Tagged: assessment

Connect the Dots

By

I apologize for using a rather trite metaphor for the title of this blog, particularly since I never really cared for the dot-to-dot pages that would occasionally appear in my coloring books as a child.  I never saw the purpose. I could tell what the picture was going to be and I didn’t need to scour the page to find the next number to make it appear.

As an educator the idea of connecting things has become much more profound to me. Watching the students in my English classes make connections between what we were reading and what was happening in the world were some of my favorite teacher moments. The flip side of that was also enlightening to me. As a principal of a school with many different academic support programs for students I remember a conversation with a student who told me that she didn’t “do reading” when she went to a classroom to work with a teacher who was supporting English Learners, even though I had just been in that room and seen a lesson that was explicitly planned to connect to the general education classroom. The student didn’t see the connection and that was the problem. Read more

The 4×2 of Student Self-Reflection

By

The story self-reflection within the context of my own career is a good news/bad news story. First, the good news. While there is much I’m not proud of when I reflect on the early part of my career – especially from an assessment and grading perspective (e.g. zeros, no reassessment) – the one thing I did do is have my students engage in some self-reflection.

The bad news? Well, I didn’t engage my students in self-reflection very often and when I did, it was awful; I didn’t know what I was doing, there was no structure to it, and it, more often than not, ended up being a waste of time.

Self-reflection is essential to the development of our students’ metacognitive awareness that allows them to plan, monitor, and assess their learning and themselves, as learners (Clark, 2012; Jones, 2007). Metacognition entails both the knowledge and regulation of one’s cognition (Pintrich, 2002). Through the processes of self-judgment and self-reaction (Zimmerman, 2011), self-reflection plays an essential role in the cyclical process of metacognitive awareness before, during, and after the learning. Read more

Uncovering Implicit Bias in Assessment, Feedback and Grading

By

Education is a noble profession. It is a profession that aims to cultivate diverse thinkers and aspires to nurture personal growth. It is a profession that can lift humanity’s spirits and help humankind strive to be the best version of itself—the “great equalizer of the conditions of men,” as Horace Mann famously stated in the 19th century. However, even with great people, a worthy goal, and an admirable vision, the opposite can often be the case.

Unfortunately, education can also be the great unequalizer, where personal biases can inform practice and policy development, stifle student growth, enforce discriminatory policies, and even socially isolate students. According to some researchers, implicit educator biases may contribute to a racial achievement gap; precisely, the negative impact of teacher assumptions on students’ ability based on race, culture, or values (van den Bergh et al. 2010). Unknown to an educator, these personal biases may create imagery of an ideal student, which is often seen through a white privilege lens because of society’s tendency toward whiteness, distorting our interactions with students of color.

Without social awareness and continuous self-monitoring, educators may let their implicit bias become an influential factor in their pedagogy, influencing everything from assessment to grading. This blog will discuss how personal biases can appear in our teaching and learning practices if educators are not diligent. I will focus on three of the more considerable teaching and learning modes: assessment, feedback, and grading.

Assessment Bias

Without attention, teachers may create assessments that reflect their values and experiences and ignore those of their students. The teacher may use language that they are more familiar with in their queries or create prompts influenced by their personal experiences. Ultimately students may find it hard to relate to the questions—potentially leaving some students unable to perform to the best of their abilities. For assessments to be less biased, a teacher must consider all backgrounds, ethnicities, genders, and identities to ensure that their lived experience isn’t the only one represented on an assessment.

By being more introspective when developing assessments, teachers can lessen the chance they produce a personally irrelevant assessment for their students. The impact of this irrelevancy could be low student performance, disinterest in the task, and even apathy toward school.

To help teachers be more aware of their biases when creating assessments, they can ask themselves the following questions as they develop questions:

  1. Does the assessment give the sense that the teacher has unwavering support and is a partner in a student’s success?
  2. Are the questions seeking to understand the student or judge them?
  3. Does the teacher draw on the students’ life situations, interests, and curiosities when creating problems/prompts? – Adapted from Tomlinson (2015).

Microaggressions in Feedback 

Suppose we ignore our implicit biases when speaking with students. In that case, we run the risk of putting both parties into what social psychologist Albert Bandura calls “a downward course of mutual discouragement” (Bandura 1997, 234). A student’s reaction to deficit-based feedback may result in the teacher reacting in kind. Once this cycle starts, a student’s self-belief is now at risk.

