On the other hand, if students are performing poorly on a unit test or comprehension check, educators can look back at the strategy used to teach the material and try a different approach. The NEA recommends employing multiple measures when using assessments to measure student progress. Students need to acquire a broad array of skills, knowledge, and critical thinking tools that a single multiple-choice standardized test cannot reflect.
Self-assessments allow educators to reflect on the strategies they use in the classroom and identify areas of strength and need within their own techniques. This self-reflection may be as informal as keeping a daily journal or writing notes on lesson efficacy in a teaching planner. Educators who seek to improve their teaching performance can also invite a co-worker or administrator to observe a lesson and ask for feedback. In addition to assessing their day-to-day performance in the classroom, educators can use their assessment skills to guide their careers.
After identifying frequent difficulty with a particular skill, such as classroom management or personalized instruction, they may look for professional development opportunities in those areas. Educators may also reflect on their strengths to decide how to move forward in their careers. For example, educators who easily engage student interest in science might start an after-school science club or become a team leader within the sciences. They may even decide to switch tracks to administration if they have strong management and policy skills.
As when assessing students, the NEA recommends using multiple measures when assessing educators themselves. In this way, assessments can become an essential component of improving education for students and educators alike. As a result, teachers are able to institutionalize effective teaching choices and revise ineffective ones in their pedagogy.
The measurement of student learning through assessment is important because it provides useful feedback to both instructors and students about the extent to which students are successfully meeting course learning objectives.
For Wiggens and McTighe, assessment enables instructors to determine the metrics of measurement for student understanding of and proficiency in course learning objectives. They argue that assessment provides the evidence needed to document and validate that meaningful learning has occurred in the classroom. Student assessment also buttresses critical reflective teaching. She works from a position of informed commitment. There are generally two forms of student assessment that are most frequently discussed in the scholarship of teaching and learning.
The first, summative assessment , is assessment that is implemented at the end of the course of study. Summative assessment is comprehensive in nature and is fundamentally concerned with learning outcomes. While summative assessment is often useful to provide information about patterns of student achievement, it does so without providing the opportunity for students to reflect on and demonstrate growth in identified areas for improvement and does not provide an avenue for the instructor to modify teaching strategy during the teaching and learning process.
Maki, Examples of summative assessment include comprehensive final exams or papers. The second form, formative assessment , involves the evaluation of student learning over the course of time. Formative assessment includes course work—where students receive feedback that identifies strengths, weaknesses, and other things to keep in mind for future assignments—discussions between instructors and students, and end-of-unit examinations that provide an opportunity for students to identify important areas for necessary growth and development for themselves.
Brown and Knight, It is important to recognize that both summative and formative assessment indicate the purpose of assessment, not the method. Different methods of assessment discussed in the next section can either be summative or formative in orientation depending on how the instructor implements them. Sally Brown and Peter Knight in their book, Assessing Learners in Higher Education, caution against a conflation of the purposes of assessment its method.
Brown and Knight, Indeed, feedback and discussion is the critical factor that distinguishes between formative and summative assessment.
Below are a few common methods of assessment identified by Brown and Knight that can be implemented in the classroom. The goal of implementing self-assessment in a course is to enable students to develop their own judgement. In self-assessment students are expected to assess both process and product of their learning.
While the assessment of the product is often the task of the instructor, implementing student assessment in the classroom encourages students to evaluate their own work as well as the process that led them to the final outcome.
It enables students to develop transferable skills in other areas of learning that involve group projects and teamwork, critical thinking and problem-solving, as well as leadership roles in the teaching and learning process. Things to Keep in Mind about Self-Assessment. Peer assessment is a type of collaborative learning technique where students evaluate the work of their peers and have their own evaluated by peers. This dimension of assessment is significantly grounded in theoretical approaches to active learning and adult learning.
Things to Keep in Mind about Peer Assessment. According to Euan S. Henderson, essays make two important contributions to learning and assessment: the development of skills and the cultivation of a learning style. Henderson, Essays are a common form of writing assignment in courses and can be either a summative or formative form of assessment depending on how the instructor utilizes them in the classroom. Examinations have traditionally been viewed as a gold standard of assessment in education, particularly in university settings.
Like essays they can be summative or formative forms of assessment. As Brown and Knight assert, utilizing multiple methods of assessment, including more than one assessor, improves the reliability of data. However, a primary challenge to the multiple methods approach is how to weigh the scores produced by multiple methods of assessment.
If a teacher is reaching fewer than half of the students in the class, the teacher's method of instruction needs to improve. And teachers need this kind of evidence to help target their instructional improvement efforts. If assessments provide information for both students and teachers, then they cannot mark the end of learning. Instead, assessments must be followed by high-quality, corrective instruction designed to remedy whatever learning errors the assessment identified see Guskey, To charge ahead knowing that students have not learned certain concepts or skills well would be foolish.
