Personal Assessment Philosophy

I believe in using assessments as guides for student progress and the practical exercise of assigning grades (John, 2013; Popham, 2014). Assessments must be grounded in authentic and engaging task, context, and criteria to benefit students (MovNat, 2015). For an assessment to be authentic and comprehensive it must contain the following parts: task, physical or virtual context, social context, results, and criteria (Gulikers, Bastiaens, & Kirschner, 2004). This general philosophy of assessment has been reinforced during the experience of this assessment course and my current teaching.

As a specific addition to the above general philosophy, I believe students needs to have a say in what task they are to be assessed by. Several authors indicate the importance that student choice plays in assessment (Dosch & Zidon, 2014; Servilio, 2009; Varsavsky & Rayner, 2013). This can also be viewed as a form of differentiation of instruction and assessment, which has been identified as a valuable teaching tool (Tomlinson & Moon, 2013). Student choice of assessment relates to a larger theory of human motivation, self-determination theory. Self-determination theory is a conceptualization of the factors that lead to optimal human development. There are three factors at play, one of which, autonomy (Deci & Vansteenkiste, 2004), is related to the issue at hand. The basic idea is that students who are able to make decisions about class activities are more likely to be motivated to stay engaged in them. As this is applied to assessment, it is important to give students a choice, so that they are able to demonstrate autonomy in how they are being guided and judged in the class.

While there is some evidence that has already been sited, this is mostly from my experience teaching. Recently, I have experimented with having students actually run part of a class in anyway they see fit, as long as they have cleared it with me first. The results have not been astonishing, but it appears that the students are more engaged and motivated to take part. It appears that when students are in control they have the opportunity to understand the reality of the situation and something changes: it becomes more serious.

I continue to try new methods on expanding my philosophy to include providing options for students on how they are assessed, such as selected response tests, constructed response tests, and performance tests. Morawski (2014) provided an interesting framework from which to work from by creating student selected multimodal responses in place of a test (Morawski et al., 2014). While I am not comfortable creating grading criteria for artwork as was in this example, it is an interesting example and something to use at some point in time.

My personal assessment philosophy is part of a larger education philosophy that I am constantly developing. I am trying to put this philosophy together to understand and leverage how humans learn best, or to put another way, what is our nature as learners and teachers. I believe that it is important to have both roles in your life at the same time. My philosophy of assessment contributes to the overall philosophy, through student choice and using the information as a guide first, and grade second.

References

Deci, E. L., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2004). Self-determination theory and basic need satisfaction: Understanding human development in positive psychology. Ricerche di Psicologia, 27(1), 23-41.

Dosch, M., & Zidon, M. (2014). "The Course Fit Us": Differentiated Instruction in the College Classroom. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 26(3), 343-357.

Gulikers, J. T. M., Bastiaens, T. J., & Kirschner, P. A. (2004). A five-dimensional framework for authentic assessment. Educational Technology Research and Development, 52(3), 67-86.

John, D. (2013). Intervention : course corrections for the athlete and trainer. Aptos, CA: On Target Publications.

Morawski, C. M., Hayden, K., Nutt, A., Pasic, N., Rogers, A., & Zawada, V. (2014). A Gallery of Multimodal Possibilities in a Graduate Course on Learning Differences in Education. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 15(18).

MovNat. (2015). Certified Level 1 Trainer Manual (4.2 ed.). Albuquerque, NM.

Popham, W. J. (2014). Classroom assessment : what teachers need to know (Seventh edition. ed.). Boston: Pearson.

Servilio, K. L. (2009). You Get to Choose! Motivating Students to Read through Differentiated Instruction. TEACHING Exceptional Children Plus, 5(5).

Tomlinson, C. A., & Moon, T. R. (2013). Assessment and student success in a differentiated classroom. Alexandria, Va.: ASCD.

Varsavsky, C., & Rayner, G. (2013). Strategies That Challenge: Exploring the Use of Differentiated Assessment to Challenge High-Achieving Students in Large Enrolment Undergraduate Cohorts. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 38(7), 789-802.