Microaggressions and subtle discriminations can exist in the feedback process, and when they do, they may severely limit feedback acceptance.

Teachers can limit bias in their feedback to use the student’s thinking to grow the student. For example, let’s look at the following examples:

Example A

Feedback that Uses Teacher Thinking: You didn’t include [these details] about [person] in your essay. Try [these words].

Feedback that Uses Student Thinking: Tell me more about these words [here]. I am interested to know why you think [this word] didn’t work instead? Oh, okay, that would work. You should add what you just said to your paragraph, and it was perfect.

Example B

Feedback that Uses Teacher Thinking: When I write, I try and think about [detail]. Remember when I taught you the three-step process? No? The one that is in your textbook? That’s the most effective process.

Feedback that Uses Student Thinking: What did you think about when you wrote [this]? Seems like that interests you? Yeah, I can see you are passionate about [that]. What are the first three things you did when you wrote [this]? That is an interesting place to start. Could I convince you to start here? No? Okay, that makes sense. Have to make this work for you.

Example C

Feedback that Uses Teacher Thinking: In this graph, I would start [here] because this information is important. Has anyone heard of the [rhyme name] to remember the key features of a graph? No? Oh, this helped me a lot.

Feedback that Uses Student Thinking: In this graph, what information did you think was essential for you to begin this problem? I’m surprised to hear you say that because yesterday you said something different, what changed? Interesting, I saw you smile as you were talking. Why? Yeah, I agree you are getting this concept more. Are you using any strategies to help you learn this? Yes. Well, [that strategy] is undoubtedly helping you.

These scenarios are fictional, but the point here is teachers should always be aware of their language. Otherwise, they can inadvertently make the student feel like an unequal and devalued student in the class and even the school. In short, words matter.

Race Bias in Grading Practices

Teachers must judge student performance fairly and accurately. It is our professional duty. Inaccurate judgments have the potential not only to alter grades but could negatively affect teacher-student relationships, distort a student’s self-concept, or reduce opportunities to learn (Cohen and Steele 2002). One factor that can lead to a misrepresentation of a grade is teacher race and ethnicity bias. A student’s racial or ethnic group, socioeconomic class, or gender can substantially bias a teacher’s judgment of student performance. Any internalized racial biases can activate stereotypes and lead teachers to utilize discriminatory performance evaluations (Wood and Graham 2010).

For example, several studies found substantial differences in students’ performance judgments from various racial subgroups when the teacher subconsciously subscribed to the general stereotype that African American and Latino students generally don’t perform as well as their White and Asian counterparts (Ready and Wright 2011).

Different minority statuses can affect teacher perceptions in performance evaluation, leading to inaccurate grades, potentially harming students’ perception of their academic experience. (Ogbu and Simons 1998). In other words, students may feel like school is insignificant, unsupportive, or even harmful.

To help lessen the likelihood that implicit personal bias influences the grading process, teachers can democratize the grading process. They can use learning evidence instead of points and employ a modal interpretation of gradebook scores instead of averages. They can use a skills-focused curriculum instead of a content-focused one. Perhaps most important, they can involve the student in the grading process by infusing more self-evaluation moments into their instruction.

School leaders should explore ways to evaluate pedagogical practices through a racial and equity lens and observe classroom interactions between teachers and students. School leaders should also continue training on white privilege and its influence over the status quo, and teachers should evaluate student performance to judge its fairness and accuracy.

The Work Ahead

Although we may feel like we are objective and rational people, we all have biases.  We all have values, beliefs, and assumptions that help us make sense of what is happening in our lives and guide our interactions with others. For the most part, these values, beliefs, and assumptions guide us in positive and productive directions, but the interplay between these same values and social interactions can produce implicit biases that distort our decisions, perspectives, and actions. We must notice, monitor, and manage these distortions to achieve a goal of racial equity in school and life. If we don’t, we are at risk of our unconscious biases harming our pedagogy, our relationships with students, and our perception of their needs.

 

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York, NY: W. H. Freeman & Co, Publishers.

Cohen, G. L., & Steele, C. M. (2002). A barrier of mistrust: How negative stereotypes affect cross-race mentoring. In J. Aronson (Ed.), Improving academic achievement: Impact of psychological factors on education (pp. 303–327). San Diego, CA: Academic.

