the effects that different grading policies have on students (Brookhart, 2011a; Brookhart & Nitko, 2008; Stiggins, 1993; Stig- gins & Chappuis, 2011). As a result, attempts at grading reform often lack direction and coherence and rarely bring about significant improvement in the accuracy or relevance of the grades students receive.
Effective grading reform requires four steps. Although each step addresses a different aspect of grading and reporting, all of the steps are related. Together, the four steps are the foundation of grading policies and practices that are fair, meaningful, educationally sound, and beneficial to students.
Be Clear About the Purpose
One of the major reasons that school leaders run into difficulties in their attempts to reform grading and reporting is that they fail to identify the pur- pose of grading. Enamored of the promise of new online grade books and reporting software, they charge ahead without giving serious thought to the function of grades as communication tools. In particular, they fail to consider what information they want grades to communicate, who is the primary audi- ence for that information, and what outcome they want to achieve. As a result, predictable problems arise that thwart even the most dedicated attempts at reform.
Compounding the problem, parents, teachers, students, and school leaders typically see report cards serving quite different purposes. Some suggest that those differences stem from the conflicting opinions about the report cards’ intended audience. Are they designed to communicate information primarily to parents, students, or school personnel?
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Section 3.5 Four Steps in Grading Reform
Although a variety of purposes for grades and report cards may be consid- ered legitimate, educators seldom agree on the primary purpose. This lack of consensus leads to attempts to develop a reporting device that addresses multiple purposes but ends up addressing no purpose very well (Austin & McCann, 1992; Brookhart, 1991, 2011a; Cross & Frary, 1999).
The simple truth is that no single reporting device can serve all purposes well. In fact, some purposes are actually counter to others.
For example, suppose that nearly all students in a particular school attain high levels of achievement and earn high grades. Those results pose no problem if the purpose of the report cards is to communicate information about stu- dents’ achievement to parents or to provide information to students for the purpose of self-evaluation. But that same result poses major problems, if the purpose of the report cards is to select students for special educational paths or to evaluate the effectiveness of instructional programs.
To use grades for selection or evaluation purposes requires variation in the grades—and the more variation, the better! For those purposes, grades should be dispersed across all possible categories to maximize the differ- ences among students and programs. How else can appropriate selection take place or one program be judged as being better than another if all students receive the same high grades? Determining differences under such conditions is impossible.
The first decision that must be made in any reform effort, therefore, is deter- mining the purpose of the grades and report card. The struggles that most school leaders experience in reforming grading policies and practices stem from changing their grading methods before they reach consensus about the purpose of grades and report cards (Brookhart, 2011b). All changes in grading policy and practice must build from a clearly articulated purpose statement, which should be printed on the report card itself so that all who look at the report card understand its intent. When a clear purpose is defined, decisions about the most appropriate policies and practices are much easier to make.
Use Multiple Grades
Another issue that poses a significant obstacle to grading and reporting reform is the insistence that students receive a single grade for each subject area or course. The simplest logic reveals that this practice makes little sense. If someone proposed combining measures of height, weight, diet, and exercise into a single number or mark to represent a person’s physical condition, we would consider it ridiculous. How could the combination of such diverse mea- sures yield anything meaningful? Yet every day, teachers combine evidence of student achievement, attitude, responsibility, effort, and behavior into a single grade, and no one questions it.
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Section 3.5 Four Steps in Grading Reform
In determining students’ grades, teachers frequently merge scores from major exams, compositions, quizzes, projects, and reports with evidence from homework, punctuality in turning in assignments, class participation, work habits, and effort. Computerized grading programs help teachers apply differ- ent weights to each of those categories (Guskey, 2002a), which they then com- bine in widely varied ways (see McMillan, 2001; McMillan, Myran, & Work- man, 2002). The result is what researchers refer to as a “hodgepodge grade” (Cross & Frary, 1999).
Another more meaningful approach is to offer separate grades for product, process, and progress learning criteria (Guskey, 2006; Guskey & Bailey, 2010).
Product criteria reflect what students know and are able to do at a specific point in time. In other words, they reflect students’ current level of achieve- ment. Evidence of meeting product criteria comes from culminating or “sum- mative” evaluations of student performance (O’Connor, 2009). Teachers who use product criteria typically base grades on final examination scores; final reports, projects, or exhibits; overall assessments; and other culminating demonstrations of learning.
Process criteria are emphasized by educators who believe that product crite- ria do not provide a complete picture of student learning. They contend that grades should reflect not only the final results but also how students got there. Teachers who consider responsibility, effort, or work habits when assigning grades use process criteria. So do those who count classroom quizzes, forma- tive assessments, homework, punctuality turning in assignments, class par- ticipation, or attendance.
Progress criteria are based on how much students have gained from their learning experiences. Other names for progress criteria include learning gain, improvement scoring, value-added learning, and educational growth. Teachers who use progress criteria look at how much improvement students have made over a particular period of time, rather than just where they are at a given moment. As a result, scoring criteria may be highly individualized among students. For example, grades might be based on the number of skills or standards in a learning progression that students mastered and on the ade- quacy of that level of progress for each student. Most of the research evidence on progress criteria comes from studies of individualized instruction (Esty & Teppo, 1992) and special education programs (Gersten, Vaughn, & Brengel- man, 1996; Jung & Guskey, 2012).
After establishing specific indicators of product, process, and progress learn- ing criteria, teachers then assign separate grades to each set of indicators. In this way, they keep grades for achievement separate from grades for responsi- bility, learning skills, effort, work habits, or learning progress (Guskey, 2002b; Stiggins, 2008). This allows a more accurate and comprehensive picture of what students accomplish in school.
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Section 3.5 Four Steps in Grading Reform
Reporting separate grades for product, process, and progress criteria also makes grading more meaningful. Grades for academic achievement reflect precisely that—academic achievement—and not some confusing amalgama- tion that’s impossible to interpret and that rarely presents a true picture of students’ proficiency (Guskey, 2002a). Teachers also indicate that students take process elements, such as homework, more seriously when it’s reported separately. Parents favor the practice because it provides a more comprehen- sive profile of their children’s performance in school (Guskey, Swan, & Jung, 2011). The key to success in reporting multiple grades, however, rests in the clear specification of the indicators that relate to product, process, and prog- ress criteria. Teachers must be able to describe how they plan to evaluate stu- dents’ achievement, attitude, effort, behavior, and progress. Then they must clearly communicate those criteria to students, parents, and others.
Change Procedures for Selecting the Class Valedictorian and Eliminate Class Rank
The third step involves challenging a long-held tradition in education. Most school leaders today understand the negative consequences of grading on the curve. They recognize that when grades are based on students’ relative standing among classmates, rather than on what students actually achieve, it’s impossible to tell if anyone learned anything.
Most school leaders also see that grading on the curve makes learning highly competitive for students who must battle one another for the few scarce rewards (high grades) awarded by the teacher. Such competition discourages students from cooperating or helping one another because doing so might hurt the helper’s chance at success (Krumboltz & Yeh, 1996). Similarly, teach- ers may refrain from helping individual students under those conditions because some students might construe this as showing favoritism and biasing the competition (Gray, 1993). School leaders may fail to recognize that other common school policies yield similar negative consequences, such as calculat- ing students’ class rank on the basis of weighted GPAs and selecting the top student as the class valedictorian.
There is nothing wrong with recognizing excellence in academic performance. But when calculating class rank, the focus is on sorting and selecting talent, rather than on developing talent. The struggle to be on top of the sorting pro- cess and then chosen as class valedictorian leads to serious and sometimes bitter competition among high-achieving students. Early in their high school careers, top students analyze the selection procedures and then, often with the help of their parents, find ingenious ways to improve their standing. Gain- ing that honor requires not simply high achievement; it requires outdoing everyone else. And sometimes the difference among top-achieving students is as little as one-thousandth of a decimal point in a weighted GPA.
