Personal Philosophy of Asessment

            Assessment is a key component of teaching. I always knew this to be true, but my perspectives on the importance of assessment and how assessment results can be interpreted have changed drastically over the course of this semester. When I entered the MAT program, I viewed assessment primarily as a tool for evaluating students at a given point in time. I felt that they provided a snapshot of student learning and a numeric value by which students can be compared to each other or an ideal standard. While this is true to an extent, I’ve since learned that my previous views on assessment could be considered very narrow. Assessments needn’t be formal, graded, or even evaluative. Rather, assessments can be tools for monitoring and improving student learning and teacher instruction (McMillan, 2008). My current philosophy of assessment values assessment variety, assessment fairness, and communication with students.

 One important belief I’ve developed during this course is the belief that a variety of assessment techniques should be used to monitor and evaluate student learning. Previously, I valued summative written assessments far more than other assessment varieties because I felt that they provided the most valid and objective measures of student knowledge. This course has given me an appreciation of other assessment techniques that offer additional information to teachers and students. Performance assessments, including research papers, laboratory activities, and oral presentations, can be used not only to assess content knowledge gains like traditional written exams, but to also assess the development of important skills such as collaboration, research, presentation, and creative skills (McMillan, 2008). Learning facts is an important component of a student’s education, but being able to understand the importance of those facts, apply that information to a novel problem, and use their skills to find a solution is arguably more important. Performance assessments may be more difficult to create and less objectively graded than traditional tests, but they are useful for skill development and introduce variety into a teacher’s assessment repertoire (McMillan, 2008).

Using a variety of assessments may also be considered more fair, as alternative assessments could benefit learners who have different strengths, weaknesses, and learning styles. In the past, we’ve discussed Howard Gardner, a theorist whose theory of multiple intelligences suggests that using a variety of teaching styles is key to providing each student with the opportunity to succeed and helping students become more well-rounded learners (Snowman & McCown, 2015). This same logic applies to assessment. I tend to favor written exams as a student because I am an intrapersonal, logical learner who enjoys listening to lectures and reading text. There are many students, however, that prefer audio-visual, kinesthetic, or interpersonal styles. These students may do well on written tests, but they would benefit from performance assessments that allow them to be assessed in areas in which they are stronger. A second theorist that’s inspired me, Robert Sternberg (2008), used a basketball analogy to stress the importance of using performance assessments to teach more than facts. He wrote that teaching a person the rules of basketball and the relevant terminology won’t make that person a good basketball player; you must actually play basketball to get better! If we, as STEM teachers, want to develop students who use STEM practices, shouldn’t we give them to chance to put those skills to the test in an authentic way?

Perhaps the most important thing my assessment class has added to my philosophy of assessment pertains to the use of formative assessment to monitor the learning process. Formative assessments are those that are used by teachers to improve student learning and teacher instruction (McMillan, 2008). These assessments needn’t be formal or graded if they provide the teacher and their students with feedback that improves learning in some way. One of the best ways to do this is with a technological tool such as Kahoot or Socrative. These quizzing applications allow students with device access to answer questions posed by the teacher. The teacher can then use the results of these quizzes to adjust their lessons (Davis, 2015). If, for example, the students as a whole score poorly on quiz questions related to the differences between mitosis and meiosis, the teacher can stop the quiz and clarify some misconceptions, or reteach the material in a new manner. Such quizzes also provide the students with opportunities to test themselves and determine if they truly understand the material, or if they need to change their study strategies (Davis, 2015). I’ve seen the benefits of using formative assessment technologies to enhance learning firsthand, both as a student in college and as an instructor during my field experience. I therefore aim to incorporate formative assessment into my own classrooms in the future.

Another type of assessment I’ve learned to appreciate is affective assessment. The assessment types I’ve discussed thus far have been cognitive in nature, meaning they pertain to knowledge and facts. Affective assessments are used to measure students’ feelings, values, and beliefs towards a subject (Hall, 2011). As discussed by theorists Ramona Hall (2011) and W. James Popham (2009), these are important because students are unlikely to be motivated to work hard in class if they don’t value or enjoy class. Affective assessment items can be easily incorporated with cognitive items in formative assessments such as Kahoot quizzes. For example, teachers could ask students to rate, on a scale of 1-4, how important they felt the material they learned that day was. If students respond with low scores overall, the teacher could try to point out more connections between the content learned in class and real-world problems. If a similar question informed the teacher that students did not enjoy a particular lesson, that teacher could try to change the next lesson to make it more engaging.

