My feeling is that we have to move from the world of assessing correctness to the dimension of understanding. The question is HOW can we measure understanding? This chapter provides us with a clear description of what criteria based assessment is.
These criteria must specify the final results that we expect our students to achieve. These criteria have to be presented to them before hand so that they know what the aspects on which they are going to be assessed are and of course after evidence of understanding is shown, the correspondent feedback has to take place, in this way we are leading our students towards a higher level in the understanding continuum.
The chapter also explains what rubrics are and they use we can give them when assessing. They describe degrees of quality, proficiency or understanding along a continuum. That sounds absolutely fair.
I am sure that every single student has faced the frustrating situation of feeling that in spite of having complete control over a determined content, the assessing device used to evaluate his understanding in some way or another went against success. Now that we know that assessing is much more than correctness, we cannot allow that situations like this happen again.
Here is the point where validity and reliability play a very important role when devising an assessment instrument. We have to make sure that “the performances we demand from students are appropriate to the particular understandings sought”, in other words we have to evaluate what we first stated as our goals when planning our lessons, and the inferences we have to make from the results obtained must be based exclusively on what we are aiming at, not more, not less.
Not an easy task , we might think, specially if assessing correctness is far much easier, faster and cleaner than assessing understanding. But we have to do our job correctly. That is what we are paid for, not only in terms of money but in terms of the expectations of those young souls sitting in front of us every day, for some of them education is the only way to have access to a decent life, let’s have that in mind the next time we set our goals.
These criteria must specify the final results that we expect our students to achieve. These criteria have to be presented to them before hand so that they know what the aspects on which they are going to be assessed are and of course after evidence of understanding is shown, the correspondent feedback has to take place, in this way we are leading our students towards a higher level in the understanding continuum.
The chapter also explains what rubrics are and they use we can give them when assessing. They describe degrees of quality, proficiency or understanding along a continuum. That sounds absolutely fair.
I am sure that every single student has faced the frustrating situation of feeling that in spite of having complete control over a determined content, the assessing device used to evaluate his understanding in some way or another went against success. Now that we know that assessing is much more than correctness, we cannot allow that situations like this happen again.
Here is the point where validity and reliability play a very important role when devising an assessment instrument. We have to make sure that “the performances we demand from students are appropriate to the particular understandings sought”, in other words we have to evaluate what we first stated as our goals when planning our lessons, and the inferences we have to make from the results obtained must be based exclusively on what we are aiming at, not more, not less.
Not an easy task , we might think, specially if assessing correctness is far much easier, faster and cleaner than assessing understanding. But we have to do our job correctly. That is what we are paid for, not only in terms of money but in terms of the expectations of those young souls sitting in front of us every day, for some of them education is the only way to have access to a decent life, let’s have that in mind the next time we set our goals.
Dear Vicky!
ReplyDeleteYour last paragraph made me think of myself when studying at the university as an undergraduate and I had to accept all those sort of bad or poor instruments of assessments and the delays of test corrections which never were analyzed. Now I have seen the light. I have always said that time is our worst enemy because we have to face deadlines for everything which unfortunately leads us to overuse objective tests, just because we need to save time. However, if we do not want to complain about the poor ability of our students to think deeply, i.e. to develop critical thinking, we have to assess properly. We have to consider all the factors when assessing, I mean, the purpose, the criteria (which both are closely related), the instrument to assess, and the rubrics, of course. So many things to do, but as you said, let’s think of those “poor souls” who are looking for something for their lives, they do deserve to get good education, and ethically speaking we have to carry out our job efficiently.
Best
Angie
In order that 'we' teachers become sheer assessors, one starting step is that of changing the way we see assessment, and going beyond giving good or bad marks, but searching clear evidence of students understanding. It is necessary to see assessment in perspective, as an ongoing cyclical process rather than a special situation in which we can give a test, get results and give good or bad marks accordingly. Of course assessing understanding is assessing more than correcteness, but assessing what we want to assess, and not losing sight of the purpose of our assessment procedures. If we lose sight of what our purposes are, then we cannot get enough valid evidence and thus, we cannot make adequate decisions.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your idea that criteria must specify the final results that we expect our students to achieve. It is essential to take the time to think, analize and find out what we expect our students to learn, since if we are totally clear on this stage, the following process will be much easier to carry out.