Ironically, the term valedictorian has nothing to do with achievement. It comes from the Latin, vale dicere, which means “to say farewell.” The first reference to the term appeared in the diary of the Reverend Edward Holyoke, president
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Section 3.5 Four Steps in Grading Reform
of Harvard College in 1759, who noted that “Officers of the Sophisters chose a Valedictorian.” Lacking any established criteria, the Sophisters (senior class members) arbitrarily selected the classmate with the highest academic stand- ing to deliver the commencement address.
Within a few years, most colleges and universities moved away from com- petitive ranking procedures to identify honor students and, instead, adopted the criterion-based Latin system, graduating students cum laude, magna cum laude, and summa cum laude. Most also altered their procedures for selecting a commencement speaker, using such means as student votes and appoint- ments made by faculty members on the basis of not only grades but also involvement in service projects and participation in extracurricular activities.
More and more high schools today are moving away from competitive ranking systems and adopting criterion-based systems similar to those used in col- leges and universities. Rigorous academic criteria are established for attain- ing the high honor categories, but no limit is set on the number of students who might attain that level of achievement. Schools that establish such poli- cies generally find that student achievement rises as more students strive to attain the honor. In addition, students begin helping each other gain the honor because helping a classmate can actually help, rather than hinder the helper’s chance of success. Instead of pitting students against each other, such a sys- tem unites students and teachers in efforts to master the curriculum and meet rigorous academic standards.
Recognizing excellence in academic performance is a vital aspect of any learn- ing community. But such recognition need not be based on arbitrary crite- ria and deleterious competition. Instead, it can and should be based on clear models of excellence that exemplify the highest standards and goals for stu- dents. (See Guskey & Bailey, 2010.) Educators can then take pride in helping the largest number of students possible meet those rigorous criteria and high standards of excellence.
Give Honest, Accurate, and Meaningful Grades
The fourth step in effective reform of grading and reporting is to ensure hon- est, accurate, and meaningful grades for exceptional and struggling learners. Of all of the students in a school’s population, those who have disabilities or who are struggling learners have the most to gain from a standards-based approach. For those students, intervention decisions depend on having clear and complete information on their performance.
But moving to standards-based grading presents a serious challenge. By removing non-achievement factors from grades, all of the common grading adaptations that teachers typically make for such students are no longer avail- able. Teachers cannot add points for effort, weight assignments differently, or use a different grading scale. Teachers no longer report on a student’s overall performance in a subject area, but on how the student performed on a spe- cific skill or strand of skills. For many struggling or exceptional learners, this
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Section 3.5 Four Steps in Grading Reform
change could result in a failing grade. But receiving a failing grade on a stan- dard that the team has already agreed is unachievable provides no informa- tion about how that student is progressing.
In response to this challenge, we developed an inclusive grading model (see Jung & Guskey, 2007, 2010, 2012) that educational teams use to modify the skill or standard being measured. Teachers then use the same grading prac- tices for all students, but for those who are significantly behind grade-level expectations, teachers report students’ achievement on the level of work they are able to complete. This way, students and their families understand that the students’ achievement is not on grade level, but they also have specific information about how they are progressing toward the grade-level standard.
Consider, for example, an eighth-grade student who is reading on a fourth- grade level. Instead of assigning that student a failing grade on the eighth- grade language arts standards, the student is graded on a modified expecta- tion (see Figure 3.2). The educational team identifies a plan for reducing this student’s gap between performance and the grade-level expectation. A part of this plan involves determining modified standards for this student, including appropriate objectives on the most important language arts skills. At the end of each reporting period, the language arts teacher grades and reports achieve- ment on the modified expectations. If the student met the modified standard, then the grade that corresponds with meeting the standard is assigned.
Figure 3.2: Example of language arts section of a report card
with modified standards
B*
3*
3*
3
4
4*
LANGUAGE ARTS
Reading
Writing
Listening
Speaking
Language
*Grades marked with an asterisk are based on modi�ied expectations. For additional detail, please see the attached progress report.
Marking period
1 2 3 4
In grading on modified standards, it is absolutely necessary that the report card clearly communicates that the grade is based on modified expectations. Teachers should include additional detail with the report card that outlines what was measured, describes what interventions were used, and elaborates
B*
3*
3*
3
4
4*
LANGUAGE ARTS
Reading
Writing
Listening
Speaking
Language
*Grades marked with an asterisk are based on modi�ied expectations. For additional detail, please see the attached progress report.
Marking period
1 2 3 4
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Section 3.5 Four Steps in Grading Reform
on the data collected. In determining language for transcripts, it is important from a legal perspective that nothing identifies a student as having a disabil- ity. Noting that grades are based on a modified expectation on a transcript is legal and good practice. Using words such as “special education” or “IEP,” however, is not legal notation (Office of Civil Rights, 2008).
For leaders in secondary education, implementing the inclusive grading model requires district and state-level support, because the model requires that schools note when students are not on grade level and that schools make mod- ifications and offer interventions to any student needing them, not only stu- dents with disabilities. The inclusive grading model certainly does not lower expectations for students in any way. In fact, the opposite is true. By being transparent about where students are, schools make themselves accountable to employ evidence-based interventions and demonstrate progress toward grade-level standards. Every school has a percentage of students that is not achieving at grade level. But offering the level of transparency needed to address this issue will require courage on the part of key leadership.
Summary
Grading reform is a necessary piece of the move toward a standards-based orientation to education. The preceding four steps are vital to successfully revising grading and reporting systems. Although the numerous decisions that must be made when revising report cards may seem daunting, the four steps we’ve described will be vital to success. The shift to a standards based education is rapidly taking shape, and by taking those initial steps, education leaders can ensure that their grading and reporting systems do not lag behind the greater standards-based movement.
References Austin, S., & McCann, R. (1992). “Here’s another arbitrary grade for your collection”: A state-
wide study of grading policies. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Ameri- can Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA.
Brookhart, S. M. (1991). Grading practices and validity. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 10(1), 35–36.
Brookhart, S. M. (2011a). Grading and learning: Practices that support student achievement. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.
Brookhart, S. M. (2011b). Starting the conversation about grading. Educational Leadership, 69(3), 10–14.
Brookhart, S. M., & Nitko, A. J. (2008). Assessment and grading in classrooms. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Cross, L. H., & Frary, R. B. (1999). Hodgepodge grading: Endorsed by students and teachers alike. Applied Measurement in Education, 2(1), 53–72.
Esty, W. W., & Teppo, A. R. (1992). Grade assignment based on progressive improvement. Mathematics Teacher, 85(8), 616–618.
Gersten, R., Vaughn, S., & Brengelman, S. U. (1996). Grading and academic feedback for special education students and students with learning difficulties. In T. R. Guskey (Ed.), Com- municating student learning: 1996 yearbook of the ASCD (pp. 47–57). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
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Section 3.5 Four Steps in Grading Reform
Gray, K. (1993). Why we will lose: Taylorism in America’s high schools. Phi Delta Kappan, 74(5), 370–374.
Guskey, T. R. (2002a). Computerized grade-books and the myth of objectivity. Phi Delta Kap- pan, 83(10), 775–780.
Guskey, T. R. (2002b). How’s my kid doing? A parents’ guide to grades, marks, and report cards. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.
Guskey, T. R. (2006). Making high school grades meaningful. Phi Delta Kappan, 87(9), 670–675.
Guskey, T R., & Bailey, J. M. (2010). Developing standards-based report cards. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Guskey, T. R., Swan, G. M., & Jung, L. A. (2011, April). Parents’ and teachers’ perceptions of stan- dards based and traditional report cards. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA.