Ogbu, J. U., & Simons, H. D. (1998). Voluntary and involuntary minorities: A cultural-ecological theory of school performance with some implications for education. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 29(2), 155-188.

Ready, D.D., & Wright, D. L. (2011). Accuracy and Inaccuracy in Teachers’ Perceptions of Young Children’s Cognitive Abilities: The Role of Child Background and Classroom Context. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831210374874

Tenenbaum, H. R., & Ruck, M. D. (2007). Are teachers’ expectations different for racial minorities than for European American students? A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 99(2), 253–273.

“Teaching Up” – Carol Ann Tomlinson: Teaching for Excellence in Academically Diverse Classrooms (2015).

van den Bergh, L., Denessen, E., Hornstra, L., Voeten, M., & Holland, R.W., (2010). The implicit prejudiced attitudes of teachers: Relations to teacher expectations and the ethnic achievement gap. American Educational Research Journal, 47, 497–527.

Wood, D., & Graham, S. (2010). “Why race matters: social context and achievement motivation in African American youth.” In Urdan, T. and Karabenick, S. (Eds.) The Decade Ahead: Applications and Contexts of Motivation and Achievement (Advances in Motivation and Achievement, Vol. 16 Part B) (pp. 175-209). Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Bingley.

Data as a Flashlight: Using the Evidence to Guide the Journey (Yours and Theirs)

By

My granddaughter was struggling with the latest topic in her grade 3 math class and her recent assessment result validated that she did not fully understand the learning target of patterns and the equations that supported them. Determining patterns is not always an easy process as this example would indicate:

2, 6, 3, 9, 6, 18, 15…

With a big test coming up, my daughter-in-law reached out to me to help get my granddaughter past the block and gain some confidence in her ability to master the concept. We connected online a few times over the days before the test and worked through a lot of questions and strategies. As she grasped the concepts and different ways to get to the solution, I could see her confidence soar. By the time we concluded all of the practice and she routinely got every solution, she was excited to demonstrate her skills on the assessment. As I write this post it’s been well over a week since the assessment was completed and my granddaughter has not received any feedback.  Read more

Assessment Transformation in Unprecedented Times

By

Many are predicting larger-than-ever achievement disparities due to the deep inequities in our system that existed even before this pandemic. 

Achievement gaps are the symptom of educational system deficits that do not serve all students well, in particular our black, brown and indigenous children. Knowing this deepening disparity, our planning and design must be intentional, and dramatically different than anything we have done before. Our district and school leadership teams, collaborative teams, and individual teachers can set up the context that will ensure success for all of our students. I believe in educators. Read more

Comments: 1

Moving Forward to a New Better

By

In the mid-1940’s, as the end of World War II was near, Sir Winston Churchill was credited with saying, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”  

I think it’s fair to say that the vast majority of educators could not have imagined being in a time of twin crises. One brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the second due to the unrest borne out of systemic racism resulting in the loss of black lives.  

So, the question facing us today is:

How can we recognize these current crises, respond to them, and extract the greatest good for our students and ourselves?

As I ponder this question from both instructional design and assessment lenses, I turn to the work I’ve been doing with schools and educators over the last six weeks. A common theme has emerged as I’ve heard colleagues express a desire to return to the “old normal.”  

This worries me as it devalues, on some levels, all of the new learning that has happened during this challenging time. I also don’t think we should be hoping for a “new normal,” as “normal” connotes some limitations as well. I hope instead that we are moving forward to a “new better.”

I believe this “new better” will cause us to embrace the best of what we knew prior to the crises, with the best of what we learned during the time classroom instruction was occurring remotely. I know there is deep concern about all of the learning loss that occurred, as well as challenges driven by how to best assess student progress.  

When it comes to academics some panic has been created in educators by reports that suggest a 30% loss in literacy, and 50% percent loss in mathematics has been the end result of schools closing in the spring, and remote learning being a poor substitute.  

It’s important that we recognize that students are where they are. Spending four weeks, or four months for that matter, on what educators think was missed, is not going to ensure that students learn at high levels, nor will it make up for the lost time. Instead, there is a need to focus on what’s important for the current year and provide small group sessions to address students’ needs.  

I have been advocating that the return to school should focus on the foundational skills of literacy and numeracy, and also SEL (social-emotional learning), as educators determine the baseline levels of their returning students and plan for their growth during the 2020-21 school year.  