ReplyDeleteAnother important point you mentioned is that criteria have to be presented to them before hand so that they know what the aspects on which they are going to be assessed. It makes a big difference when students know what we expect from them. As a teacher and student I have experimented both situations, and when criteria is not presented most of the students get bewildered during the course, therefore demotivaded.
"not more, not less." This is somethings that we never takie into account. We tipically evaluate, for example, reading comp and we tend to use personal criteria to give a final score. We are so ued to use our bias to evaluate that the no more or no less is our main rubric to evaluate. To be fair, unbiased and clear in these sense take a long time to be developed. The very same teacher centered routine force teachers to carry out this at random evaluations. That's why a proper planning of units with clear objectives in the end makes our life easier and more fair to students.
ReplyDeletexxx
Claudio
Dear Vic,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you when you say that assessing is much more than correctness. Just now after reading and reflecting we can realised about the mistakes commited when assessing. Maybe because we did not know about this great issue or just because as somebody posted it was easier. To be coherent and consistent we need to be clear in our objectives from the very beginning just then we can take decision about criterion to through which our students are going to be assessed. I think there’s no other way, otherwise everything would have non sense. Moreover, if we teachers are not crystal clear with this, how can we demad to our students evidence of their understanding?
Hi Vicky!
ReplyDelete"...the expectations of those young souls sitting in front of us every day, for some of them education is the only way to have access to a decent life, let’s have that in mind the next time we set our goals." That paragraph really touched me; and at the same time , it made me remember a school where I used to work where teachers were absolutelly aware that for those students, a decent education was the key to a better life not only for them, but also for their families. No matter the kind of institution we work in, we must have our objectives clear from the beginning; and I am not only refering to content delivey, but also to the kind of student and citizen we are forming: When we have all those questions answered, the way seems a little bit clearer. And yes, our students deserve a committed and well done job.
Dear Vicky,
ReplyDeleteAfter having read this book, I think there will be a before and after in our teaching practice reading assessment.
Wiggins has presented solid and practical arguments which have built knowledge regarding the teaching practices in terms of evaluation.
Knowing and being able to explain what the purpose of an activity, a test, a project, a final exam are about is the first step. On the other hand, have a reliable and valid instrument which can pursue our objective is another issue. It would be ideal to be able to validate an assessing instrument with a testing group, but our posibilities to do so are limited. To work on items and / or questions that we can recycle for the future is the best way to see how we are doing our tests.
Dear Vicky,
ReplyDeleteWhat you mention about providing our students with the assessment criteria before hand reflects, in my opinion, nothing but the lack of responsibility in teachers when planning. Everything gets clear for students when given the rubrics, since they know perfectly well what they are expected to do.
It is simply because we teachers do not know where we going that we are not able to be clear with our students.
Dear Vicky:
ReplyDeleteThe last paragraph of your post touched my heart. It seems obvious our role as teachers but we tend to forget it. Planning our classes, setting goals from the beginning, encouraging students to think critically and assessing for understanding are essential steps to succeed in our complex task. Nevertheless, we persist in using easy and ineffective strategies which are useless. It is our duty to take the first step leaving mediocrity behind.
Talking about rubrics, they might be useful tools if we know how to use them. Forgetting about correctness will lead us to find the light and reach understanding.
My dear Vicky:
ReplyDeleteYes, it is difficult to define the criteria to assess. How to avoid judging when assessing? I am full of questions just like you. I visited Claudio in his blog and said sharing among peers is a plausible solution to erase the word BIAS from our vocabulary mental data base. Nonetheless, now I am thinking that sharing with colleagues is not all... and I also think we saw a very effective example of 'criteria definition' in class just the other day... What about not only sharing among peers but also among STUDENTS? Claudia Trajtemberg gave US the possibility of choosing the criteria to assess our own projects... always guided by her lovely wisdom, of course! See? That is a way to define criteria, including everyone's judgement, avoiding the intrusion of our twsited ideas and beliefs in the assessment preocess. Why do we think students do not know anything? I believe that if we guide them, they themselves will surely know what criteria should be included in a rubric!
So in the end, we diminish this hideous judgement margin to the minimum!
I salute you Dear!