Jung, L. A., & Guskey, T. R. (2012). Grading exceptional and struggling learners. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Jung, L. A., & Guskey, T. R. (2010). Grading exceptional learners. Educational Leadership, 67(5), 31–35.
Jung, L. A., & Guskey, T. R. (2007). Standards-based grading and reporting: A model for special education. Teaching Exceptional Children, 40(2), 48–53.
Krumboltz, J. D., & Yeh, C. J. (1996). Competitive grading sabotages good teaching. Phi Delta Kappan, 78(4), 324–326.
McMillan, J. H. (2001). Secondary teachers’ classroom assessment and grading practices. Edu- cational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 20(1), 20–32.
McMillan, J. H., Myran, S., & Workman, D. (2002). Elementary teachers’ classroom assessment and grading practices. Journal of Educational Research, 95(4), 203–213.
O’Connor, K. (2009). How to grade for learning K-12 (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Office of Civil Rights (2008, October 17). Dear colleague letter: Report cards and transcripts for students with disabilities. Available: www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/ letters/colleague-20081017.html
Stiggins, R. J. (1993). Teacher training in assessment: Overcoming the neglect. In S. L. Wise (Ed.), Teacher training in measurement and assessment skills (pp. 27–40). Lincoln, NE: Buros Institute of Mental Measurements.
Stiggins, R. J. (2008). Student-involved assessment for learning (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice.
Stiggins, R. J., & Chappuis, J. (2011). An introduction to student-involved assessment for learning (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
Source: Guskey, T. R. & Jung, L. A. (2012). Four steps in grading reform. Principal Leadership, 13(4), 22–28. Copyright (2014) National Association of Secondary School Principals. For more information on NASSP products and services to promote excellence in middle level and high school leadership, visit www.nassp.org.
Summary Guskey and Jung suggest that educators replace the final, single grade per subject that is typi- cally seen on report cards for three grades per subject area with the following criteria for each:
1. a product grade that indicates what students know and are able to do at the end of the grading period,
2. a process grade that reflects formative assessments such as quizzes, as well as effort and homework, and
3. a progress grade that identifies improvement made during the grading period.
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Section 3.6 Self Assessment for Understanding
The article also discusses the hazards of class rank and suggests that high schools are moving away from a system that sorts students, replacing it with a model similar to universities in which there is no limit to the number of students who achieve “magna cum laude,” “summa cum laude,” or “cum laude.” Guskey and Jung note that in such a system, students are more likely to help each other achieve goals because they are no longer in competition with each other.
Guskey and Jung direct their suggestions for grading reform to school and teacher leaders, describing the need for adults in schools and districts to learn more about grading, about how grades affect student learning, and about how to communicate more clearly through the assign- ment of grades.
Critical Thinking Questions 1. Provide a critique of the proposed three-grade system (product, process, progress) as
opposed to the more common one grade per subject area on reports cards in most school systems today. What might be the stumbling blocks for converting to such a system? What might teachers have to learn to do with respect to assessment data that they may not do presently?
2. The authors comment on the possible impact of online grading and assessment software, claiming that teachers often assign grades without realizing their potential as communi- cation tools. Is this true in your experience? Does the online environment change grading practices in substantial ways?
3. The reform of grading practices is directly related to the reform of assessment at the class- room level. To what extent should grading practices be systematic and regularized across a whole school or district? Conversely, to what extent should grading be a matter of individual teacher discretion?
4. Propose a plan for a PLC that explores grading reform in a school. What might be the topics for teachers and leaders to discuss? Where might such a discussion begin? What might be the outcomes for such a PLC after a series of meetings?
3.6 Self Assessment for Understanding, by Betty McDonald
Introduction Betty McDonald is currently the coordinator of the Centre for Assessment and Learning at the University of Trinidad and Tobago. Her research interests include measurement, assessment, and problem-based learning. She is the author of the book, Self Assessment in Action, published by Common Ground.
In this article, McDonald reviews selected studies that explore the value of student self- assessment for learning. She uses Boud’s (1986) definition of self-assessment: “the involvement of students in identifying standards and/or criteria to apply to their work and making judge- ments about the extent to which they have met these criteria and standards” (p. 5).
Research indicates that self-assessment is an active process in which students can take personal responsibility for their achievement. The author reports that secondary teachers typically do not
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utilize self-assessment in their own assessment of students; students may, in most classrooms, rely on self-assessment as formative feedback.
McDonald makes the connection between self-assessment, authentic assessment and the use of portfolios. She also notes the importance of students learning how to distinguish between what is good and poor work. Finally, the author asserts that self-assessment is not a solitary process; rather, it relies on the interaction between student and teacher, as well as among the students themselves.
Excerpt The following is an excerpt from McDonald, B. (2007). Self assessment for understanding. Jour- nal of Education, 188(1), 25–40.
This present paper draws empirical evidence from a more comprehensive study on self assessment and academic achievement that provided undis- puted evidence that high school students trained in self assessment skills outperformed their untrained counterparts in external examinations in all curriculum areas. This paper focuses on one aspect of self assessment: under- standing, a key element for achievement. Self assessment has been defined as “the involvement of students in identifying standards and/or criteria to apply to their work and making judgements about the extent to which they have met these criteria and standards” (Boud, 1986, p. 5). This paper describes how self assessment training improves students’ understanding of concepts. Beginner teachers will find hands-on suggestions that they could use in their class- rooms. It is hoped that the ideas shared here would provoke more research in this important area. Longitudinal studies on students exposed to self assess- ment training could address issues regarding the reduction of students’ zone of proximal development, where real learning takes place, and shed further light on how humans create meaning through understanding.
Introduction
The complexity of life offers boundless opportunities and also undermines our feeling of context and relatedness (Mazarr, 1999). Numerous people, and in particular, young students, feel that they are never understood. Clearly, we need a type of assessment that gives the learner a sense of belonging, achieve- ment, autonomy, independence, empowerment, and mastery over his or her own destiny, while simultaneously affording the learner a clear understand- ing of what is being learned. In keeping with information about multiple intel- ligences, the knowledge era, massive globalization, and transformation of modern society, a climate of unprecedented organizational change, coupled with student migration—a broad-based approach to assessment incorporat- ing self assessment—seems the natural progressive way forward. Further- more, an argument could be made that this notion should be introduced to teachers very early in their teaching career in an effort to make it common practice in the classroom.
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It had almost become traditional for assessment to be conceptualized as an activity originating from an external distant source, for example, an examiner, supervisor, adjudicator, referee or from an external close source, for example, a lecturer, teacher, tutor, facilitator, mentor, or coach. While some individu- als had their own homespun ways of assessing themselves privately, in the public domain not much emphasis was placed on assessment originating from an internal source, namely the person himself or herself doing his or her own assessment. For this reason, it was not surprising that while the current literature was replete with empirical research about assessment from both external distant and external close sources, none could be found about assess- ment from the internal source or the self. Needless to say, there is continuous need for triangulation or for a multiplicity of views to provide a 360-degree assessment in order to validate, increase reliability, and enhance credibility of the final assessment decision made. Since the individual student is the person constantly exposed to all aspects of his or her course (textbooks, resource materials, course content, homework, teacher personality, and pedagogical methodology), he or she is more advantageously positioned to determine the effectiveness of those aspects of the course through self assessment. The indi- vidual can focus on himself or herself, cognizant of his or her idiosyncrasies, peculiarities, and individual differences.
