Notes from 21st Century Assessment Session
- What we know about assessment
- Assessment is the tail that wags the curriculum dog
- Grades with substantive comments have the most impact on
learning
- What impact does a blogging community have on the role of the teacher?
- Reflecting on what happens in the classroom, both online and off — show how much you have learned
- Noticed that the students were engaged in talking with the community, but not by communicating with the teacher
- Students saved docs, printed them and gave them to the teacher offline
- But, they were interested in conversations with one another
- Is this evidence of learning?
- Not in the sense of “data” that is measured on a test
- Rubrics, too, only focus on what they can not do and not on what they can do.
- Current Models
- Metaphor of acquisition moving to a metaphor of participation to metaphor of knowledge creation
- Assessing learning of what is taught in test conditions (behaviorist) to assessing learning as individual sense-making through problem solving and demonstration through projects and writing (cognitive constructivist) to assessing learning as building knowledge with others in a situated context of a community and with real-life problems using resources and represented in a variety of forms(sociocultural)
- Most of us would want to be in the socio-cultural paradigm
- Suggestion One: Sociocultural Assessment Practices
- Models for the Future
- New Zeeland’s Te Whariki
- Principles
- Curriculum of contributuion
- Learn through relationships
- Role of family and community
- Principles
- All of this is woven together, like a mat
- There are no specific goals, and what they use to
assess student progress is a narrative, learning and assessment are dynamic and continuous - If there is no score, what are they working towards?
- Rubric combined with narrative response
- Focus on what students can do, not just the deficits
- Individuality, learning as holistic, inquiry-based,
draws from family and home - When children see that teachers, families, peers, and others see value in their work and that what they do have meaning, then wonderful things will happen
- Individuality, learning as holistic, inquiry-based,
- Children who are valued with do valuable learning
- The government of New Zeeland is looking for learning
dispositions that invite students to investigate and collaborate
- New Zeeland’s Te Whariki
- Two common dispositions
- Resourcefulness and agency
- What we need to do with assessment:
- Feedback — timely and substantive
- “Needs to provide information related to the task or process of learning that fills a gap between what is understood and needs to be understood” — missed citation
- Where am I going, how am I going, and where to next?
- These three questions can work at different levels: task, process, self-regulation, and self level
- Self-assessment — and peer assessment, to some degree
- Revisiting episodes of competence — need to do this more intentionally
- This creates spaces for conversation about learning
- Feedback — timely and substantive
- Example: how to grow a blog — flower metaphor
- What do I want to accomplish?
- How will I nourish it and help it grow?
- Questions
- What makes me unique?
- As a blogger and writer, what will I do?
- How will I support my peers?
- Frequency of blog posts as compared to quality of writing and impact on the blogging community
- Discuss how their own blog post has impacted their own learning and the community by using a “ripple effect” diagram
- Questions
- What is the role of the teacher in the 21st century classroom?
- What are your experiences with assessment as a student?
- What are the benefits of a learning story approach? What are the drawbacks?
- To what extent do your current assessment practices promote resourcefulness and agency?
- Detailed and timely feedback can be time consuming — how do we do it?