When creating and utilizing assessments, it is of crucial importance to take steps to ensure that those assessments are fair and unbiased (McMillan, 2008). This is something I’ve thought about as a student, but I hadn’t understood exactly how to do so until recently. First, there’s absolutely no shame in asking others to evaluate an assessment you’ve written for fairness. In fact, having another teacher look at an assessment is helpful because they may notice something that you did not, like a poorly worded question or a mistake in the answer key. Furthermore, a teacher can reflect on a previously administered assessment using an item analysis. An item analysis provides the teacher with indices of difficulty and discrimination for each assessment item (Making sense of test analysis, n.d.). Assessment items with unreasonably high difficulties or with very low discrimination indices should be reevaluated or eliminated from an assessment altogether. If an assessment was administered more than once, the reliability and validity of the assessment can be considered as well (McMillan, 2008). It is unreasonable to expect any teacher to write a perfect assessment on the first try, but utilizing peer, student, and self-reflective feedback to improve an assessment can help a teacher become more effective over time.

Communication with students is a very important component of assessment. I know first-hand that students are appreciative of clear guidelines, detailed rubrics, and consistent grading. This is partially why it’s necessary to relate every assessment item to a learning outcome for the course or unit. Teachers use national and state-wide standards, such as the Next Generation Science Standards, to write objectives for their course and units that state what students will be capable of doing after instruction. These learning outcomes therefore serve as the foundation for assessments. Assessment items shouldn’t be written unless there is a clear reason for the item to be included. Keeping the learning outcomes in mind, and sharing those learning outcomes with the students, is an important part of communicating with them. Sharing rubrics with students also helps them know exactly how they will be evaluated, which makes the assessment fairer in their eyes.

            Communication is especially important for students with disabilities. Teachers must understand what students are capable of to assess them properly. This information can only be gathered via communication with the student and their parents. Teachers can then use this information to design assessments that are fair for the student. For example, students with intellectual disability struggle with processes that have many parts, such as the processes of gene expression (Snowman & McCown, 2015). Therefore, it would be inappropriate to ask a student with intellectual disability to determine an amino acid sequence from a DNA template. Instead, a teacher should break that task into multiple parts that make more sense to the student. First, have the student determine the mRNA sequence that is complementary to the DNA strand, then have them recognize the tRNA sequence before they finally translate the amino acid sequence. It certainly isn’t easy to appeal to every student, but if teachers communicate with students and use their own observations to determine how students may learn better, they can also determine how to structure assessments that are fair and give the students the best opportunity for success.

            Prior to taking a formal course on assessment methods, I had a very narrow view of assessment. I favored summative written assessments far too heavily because I considered them to be the most objective measures of student learning. I now understand that utilizing a variety of assessment methods is key for assessing all students fairly and improving both teacher instruction and student learning. Performance assessments may not assess content-knowledge memorization as well as written tests, but they assess skill development and knowledge application to a much greater extent (McMillan, 2008). Furthermore, using formative assessments and affective assessments is crucial for monitoring student learning and keeping students engaged (McMillan 2008; Hall, 2011). This can be easily done using technologies including Kahoot and Socrative, which provide instant feedback and fun challenges for participants. Additionally, evaluating assessments for fairness, bias, reliability, validity, and difficulty allows teachers to improve those assessments overtime to ensure that the conclusions drawn from assessment results are accurate (McMillan, 2008). Lastly, communicating with students is a key component of assessment. Students appreciate clear learning outcomes, detailed rubrics, and consistent grading expectations. Taking these steps as a teacher can help me show my students that I truly want them to succeed, and that we can work together to improve the experience of everyone in class.  

References

Davis, V. (2015). 5 Fantastic, Fast, Formative Assessment Tools [Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/5-fast-formative-assessment-tools-vicki-davis

Hall, R. A. (2011). Affective assessment: The missing piece of the educational reform puzzle. Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin: International Journal for Professional Educators, 77 (2), 7-10. Retrieved from https://blackboard.stevenson.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-1317870-dt-content-rid-7002657_1/courses/17S8W1_ED_615_OL1/Hall_2011_Affective%20Assessment%20The%20Missing%20Piece%20in%20the%20Educational%20Reform%20Puzzle.pdf

Making sense of test analysis (n.d.). Retrieved from: https://www.geneseo.edu/sites/default/files/sites/education/p12resources-item-analysis-and-instruction.pdf

McMillan, J. H. (2008). Assessment essentials for standards-based education. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Popham, W. J. (2009). Assessing Student Affect. Educational Leadership, 66 (8), 85-86

Snowman, J. & McCown, R. (2015). Psychology Applied to Teaching (14th ed.). Stamford, Connecticut: Cengage Learning.

Sternberg, R. J. (2008). Assessing what matters. Educational Leadership, 65 (4), 20-26. Retrieved from https://blackboard.stevenson.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-1317851-dt-content-rid-7002648_1/courses/17S8W1_ED_615_OL1/Sternberg_2008_Assessing%20What%20Matters.pdf