The average high school student often has a myriad of activities that engage his or her attention to the exclusion of significant others. Oftentimes, a high school teacher who is normally responsible for a class of about 30 to 40 stu- dents of mixed abilities, coming from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, cannot reasonably be expected, with any measure of success, to attend to most students’ issues and needs. Darwinian principles demand the natural acquisition of personal skills that would maximize academic achievement and sustain efforts over a prolonged period of time. Clearly, self assessment is a sine qua non for effective learning and the provision of quality feedback for personal improvement (Sadler, 1989). While several works have concentrated on providing empirical data in support of self assessment as it affects different aspects of the whole individual, this present paper will pres- ent a descriptive analysis of self assessment as it promotes understanding. It will also challenge the faculty of higher education to consider this within teacher education programs, where traditional assessment, much less self assessment, is infrequently an emphasis.
It is instructive to establish our working definition for self assessment. We shall choose Boud’s (1986, p. 5) definition of self assessment as “the involve- ment of students in identifying standards and/or criteria to apply to their work and making judgments about the extent to which they have met these criteria and standards.” To every assessment (whether conducted by teacher or learner), Boud (1995) insists that two key elements are essential: (1) development of knowledge and an appreciation of appropriate standards and criteria for meeting those standards; and (2) capacity to make judg- ments about whether or not the work involved does or does not meet those standards (which involves critical thinking). A desire for achievement and a
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clear understanding of what is involved in the process are two key elements involved. Clearly, the whole individual is deeply engrossed in the process.
Self assessment not only encompasses testing/grading one’s own skills/work but also involves an active process on the part of the individual of evaluating what is good, mediocre or poor work in any given situation. Self assessment represents a much-expanded role in assessment because the construct under- scores provisions for strengthening personal accountability for academic achievement. Besides requiring setting appropriate criteria for meeting stan- dards, self assessment seeks to offer a method for judging criteria effective- ness, establishes a schedule or timetable for ultimate progress of the individ- ual, and also establishes a sequence for failure. Additionally, self assessment establishes a set of procedures that would link criteria over time, across sub- jects, and with an external assessment. Moreover, self assessment emphasizes directing assessment at important learning targets, using assessment to plan next steps in instruction, and communicating assessment results to others in ways that have positive consequences on the individual.
Conceived as an instructional tool or an aid to instruction and not as an assess- ment tool, the comprehensive study, from which this paper draws information, provides an analytic platform that would be transparent enough so that the procedures for self assessment can be better decoupled from general assess- ment. Generally, high school teachers do not use the assessments done by stu- dents as part of their reporting. Instead, students may use self assessment for their own formative evaluation. Good and poor practice in self assessment (Boud, 1995, 208-209) may assist in further clarifying the nature of the con- struct and offer a useful skill set of indicators of good self assessment practice.
Self assessment may be viewed as the act of evaluating or monitoring one’s own level of knowledge, performance, and understanding in a metacognitive framework, taking into account the contexts in which it occurs. Self assess- ment involves the individual making an informed assessment of his or her own work, with an appreciation for and the understanding of those concepts of quality upheld and practiced by the adjudicators of his or her work. Clearly, the honing of self assessment skills would not naturally be endowed upon an individual but requires formal training, like several other skills, incorporating the analytical, creative, and practical. It also requires formal training on the part of the teachers so that they may effectively integrate it into classroom teaching and learning.
Rudd and Gumstove (1993) reported a yearlong study conducted in 1991 that aimed to develop self assessment skills in a third-grade class in Australia. A class of 20 students (ages eight to nine years) was present for the entire school year (four 11-week terms). To make planning and post-teaching reflec- tion more manageable for the teacher, a specific curriculum area (science and technology) was selected. Based on ideas that students had about the skills they needed in science and technology, a self assessment questionnaire was developed early in the year. Students were introduced to concept maps and learned to use them in their work. Further, the students also created self
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assessment graphs that allowed them to record additional self assessment concepts and techniques introduced during each term. Students accepted the self assessment tasks as teaching and learning strategies in their own right. Rudd and Gumstove (1993) found that student awareness and use of skills in these class activities were substantially enhanced and the teacher’s role changed from a dominating instructor to a delegator as students became more proficient at self assessment. No control group was used in this study as a means of comparison. With this apparent shortcoming, this researcher’s comprehensive study sought to improve on the methodology by using a ran- domized treatment group from a random stratified sample to determine dif- ferences in academic achievement between treatment groups as a result of formal self assessment training.
Self assessment affects the individual’s understanding as it emphasizes high levels of thinking—metacognitive, self-reflective, self-regulated—as well as goal-directed learning and preferred learning styles. Mercer et al. (2004) claim that “talk-based activities can have a useful function in scaffolding the development of reasoning and scientific understanding” (p. 370). As students discuss standards and/or criteria for making judgments, they are involved in talk-based activities that force them to reason one with another and with themselves. In a sense, self assessment is a component of metacognition that is applied more spontaneously, more deeply, and more automatically as stu- dents move through primary school. This developmental aspect of self assess- ment continues to influence the whole individual. This is particularly useful for beginning teachers because they are assured that students already have information upon which they could build.
Self assessment is an integral part of both portfolio and authentic assessment. It involves reflecting on past achievements, critically evaluating present per- formance, and planning future goals. It thus involves past, present, and future perspectives of the individual, thereby fostering understanding as situations from the past, present, and future are compared and contrasted. Personal goal setting and standards underscore the perspectives (McAlpine, 2000). Sekula, Buttery, and Guyton (1996) agree that self assessment is premised on real- istic knowledge about the whole self in relation to educational goals. It asks “How am I doing?,” “How can I do better?” Students learn to compare and con- trast their work with models and against a set of standards and/or criteria (Bourke & Poskitt, 1997). In this regard, it is important that students under- stand what they are attempting before they commence the task, and this is the process that teachers can facilitate. Further, the student needs to understand the standards of performance, know what he or she is trying to achieve, and be able to compare his or her own performance to that standard. Inherent is the notion that students need to have an understanding of competence that can be applied to them. These metacognitive issues associated with human assessment, and in particular self assessment, may present methodological challenges that must be addressed in its training and measurement. The lack of a common metric for its measurement may, to many, be a major roadblock to establishing a coherent system aimed at improving the acceptance of self
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assessment as a viable method of a standards-referenced approach to assess- ment to be incorporated into the overall assessment of an individual.
Throughout the literature, proponents of formative assessment (Black & Wil- liam, 1998a,b; Ramaprasad, 1983) agree that the student must take an active, responsible part in assessment if sustained, meaningful learning is to occur. Sadler (1989) recommends that gap closure between a student’s state of knowledge revealed by feedback and the desired state must be undertaken by the student. A student who simply follows the instructions of the teacher blindly without understanding the purpose of the teacher’s comments would have difficulty in internalizing the work and improving in the future. Con- sequently, Sadler (1989) posits that teachers must share responsibility of assessment with students whose self assessment would contribute to their overall assessment.
Goodrich (1997) studied the effects of instructional rubrics and guided self assessment on students’ writing and understandings of good writing. Thir- teen seventh- and eighth-grade classes in the same two urban schools formed the sample. Both the experimental and control groups wrote two essays: a his- torical fiction essay and a response to literature. All students in both groups in participating classes were given instructional rubrics. The two self assess- ment lessons focused on a formal process of guided self assessment designed by the researcher in collaboration with the participating teachers. Students used markers to color code the criteria on the rubric and the evidence in their essays that showed that they met the criteria. Only the experimental classes participated in a process of guided self assessment. Control classes received copies of the rubrics but did not formally assess their own work in class. The results of the study indicated that rubric-referenced self assessment could have a positive effect on females’ writing but no effect on males’ writing. This finding agrees with research on sex differences in the manner in which males and females respond to feedback (Hollander & Marcia, 1970; Dweck & Bush, 1976; Dweck, Davidson, Nelson, & Enna, 1978; Deci & Ryan, 1980). It must be pointed out here that the study did not examine students’ cognitive and emo- tional responses to self assessment, which means that the explanation offered for the differences between males and females may be speculative. The call for a better understanding of the different ways in which males and females respond to self assessment further fueled the flame for such an investigation in the holistic manner in which self assessment affects the individual. Further research in this area could be useful.