Teachers must therefore follow their assessments with instructional alternatives that present those concepts in new ways and engage students in different and more appropriate learning experiences. High-quality, corrective instruction is not the same as reteaching, which often consists simply of restating the original explanations louder and more slowly. Instead, the teacher must use approaches that accommodate differences in students' learning styles and intelligences Sternberg, Although teachers generally try to incorporate different teaching approaches when they initially plan their lessons, corrective instruction involves extending and strengthening that work.
In addition, those students who have few or no learning errors to correct should receive enrichment activities to help broaden and expand their learning.
Materials designed for gifted and talented students provide an excellent resource for such activities. Developing ideas for corrective instruction and enrichment activities can be difficult, especially if teachers believe that they must do it alone, but structured professional development opportunities can help teachers share strategies and collaborate on teaching techniques Guskey, , b. Faculty meetings devoted to examining classroom assessment results and developing alternative strategies can be highly effective.
District-level personnel and collaborative partnerships with local colleges and universities offer wonderful resources for ideas and practical advice. Occasionally, teachers express concern that if they take time to offer corrective instruction, they will sacrifice curriculum coverage.
Because corrective work is initially best done during class and under the teacher's direction, early instructional units will typically involve an extra class period or two. Teachers who ask students to complete corrective work independently, outside of class, generally find that those students who most need to spend time on corrective work are the least likely to do so. As students become accustomed to this corrective process and realize the personal benefits it offers, however, the teacher can drastically reduce the amount of class time allocated to such work and accomplish much of it through homework assignments or in special study sessions before or after school.
By pacing their instructional units more flexibly, most teachers find that they need not sacrifice curriculum coverage to offer students the benefits of corrective instruction. To become an integral part of the instructional process, assessments cannot be a one-shot, do-or-die experience for students. Instead, assessments must be part of an ongoing effort to help students learn. And if teachers follow assessments with helpful corrective instruction, then students should have a second chance to demonstrate their new level of competence and understanding.
This second chance helps determine the effectiveness of the corrective instruction and offers students another opportunity to experience success in learning. Writing teachers have long recognized the many benefits of a second chance. They know that students rarely write well on an initial attempt. Teachers build into the writing process several opportunities for students to gain feedback on early drafts and then to use that feedback to revise and improve their writing.
Teachers of other subjects frequently balk at the idea, however—mostly because it differs from their personal learning experiences. Because of the very high stakes involved, each must get it right the first time. But how did these highly skilled professionals learn their craft?
The first operation performed by that surgeon was on a cadaver—a situation that allows a lot of latitude for mistakes.
Similarly, the pilot spent many hours in a flight simulator before ever attempting a landing from the cockpit. Such experiences allowed them to learn from their mistakes and to improve their performance. Similar instructional techniques are used in nearly every professional endeavor. Only in schools do student face the prospect of one-shot, do-or-die assessments, with no chance to demonstrate what they learned from previous mistakes.
All educators strive to have their students become lifelong learners and develop learning-to-learn skills. What better learning-to-learn skill is there than learning from one's mistakes?
A mistake can be the beginning of learning. Some assessment experts argue, in fact, that students learn nothing from a successful performance. Rather, students learn best when their initial performance is less than successful, for then they can gain direction on how to improve Wiggins, Other teachers suggest that it's unfair to offer the same privileges and high grades to students who require a second chance that we offer to those students who demonstrate a high level of learning on the initial assessment.
After all, these students may simply have failed to prepare appropriately. Certainly, we should recognize students who do well on the initial assessment and provide opportunities for them to extend their learning through enrichment activities.
But those students who do well on a second assessment have also learned well. More important, their poor performance on the first assessment may not have been their fault. Maybe the teaching strategies used during the initial instruction were inappropriate for these students, but the corrective instruction proved more effective.
If we determine grades on the basis of performance and these students have performed at a high level, then they certainly deserve the same grades as those who scored well on their first try. A comparable example is the driver's license examination. Many individuals do not pass their driver's test on the first attempt. On the second or third try, however, they may reach the same high level of performance as others did on their first. Should these drivers be restricted, for instance, to driving in fair weather only?
In inclement weather, should they be required to pull their cars over and park until the weather clears? Of course not. Because they eventually met the same high performance standards as those who passed on their initial attempt, they receive the same privileges.
The same should hold true for students who show that they, too, have learned well. Using assessments as sources of information, following assessments with corrective instruction, and giving students a second chance are steps in a process that all teachers use naturally when they tutor individual students. If the student makes a mistake, the teacher stops and points out the mistake.
The teacher then explains that concept in a different way. Finally, the teacher asks another question or poses a similar problem to ensure the student's understanding before going on. The challenge for teachers is to use their classroom assessments in similar ways to provide all students with this sort of individualized assistance. Successful coaches use the same process. Immediately following a gymnast's performance on the balance beam, for example, the coach explains to her what she did correctly and what could be improved.
The coach then offers specific strategies for improvement and encourages her to try again.
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