I believe educators should also prepare for the struggles associated with breaking some habits that students may have acquired during their additional time at home which may not be in tune with school success. Our students have been away from the routines that are necessary for success in school. Think about this from your own perspective. During your time away from school, has it been easier for you to sleep in, have a second cup of coffee, or only have to dress the upper half of your body for Zoom meetings? We need to extend grace to our students, display empathy for them as they struggle to return to successful school routines, and to ourselves, as we return to work habits that align with successful teaching and leading.  

When it comes to assessing, the same important question has always been there whether instruction was being delivered remotely or face to face:

Did they learn what I taught?

Educators need to use assessments to gather evidence and focus on feedback and learning rather than accountability and grading. By focusing on the formative aspects of assessment and using the results to guide students and teachers in making improvements, there’s a greater likelihood of closing gaps.  

Formative assessment (assessing to gather evidence, not numbers) drives the next steps for teachers and students. It’s the same process whether remote or face to face. Teachers are experts at this checking for understanding with students present. In a remote learning world, teachers need to be similarly collecting regular evidence of student learning before simply moving forward. There may be an adjustment in the remote world. Simple checks for understanding could include choral response or head nodding. It can be as simple as “if what I just said is correct, make a ‘C’ with your hand; if it was incorrect, show that with an ‘X.’”  

As an aside—when it comes to talking about these gaps, I think we also need to remember that when it comes to the current crisis, it’s a global phenomenon, so the question needs to be asked:

“Who are our students behind?”

In other words, if we’re comparing everything now to a non-crisis-filled school year, that point is both self-explanatory and irrelevant. If we’re comparing ourselves to other countries, they are in the same boat. Let’s focus on the current school year, get our students back to the positive thinking and learning habits they are all capable of, and build their skills anew.  

Let me conclude by mentioning another common colloquialism. You’ll all be familiar with the notion of “trying to put the genie back in the bottle.” This refers to the attempt to revert a situation to how it formerly existed by containing, limiting, or repressing information, ideas, or advancements that have become commonplace or public knowledge.  

During the time of remote learning, there were some tremendous new insights gained by colleagues about our sector of education. It has been shared with me that parent engagement increased in many jurisdictions as a result of Zoom (or other program) meetings, telephone calls, and letters home.

In a return to any form of “normal,” are you prepared to abandon this increased contact so we can return to the very stifling, sterile parent-teacher night?

Other colleagues have shared with me the surprise of finding previously identified reluctant learners or introverts who have shined during this time. They have produced high-quality work unseen prior to the move to remote learning. Are we going to forget that and return those students to instruction that did not work for them or result in their best learning indicators?  

I believe a move to “go back to,” when we’ve gained some deep insights, as these two of many examples offer, would be the equivalent of educational malpractice. Instead, it’s time to accept that the genie is out, that we’ve learned some valuable things, and that we should move forward to a new better.

Prioritize Original Thinking and Creativity

By

The rapid onset of COVID-19 that forced schools across North America to immediately pivot to a virtual learning model may have exposed some aspects of teaching and learning long overdue for reconsideration. For some teachers, what became most evident was that transitioning to a virtual learning model was not as seamless as it could have been. Read more

How Does Assessment Change in a Remote or Hybrid Environment?

By

Just like many of you, I had to develop a whole new set of skills in the last few months, as learning went online for the adults I work with in the same way most of you moved to remote teaching with your students.

Truthfully, I’ve gotten caught up in exploring many of the online tools teachers are using to share learning experiences with their students. Read more

Comments: 4

Enough: (Re)Designing Assessment Practice to Interrupt Racial Inequities in our Schools

By

Enough.

How many times have you uttered that same word in these past few months? Pause for a moment. How often has the word “enough” emerged as an emotion or direction toward your children? To your spouse or partner? To your neighbor? To your social media feed?

Read more
Comments: 4

Rethinking Pre-assessment: A Pathway to Supporting Learning in the Fall

By

As we brace for the uncertainties of the fall, it will be important to be as prepared as possible—both for our sanity and our ultimate success. We must adopt a learning stance to find our way through the COVID-19 upheaval. We must find answers to the core questions that ground all learners: 

Where are we going? Where are we now? And how can we bridge the gap between those two spaces? Read more