As explained earlier, in arriving at consensus, students must share their per- sonal views with each other and mutually agree on standards and/or criteria before for making an evaluation through the vehicle of language. Mercer et al. (2004) provide support for a generally accepted sociocultural hypothesis that “intermental activity (social interaction) of using language as a tool for reason- ing collectively can influence the development of individual thinking (intra- mental activity) and learning” (p. 369). Further, the multidisciplinary nature of the researcher-designed 12 self assessment modules and the training using eclectic approaches mandated students to think across conventional
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subject disciplines. The constant positive reinforcement from teachers other than those directly involved in the self assessment training program made students realize that self assessment was not subject-specific or task-specific but targeted at the whole individual. The skills the students learned enabled them to communicate better with understanding and make informed choices of routes to and from school, choices of friends and choices of careers, etc. To use the words of Mercer et al. (2004), the teachers created “talk-focused class- rooms” (p. 375) as they facilitated exchange among students with a view at arriving at consensus while at the same time ensuring that the stipulated cur- riculum was adequately covered as expected. That richness in focus, depth in understanding, and breath of information clearly reflected the performance of the students of the experimental group as they outperformed their untrained counterparts in all curriculum areas of business studies, humanities, science, and technical studies. With a continually changing context for reference, stu- dents quickly learned that self assessment was all inclusive and definitely pervasive and transferable enough to accommodate the individual at school and elsewhere. Students also learned that making self assessment a habit sup- ported Aristotle’s famous assertion that we are what we repeatedly do and that excellence is a habit.
Mercer et al. (2004) posit that the spoken language can be related to the learning of science in the context of teacher-led interactions with students and peer group interaction.
While the former pampers to:
. . . the sociocultural account of cognitive development that empha- sizes the guiding role of more knowledgeable members of communi- ties in the development of the learner’s knowledge and understanding and their induction into the discourses associated with the particular knowledge domain, the latter allows for interactions which are more ‘symmetrical’ than in teacher-led discourses and so present different kinds of opportunities for developing reasoned arguments, describing observed events, etc. (p. 366)
It is precisely for this reason that, self assessment is an interactive, collabora- tive process involving all of the self and others in relation to standards and/ or criteria. That interaction with peers is undoubtedly beneficial to students’ learning and understanding. It is no small wonder that in the comprehensive study, high school students who received formal training in self assessment skills were encouraged to discuss with their neighbors and arrive at mutu- ally agreed solutions to problems. That process then extended beyond that neighbor to others in the classroom and also to the group as a whole, with input from the teacher serving as facilitator. Collaboration is the key to its success. In a sense, the group functioned as a receptacle for “protecting” the thoughts and ideas of the group members, thereby affording them the privi- lege of expressing themselves freely and openly without fear of being belit- tled by peers, a fundamental right of the whole individual. This too explains why this researcher conducted group sessions throughout the three terms of
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the entire academic year of self assessment training. Teachers and students became partners in the process of assessment and self-directed learning. The questions that teachers asked a class served as models for questions that learners asked themselves in self assessment. Educational goals underpin the questions and students were led, at different levels, to a realization of these goals.
Discussion and Conclusions
Understanding is pivotal to the internalization of new concepts as these must in some way be hinged to already existing concepts if the learner is to make sense of new information. Accordingly, there seems to be an incre- mental developmental process in progress. Van Krayenoord and Paris (1997) reported developmental trends in self assessment that may suggest the development of understanding with time. Self assessment may initially commence at the lower levels of the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. As time progresses and the learner internalizes self assessment skills, higher levels of those domains would replace lower levels. With time, the learner would embrace self assessment as a necessary and sufficient part of his or her daily activities. Despite the fact that children can start using self assessment to evaluate their achievements when quite young, older stu- dents are more effective at the process. According to their levels of ability and the “quality” of teaching practices in particular classrooms, there are differences within older students. Metacognitive abilities associated with reading determine the quality of self assessment done. Greater development in students’ metacognitive abilities manifested itself in an improved ability for self-reflection and self-regulation of learning (Van Krayenoord & Paris, 1997). The foregoing information is especially helpful to beginning teach- ers since they often tend to frustrate themselves by underestimating their students’ potential. Incorporating self assessment into one’s repertoire of teaching strategies would provide more frequent feedback from the learner, enabling teachers to more quickly identify problems and modify instruction, if necessary.
Paris and Cunningham (1996) and Van Krayenoord and Paris (1997) found that effectiveness of self assessment and self-management of learning improve with age, experience, intelligence, academic achievement, and the quality of instruction. Self assessment assists the whole student to “learn how to learn” and it encourages reflection to become second nature. As students develop, they rely less on the authority of grades and adults’ evaluations as the sole source of feedback about their performance, and self assessment tends to become a foundation to the development of intrinsic motivation and autono- mous learning.
Van Krayenoord and Paris (1997), Blumenfeld, Pintrich, Meece, and Wessels (1982), and Stipek and Maclver (1989) posit that in judging their own achieve- ments, as children grow up, they gradually change from equating achievement with “effort” and see it related more to “ability.” As the development process progresses, the learner takes initiative for assessing his or her own work. In
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a study on self appraisals using work sample interviews based on both port- folio and authentic assessments, Van Krayenoord and Paris (1997) observed that activities related to portfolio assessment mandate that the learner takes the first step in assessing his or her individual work. Such initiative could be achieved autonomously but more often in association with peers and teachers.
Van Krayenoord and Paris (1997) believe that one of the main purposes of authentic assessment is to encourage students to become involved more actively in monitoring and reviewing their own performance. This includes self assessment of the products as well as the process of daily learning so that students learn to reflect on their work and evaluate their effort, feelings, and accomplishments, not just their past grade. This kind of assessment develops feelings of ownership and responsibility for learning and assists students in becoming independent learners who develop control over their own learning. Beginning teachers especially will do well to observe that special ability stu- dents may gain enormously from self assessment training and seek to develop this practice early in their careers. Self assessment could arguably make a teacher’s job easier, as more information about the students becomes available.
Continuing in the developmental trend, Hill (1995) confirmed that:
using portfolios engages learners in self assessment as they reflect on how well they have achieved the standards and/or criteria they set out for themselves, and gather samples and artifacts with their teach- ers, peers, parents or other interested people. (p. 66)
Many high school students practice journaling and this, too, is part of self assessment. Journaling is easy to practice so beginning teachers could include this in their teaching methods. Journaling forces the whole individual to reflect on past experiences, make evaluative statements of those experiences, and compare those experiences with similar experiences on a judgmental basis. Finally, this researcher has observed that while self assessment may be taken seriously by older children, there may be some difficulty in getting younger students to appreciate its worth. Herein lies a significant role for the begin- ning teacher; if it were an integral component in teacher education, then it might follow that it would be implemented with students of all ages. As with most practices, the younger it is introduced, the greater the chance for fluency.
By its very nature, self assessment is also a social activity requiring under- standing on the part of the individual. It occurs in situations that are social and collaborative and frequently with others who are more expert than the self assessor. Establishment and maintenance of mutually agreed ground rules—active listening, waiting on others, mutual respect, information shar- ing, appropriate discourse analysis, focused engaging discussion, critical ques- tioning, decision negotiation, and accurate transcription skills—are essential ingredients of the self assessment process. Van Krayenoord and Paris (1997) noted that self assessment does not occur in isolation because the self has very little meaning unless it relates to others. This inevitably means that there must be relationship with peers and teachers. The reliability and validity of scores derived from self assessment is formulated not only in relation to standards
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and/or criteria but also in relation to social interactions with assessments of peers and teachers. Before students can decide on acceptable standards and/or criteria for their work, they must use some reliable and valid forms of reference by which they could be confident that the standards and/or criteria they intend to use to make judgments about their whole corpus of work are “universally” acceptable as far as they exist within their locus of control. This undoubtedly demands understanding. Self assessment may be the key to pro- ducing a common currency for evaluating an individual’s productivity. Much research in this area is recommended.
