As a new educator, assessment has always been an area of anxiety and confusion for me because it is something that impact students’ experience in the classroom as well as their relationship with their self-confidence. I was relieved, after reading Katie White’s Softening the Edges and Dylan William’s Classroom Assessment and Pedagogy, that there are already aspects of assessment that I have concretized into my personal assessment knowledge bank. I have a solid understanding of the difference between formative and summative assessment as well as the importance of each. Formative assessment focuses on the progress, growth, and conscious change students are able to practice in their day to day learning, as well as the effectiveness of instruction. Summative assessment gives students a chance to display their overall knowledge and understanding by using their accumulated skills. Being able to use and create these two types of assessment during my practicum last year helped me to solidify my understanding of them. I also understand the way in which backwards planning works to create assessment and the associated benefits. Backwards planning has been taught and discussed in many of my B.Ed courses. This is when the teacher starts by looking at which big ideas and core competencies they would like to cover in the course, and after decides on the curricular competencies, content, and way of assessment. This strategy allows for holistic learning and for the whole child to be nurtured during the process. Another aspect of assessment that I believe I understand well is inclusivity. Inclusivity must be involved in assessment as all students learn differently and therefore display what they have learned differently as well. It is important to give students multiple options for formative and summative assessment. Some students may thrive given written, highly structured work, while some students may thrive when given the chance to express themselves artistically or verbally. It is the responsibility of the teacher to allow for each student’s success through inclusivity and diversity.
After reading the above-mentioned articles, I learned more about the idea of assessment and was even able to build on my previous skills and knowledge. Katie White states that “if we need to know whether a student is ready for the learning goals we are about to introduce, we can design a preassessment, which occurs before learning (2017, p. 17). Preassessment is a concept that I am somewhat unfamiliar with but after reading Chapter 1 of Softening the Edges, I can see the importance of facilitating a preassessment, especially when working with a new group of students so that diversity can be addressed. Making sure that all exceptionalities are acknowledged before an assessment plan is put in place is a proactive measure that can be taken so frustration and misunderstandings are kept to a minimum. A goal of mine this year will be to learn how to build an effective preassessment. Something else I learned after reading Softening the Edges is that along with knowing yourself as a teacher, it is just as critical to know your students.
“It is critical that we ensure we do not inadvertently ask students to demonstrate their understanding in ways that are contrary to cultural norms (for example, self-assessment is difficult for learners from cultures where talking about oneself is considered bragging). We also have to be careful we are not framing our prompts around contexts with which they may not be familiar (for example, asking students to calculate the area of a swimming pool when they have never gone swimming in anything besides a lake). Without an awareness of our learners and their personal contexts, we could privilege certain students who have had specific experiences over those who have not” (White, 2017, p. 18).
I almost feel guilty for not considering this. I have always thought of considering students’ cultural and personal contexts when planning inclusive activities and assignments, but before reading this article, I never thought of extending that idea to assessment. I can see how incredibly important it is to consider students’ personal experiences before basing an assessment off of assumptions that students all have the same background knowledge, unintentionally giving some an advantage. Lastly, a new concept I learned from Dylan William’s article Classroom Assessment and Pedagogy, is that assessment can have social consequences (2018, p. 564). For example, in an English Language Arts class, “competence includes speaking and listening as well as reading and writing, but only the latter are generally assessed (in the psychological jargon, the assessment under-represents the construct of language competence)” (Black and William, 2018, p.564). Because of the structure of certain assessments, some competencies are deemed less important than others, causing students to experience deficiencies in assessment. If speaking and listening are left out of an English Language Arts assessment, students are missing out on crucial social skills simply because they are not viable to have on a test (Black and Williams, 2018, p. 564). This may then cause unintentional social consequences for students as being able to listen and speak are essential communication and social skills in the real world. I was surprised to see this idea written in an academic article because I always felt that part of my personal pedagogy and educational philosophy was to incorporate real world skills into my classroom in order to set students up to be successful citizens. Reading this made me realize the consequences of not doing that, and how to be aware of it happening.
Overall, I think that continuously learning about assessment has shifted my perspective in the way that I am able to see and appreciate the complexity of it all and how the more experience one has, naturally, the more one will know. It relieves me to know that it is okay that I do not know everything right now, and that becoming an expert on assessment takes time. Although I think embracing new ways of assessment may make my pedagogy one of imperfections, I believe we have a responsibility as educators to challenge ourselves and step out of our comfort zones in terms of instruction so that everyone benefits and everyone is included.
References:
Black, P., & William, D. (2018). Classroom Assessment and Pedagogy. Routledge, 25(6), 551-575. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969594X.2018.1441807.
White, Katie. (2017). Softening the Edges: Assessment Practices That Honor K-12 Teachers and Learners (Using Responsible Assessment Methods in Ways That Support Student Engagement), Solution Tree. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unbc-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4804022. Created from unbc-ebooks on 2020-09-20 15:40:30.