A considerable amount of time is required to implement and sustain self assessment as it influences understanding and this may present a major demand on beginning teachers as they are learning many other new skills. However, if the task is skillfully implemented and neatly interwoven into the normal curriculum as the comprehensive study was, the rewards are over- whelming. Teachers need to have dialogue with students during the course of their learning, as students have to be trained to develop sound self assessment skills with understanding. Some beginning teachers may feel that their author- ity is challenged if they allow student self assessments to count in assessment and learning. Further, since there is some degree of “disclosure” in some areas of self assessment, the procedure may be seen as a threat to privacy (McAlpine, 2000). There is also the danger of breech of confidentiality in shar- ing self assessment results with a wider audience especially with the school environment. Sometimes there might even be uncertainty as to who the real audience might be. Being aware of these issues, this researcher designed the comprehensive study to take account of these challenges, thereby minimizing as much as possible random or systematic experimental errors. In self assess- ment training, beginning teachers should take responses from students very seriously. Bourke and Poskitt (1997) believe it is important to avoid a tokenist “claim” or to pretend to empower students through self assessment but record one’s own assessment. Students are less likely to take self assessments seri- ously in an environment where school and national examinations are seen to be the main measure of performance. It is hoped that the ideas shared would be useful to beginning teachers. Longitudinal studies on students exposed to self assessment training could address issues regarding the reduction of students’ zone of proximal development, where real learning takes place, and shed further light on how humans create meaning through understanding.
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Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998a). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education, 5(1), 7–74.
Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998b). Inside the Black Box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 139. Retrieved March 10, 2008 from http://faa -training.measuredprogress.org/documents/10157/15652/InsideBlackBox.pdf
Blumenfeld, P. C., Pintrich, P., Meece, I. & Wessels, K. (1982). The formation and role of self per- ceptions of ability in elementary classrooms. Elementary School Journal, 82, 401–420.
Boud, D. (1986). Implementing student self assessment. Sydney: HERDSA.
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Boud, D. (1995). Enhancing learning through self assessment. London: Kogan Page.
Bourke, R., & Poskitt, J. (1997). Self assessment in the New Zealand classroom (Booklet). Wel- lington: Ministry of Education.
Deci, E., & Ryan, R. (1980). The empirical exploration of intrinsic motivational processes. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. New York: Academic Press, 13, 39–80.
Dweck, C., & Bush, E. (1976). Sex differences in learned helplessness: 1. Differential debilita- tion with peer and adult evaluators. Developmental Psychology, 12, 147–156.
Dweck, C., Davidson, W., Nelson, S. & Enna, B. (1978). Sex differences in learned helplessness: 2. Contingencies of evaluative feedback in the classroom and 3. An experimental analysis. Developmental Psychology 14(3), 268–276.
Goodrich, H. (1997). Thinking-centered assessment. In S. Veenema, L. Hetland, & K. Chalfen (Eds.), The Project Zero classroom: New approaches to thinking and understanding. Cambridge, MA: Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Hill, M. (1995). Self assessment in primary schools: A response to student teacher questions. Waikato Journal of Education, (1), 61–70.
Hollander, E. & Marcia, J. (1970). Parental determinants of peer orientation and self- orientation among preadolescents. Developmental Psychology, 2, 292–302.
Mazarr, M. J. (1999). Global trends 2005: An owner’s manual for the next decade. New York: Palgrave.
McAlpine, D. (2000). Assessment and the gifted. Tall Poppies, 25(1).
Mercer, N., Dawes, L., Wegerif, R. & Sama, G. (2O04). Reasoning as a scientist: Ways of helping children use language to learn science. British Educational Research Journal, 30(3), 359–377.
Paris, S. G., & Cunningham, A. (1996). Children becoming students. In D. Berliner and R. Galfee (Eds.), Handbook of Educational Psychology. New York: Macmillan, 17–147.
Ramaprasad, A. (1983). On the definition of feedback. Behavioral Science, 28, 4–13.
Rudd, T. J., & Gumstove, R. F. (1993). Developing self assessment skills in grade 3 science and technology: The importance of longitudinal studies of learning. Retrieved March 9, 2008, from ERIC NO. ED 358103, http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED358103.pdf
Sadler, D. R. (1989). Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems. Instruc- tional Science, 18, 119–144.
Sekula, J., Buttery, T., & Guyton, E. (1996). Authentic assessment. In Handbook of Research on Teacher Education. New York: Prentice Hall International, 5–15.
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Source: McDonald, B. (2007). Self assessment for understanding. Journal of Education, 188(1), 25–40.
Summary McDonald provides a brief review of the empirical literature concerning self-assessment, par- ticularly in middle and secondary classrooms, and its relationship to student achievement. She stresses the importance of collaboration and commitment to self-assessment in whole programs, schools, and grade levels in order for students to see its relevance for all learning and not specific to a particular subject or teacher.
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Section 3.7 What Is a Good School?
The literature suggests that self-assessment must be taught and takes time to develop as a habit. McDonald also notes that research suggests that although younger children can learn to self assess, older students with metacognitive skills associated with literacy can apply self- assessment more readily. The literature also suggests that the quality of teaching as an accom- paniment to self-assessment may determine how effective the practice is for students.
Critical Thinking Questions 1. McDonald notes that in most studies reviewed teachers do not use students’ self-
assessments as contributors to their own assessments or subsequent grading systems. Dis- cuss whether this practice is appropriate and how such assessments may in fact contribute to the general assessment plan in a course or program.
2. This article suggests that gender plays a role in how students learn and use self- assessment in the context of feedback more generally. Girls seem to respond to these prac- tices and use them more often than boys. Comment on these findings. Are they consistent with your experience? Are there ways to plan self-assessment approaches that might be more helpful for boys?
3. How has self-assessment played a role in your own learning? 4. How might self-assessment be used in an online environment, considering the research that
suggests it is most helpful when it is collaborative? 5. The starting point for self-assessment, according to research, is a clear set of standards or
criteria in order for students to understand what constitutes good and poor work. What else might help students learn the difference between good and poor work in your subject area or content field of expertise?
3.7 What Is a Good School? by Klaus Zierer
Introduction Klaus Zierer is a scholar at the Institute of Education, University of Oldenburg in Oldenburg, Germany. He provides a critical and international perspective on the issue of large-scale cross- national measurements of student learning such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). These comparative tests are often publicized in the U.S. press as indicators of the country’s progress in K–12 student achievement.
Zierer uses a “quadrant model” (adapted in Figure 3.3), originally designed by Ken Wilber (2001), as a means of examining international measurements to answer the question, “What is a good school?” The quadrants represent four related dimensions:
1. Interior vs. exterior dimensions of good schools (i.e., what one experiences vs. what can be seen or measured),
2. Individual vs. collective dimensions of good schools, 3. Subjective vs. objective dimensions of good schools (i.e., the qualitative vs. the
quantitative/measurable criteria), and 4. Specific criteria as dimensions: joyful, effective, culturally fitting (or responsive), and
functionally fitting (or efficient).
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Section 3.7 What Is a Good School?
Excerpt The following excerpt is from Zierer, K. (2013). What is a good school? Critical thoughts about curriculum assessments. Educational Forum, 77(3), 336–341.
Abstract
Within the educational field, measurements such as the Programme for Inter- national Student Assessment (PISA), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) suggest we are living in a time of competition. This article takes a critical view of the modern drive to measure, evaluate, and rank programs within the educational field. Using Ken Wilber’s epistemological quadrant- model, I analyze the question, “What is a good school?”
The Epistemological Quadrant-Model of Ken Wilber
The quadrant-model of Ken Wilber integrates different perspectives to approach a complex issue. Wilber’s model is epistemologically founded, inter- disciplinarily constructed, systematic, extensive, and integral. Consequently,
Figure 3.3: Zierer’s quadrant model, adapted
Although the model can be complex, for the purposes of this chapter, it is important to focus on Zierer’s question of what is a good school and Zierer’s conclusion that the PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS tests only address the question, What is an “effective school”? (top right quadrant) and virtually ignore the other 3 perspectives on what makes a good school. This is an important discussion in the current century of accountability in the context of different learning environments (bottom right quadrant), diversity of learners and learning (bottom left quadrant), and the engagement and creativity (top right quadrant).
INDIVIDUAL
COLLECTIVE
INTERIOR EXTERIOR
Subjective
What is a “joyful school”?
Objective
What is an “effective school”?
Intersubjective
What is a “cultural fitting school”?
Interobjective
What is a “functional fitting school”?
INDIVIDUAL
COLLECTIVE
INTERIOR EXTERIOR
Subjective
What is a “joyful school”?
Objective
What is an “effective school”?
Intersubjective
What is a “cultural fitting school”?
Interobjective
What is a “functional fitting school”?
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Section 3.7 What Is a Good School?
the model is innovative and provides a rubric for determining the elements of complex problems. Applying Wilbur’s quadrant-model to the complex ques- tion “What is a good school?” could be useful to discussing issues in the edu- cational field.
The basis for Ken Wilber’s epistemological quadrant-model is the so-called “three-worlds theory” by Jürgen Habermas, which develops the theory of communicative action. The three-worlds theory distinguishes three different world-concepts regarding their areas and claims to validity.
First, Habermas identifies a “subjective” world, which includes “all expe- riences of a communicative actor” (Habermas, 1987, p. 149). He provides wishes and emotions as examples of the subjective world. The second “objec- tive” world includes “all circumstances, which exist or can exist.” (Habermas, 1987, p. 130). Statements out of this second world can stress truth. The third, “social” world is based on “a normative context, which defines the justified and legitimate actions” (Habermas, 1987, p. 132). Hence, statements out of the third world can stress normative accuracy. Their validity claim is deter- mined by a social group of communicative actors.
With a view to this three-worlds theory Wilber developed the epistemological quadrant-model shown in Figure 3.4 in which he distinguished four main approaches to knowledge and cited examples of researchers for each specific quadrant (Wilber, 2001).
Figure 3.4: Wilber’s quadrant model
INDIVIDUAL
COLLECTIVE
Subjective
Validity claim of truthfulnes (e.g., Jean Piaget)
Objective
Validity claim of truth (e.g., Burrhus Frederic Skinner)
Intersubjective
Validity claim of rightness/cultural fit
(e.g., Hans-Georg Gadamer)
Interobjective
Validity claim of functional fit (e.g., Talcott Parsons)
INTERIOR
• hermeneutical • interpretative
• empirical • monological
EXTERIOR
INDIVIDUAL
COLLECTIVE
Subjective
Validity claim of truthfulnes (e.g., Jean Piaget)
Objective
Validity claim of truth (e.g., Burrhus Frederic Skinner)
Intersubjective
Validity claim of rightness/cultural fit
(e.g., Hans-Georg Gadamer)
Interobjective
Validity claim of functional fit (e.g., Talcott Parsons)
INTERIOR
• hermeneutical • interpretative
• empirical • monological
EXTERIOR
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Section 3.7 What Is a Good School?
* * *
Discussion of the Question “What Is a Good School?”
Upon examination of the question “What is a good school?” within the frame- work of Wilber’s quadrants, the complexity of the issue emerges.
• Upper-left quadrant: What is a “joyful school” from learners’ and teachers’ perspectives? How does the school engage the interests, wishes, and senses of its students and teachers? Minkowski (1971) believed that school should give pleasure and a lifetime of fulfillment. Von Hentig (1996) believed that school should create and activate “competence of happiness” for learners and teachers.
• Upper-right quadrant: What is an “effective school” from learners’ and teachers’ points of view? This question takes center stage in cur- riculum assessment and instructional research.
• Lower-left quadrant: What is a “cultural fitting school” from learners’ and teachers’ points of view? How are the curricular goals adequate for young people to address future problems and challenges?
• Lower-right quadrant: What is a “functional fitting school” from learners’ and teachers’ points of view? Do schools teach competen- cies that help young people to find jobs, enter the working world, and find a place in society? Do schools help to solve actual social prob- lems, such as rising unemployment or the possible upcoming col- lapse of the healthcare system? Only schools that are meeting these social demands may be considered functional fitting.
Using this model, curriculum assessments, including Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), Programme for International Student Assess- ment (PISA), and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) scores and the resulting rankings, are predominately found in the upper-right quadrant, suggesting that a school which performs well in these tests is considered effective. However, rankings constructed from these and similar curriculum assessments neglect Wilber’s three other quadrants. Are these schools really the best schools? Can these schools really be considered good schools? Do learners and teachers like these schools? Do these schools really fit in with current cultural and functional needs?
Conclusions
What is missing from these curriculum assessments? What problems can arise in these curriculum assessments, and what can be done to mitigate them? The problem of a partial analysis of what constitutes a “good school” is obvious. The reduction, according to Wilber, can only deliver a half or, rather, a fourth of, a truth. Traditional assessments only look at this question from an empirical perspective, through the lens of effectiveness and based on a valid- ity claim of propositional truth. The other domains of truthfulness, cultural fit and functional fit, are neglected in the majority of cases. Or in other words, striving for the maximum effectiveness, meanwhile ignoring the subjective,
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Section 3.7 What Is a Good School?
cultural fitting and functional fitting aspects of schooling, runs the risk of missing the mark of supporting a good school.
In the case of curriculum assessment, it is necessary to focus on and draw conclusions from all quadrants. According to Wilber, this is integral to a com- prehensive assessment of a school. When these requirements are fulfilled, the question of a good school can be answered. When these requirements are not met, discussions remain on the level of what makes an effective school instead of what makes a good school. Not everything that is important can be mea- sured. Not everything that is good can be evaluated. Hence, we run the risk of being preoccupied with measurement, ranking, and evaluation, and as a result also with reduction, constriction, and pursuit of effectiveness. It is time for an integral view in the case of curriculum assessment.
References Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1993). Die Selbstbestimmungstheorie der Motivation und ihre
Bedeutung für die Pädagogik [Self-determination theory of motivation and its rel- evance for education.]. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 39(2), 223–238.
Habermas, J. (1987). Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (Band 1) [Theory of communica- tive action (volume 1)]. Frankfurt, Germany: Suhrkamp.
Helmke, A. (2005). Unterrichtsqualität: Erfassen, bewerten, verbessern [Teaching quality]. Seelze, Germany: Kallmeyer.
Minkowski, E. (1971). Die gelebte Zeit (Band 1) [The lived time (volume 1)]. Salzburg, Ger- many: Otto Müller Verlag.
Von Hentig, H. (1996). Bildung: Ein Essay [Formation: An essay]. München, Germany: Hanser.
Wilber, K. (2001). The eye of spirit: An integral vision for a world gone slightly mad. Boston: Shambhala.
Source: Zierer, K. (2013). What is a good school? Critical thoughts about curriculum assessments. The Educational Forum, 77(3), 336–341. Taylor & Francis. © 2013 Routledge.
Summary This article moves the reader beyond the familiar language of assessment to the larger question of what is a good school. The use of the quadrant invites a discussion of the other dimensions of teaching and learning that consider more intentionally the interests, needs, and perspectives of learners and teachers. Zierer invites critique of the large-scale assessments so commonly used and accepted, because they focus only on effectiveness of schools as measured by student test scores but ignore context, appropriate curriculum, and students’ point of view within a specific school or local (including online) environment.
Zierer stresses the importance of subjective assessments as well as the more objectively valid and reliable instruments such as the PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS tests. He reminds readers that if we do not attend to these other possibilities for assessment, “discussions remain on the level of what makes an effective school instead of what makes a good school” (p. 341). Finally, the author asserts, “Not everything that is important can be measured. Not everything that is good can be evaluated” (p. 341). This caveat is important to consider in the arena of meaningful teaching and learning for the future.
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Summary and Resources
Critical Thinking Questions 1. This article begins with a somewhat philosophical discussion of truth, which in a 21st cen-
tury worldview tends to equate with objectivity or factual evidence. Zierer then proposes that other truths worthy of exploring may not be measurable but are nonetheless important for a “good school.” Think about a school, classroom, or learning environment you have encountered in which these nontangibles are evident and describe that setting. What is different about these learning settings in which we have no objective data or facts about learning, but we sense that this is a “good” school?
2. Zierer discusses “cultural fitting schools” as ones where the curricular goals help students face future problems and challenges. List some of the indicators that you might look for in a classroom or school that matches this description.
3. The author asks an interesting question for our consideration: “How does [a] school engage the interests, wishes, and senses of its students and teachers?” (p. 340).
4. Find two colleagues or peers and discuss Zierer’s comment: “Not everything that is important can be measured. Not everything that is good can be evaluated” (p. 341).
Summary and Resources
Chapter Summary This chapter proposes the following key considerations for assessment in the 21st century:
• Classroom assessment is crucial for student achievement, despite its lack of publicity, research, attention to teacher preparation and professional development (Stiggins, Popham).
• Teachers need to develop assessment literacy in order to fully participate in students’ learning for the 21st century (Popham).
• Classroom assessment involves careful and consistent high-quality feedback from teachers and peers (Wiggins and Frey/Fisher).
• Feedback and self-assessment are both elements of formative assessment that stu- dents can participate in and use to enhance their learning (Wiggins, Frey/Fisher, and McDonald).
• Students are both assessment users and instructional decision makers in schools and classrooms where multiple, meaningful assessment tools are in place (Stiggins).
• Grading practices need to be reformed to accommodate the documentation and evi- dence from classroom assessments; clear purposes for grades should be articulated and communicated to students, parents, and other stakeholders (Guskey and Jung).
• Grades should be multidimensional and indicate how students are doing with respect to final products, the process during learning, and progress or improvement toward goals (Guskey and Jung).
• Educators, policy makers and the general public must be cautioned against a general acceptance of effectiveness criteria based on large-scale standardized tests as the only means of judging a “good school.” Other indicators of good schools demonstrate that culture, joy, and, the context for learning are all valued and valuable, but not necessar- ily measurable (Zierer).
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Summary and Resources
End of Chapter Critical Thinking Questions
1. The chapter began with an acknowledgment of the importance of standardized testing and accountability in the 21st century. Now that you have read the chapter, how would you describe the intersection of classroom assessment, including feedback, formative assessment, and large-scale standardized tests? Can classroom assessments, designed by teachers and students, affect the outcome of standardized tests?
2. Zierer’s article discusses international tests, including PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS. Investi- gate how students in your state have done recently on these tests. What is your view of the value and use of these results for educators and students?
3. Describe three steps you might take to encourage or support more self-assessment among students in a class you teach or will teach in the future.
4. Make two columns on a page. On the left side, note the ways in which you provide or have provided feedback to students you have encountered in the past. In the right column, list feedback approaches that you would consider in the future. Use the Futher Reading list as needed.
5. Popham calls for all to develop assessment literacy. How literate are you in the vocabu- lary, practices, and research focused on assessment?
Further Reading Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998b). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom
assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 80(2), 139–148. Brookhart, S. M. (2004). Classroom assessment: Tensions and intersections in theory and
practice. Teachers College Record 106(3), 429–458. Casey, G. (2013). Building a student-centered learning framework using social software in
the middle years classroom: An action research study. Journal of Information Technology Education, 12, 159–189.
Fisher, N. & Fisher, D. (2011). The formative assessment action plan: Practical steps to more successful teaching and learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curricu- lum Development.
Heritage, M., & Heritage, J. (2013). Teacher questioning: The epicenter of instruction and assessment. Applied Measurement in Education, 26, 176–190.
Tying It All Together This chapter looks forward, as other chapters in this volume do, to innovative and dynamic pos- sibilities for curriculum and instruction in the 21st century. The focus on individual educator and leader innovation in local, classroom, and contextually based assessment is consistent with the call for action research, “teacherpreneurship” in technology, and cutting-edge approaches to standards in other chapters. The term literacy is used in this chapter to address the dearth of knowledge about assessment on the part of many graduates of teacher education programs.
Researchers are calling for assessment literacy, just as they are calling for digital literacy in the 21st century. Across the chapters, a clear theme emerges regarding the need for integration of pedagogy that requires collaboration and professional learning in communities. Readers of this text would benefit from seeing how this notion of integration of themes, ideas, concepts, and top- ics improves practice and provides opportunities for classroom, as well as large-scale, research. We need to know much more about how the components of quality contribute to “good schools.”
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Summary and Resources
Lu, J., & Law, N. (2012). Online peer assessment: Effects of cognitive and affective feedback. Instructional Science, 40(2), 257–275.
Marzano, R. J. (2010). Formative assessment and standards-based grading. Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research Laboratory.
Marzano, R. J. (2012). The two purposes of teacher evaluation. Educational Leadership, 70(3), 14–19.
Popham, W. J. (2004). Curriculum, instruction, and assessment: Amiable allies or phony friends? Teachers College Record 106(3), 417–428.
Schneider, M., & Gowan, P. (2013). Investigating teachers’ skills in interpreting evidence of student learning. Applied Measurement In Education, 26(3), 191–204.
Waugh, C. K., & Gronlund, N. E. (2013). Assessment of student achievement (10th ed.). Boston: Pearson.
Zahira, M., Goetz, E., Cifuentes, L., Keeney-Kennicutt, W., & Davis, T. J. (2014). Effectiveness of virtual reality-based instruction on students’ learning outcomes in K–12 and higher education: A meta-analysis, Computers & Education, 70, 29–40.
Key Terms
classroom assessment “[F]ormal and informal procedures that teachers employ in an effort to make accurate inferences about what their students know and can do” (Popham, 2009, p. 6).
feedback “[I]nformation about how we are doing in our efforts to reach a goal” (Wig- gins, 2012, p. 11).
formative assessment “[A] process in which assessment-elicited evidence is used by teachers to adjust their ongoing instruc- tional activities, or by students to adjust the ways they are trying to learn something” (Popham, p. 5).
process grading The consideration of crite- ria for grades such as “responsibility, effort, work or work habits” in addition to quizzes, formative assessments, and homework (Gus- key & Jung, 2012, p. 25).
product grading “[R]eflect(s) what stu- dents know are able to do at a specific point in time” (Guskey & Jung, 2012, p. 24).
progress grading Is “based on how much students have gained from their learning experiences” (Guskey & Jung, 2012, p. 25).
self-assessment “[T]he involvement of students in identifying standards and/or criteria to apply to their work and mak- ing judgements about the extent to which they have met these criteria and standards” (Boud, as cited in McDonald, 2007, p. 25).
summative assessment “[T]he use of assessment based evidence when arriving at decisions about already-completed instruc- tional events such as the quality of a year’s worth of schooling or the effectiveness of a semester-long algebra course. Summative assessment is intended to help us arrive at go/no-go decisions based on the success of a final-version instructional program” (Popham, 2009, p. 5).
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