When I tell non-educators I've edited a book on formative assessment, they look blank. Yes, I admit "formative assessment" sounds like education-speak.
Formative assessment is the practice of dipping in to find out what students understand and can do during the process of instruction instead of just at the end of a unit. The point is to try and figure out where the students are when there's still time to do something about it.
Of course, teachers check for understanding all the time by asking questions in class or just by glancing around to see who looks confused. Anyone who teaches one-on-one, say for example a parent teaching a child to read or do the multiplication tables, also constantly monitors what the child already knows. That way the parent can select the logical next step in instruction. Maybe formative assessment is one reason why one-on-one learning is so efficient.
Doing formative assessment with a whole class of students at once, though, is more difficult, and that's where the need for tools comes in. Tools can range from suggested in-class assignments and ways of scoring them to computer programs that track student moves in responding to a question placed right within a text. Teachers can find out who in the class is totally lost, who just needs a hint to get back on track, and who is ready to go on to something more challenging.
New Frontiers in Formative Assessment profiles ten ongoing projects that have worked to make formative assessment a thoughtful part of teaching in the content areas of mathematics, science, and language arts. The chapters address how to decide what to assess, how to assess during instruction instead of as an interruption, and perhaps most difficult, what moves a teacher should make as a result of what he or she finds out. It's meant to be helpful to teachers, curriculum developers, administrators and teacher educators. But I thought I'd at least explain the general notion to the rest of you.
Showing posts with label formative assessment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label formative assessment. Show all posts
Monday, January 16, 2012
Monday, December 12, 2011
New Frontiers in Formative Assessment
Formative assessment is an ongoing process of checking students' understanding and then adjusting instruction to best respond to student needs. This process of checking and meeting students where they are takes more teacher skill and flexibility than just marching through a pre-set curriculum, but it should lead to greater learning.
Today is the official release date for New Frontiers in Formative Assessment from Harvard Education Press. Almost two years ago the Noyce Foundation asked me to help share some of the best assessment work of our staff and grantees. I thought a book bringing together interesting work in the field might do the trick, so I put together a proposal, convinced the Harvard folks, and found a co-editor, Dan Hickey, who is an expert on assessment.
Together we solicited authors for twelve chapters on assessment projects and practices. Half the chapters describe the use of technology to aid assessment, often building it right into a learning program. Six more use simple paper and pencil tools to get at students' thinking.
The chapters are evenly divided among math, literacy, and science. It's our contention that different subjects require different approaches to assessment, and we provide plenty of real examples from the projects our authors have run. One chapter discusses techniques for teaching science vocabulary to young English language learners. Another examines how students can label and share graphs among networked computers in a classroom, and another describes a process for preparing teachers to look collaboratively and with diagnostic acumen at students' work in mathematics.
Lorrie Shepard of the University of Colorado at Boulder wrote an insightful foreword, discussing how testing can harm learning and how the chapters of the book provide an alternative. And Dylan Wiliam, assessment maven, gave us this blurb:
Working with the authors of these chapters was a privilege, and I'm proud of the book that resulted. I hope that teachers, curriculum developers, and other educators will find it useful. In coming posts I'll give short summaries of selected chapters.
Today is the official release date for New Frontiers in Formative Assessment from Harvard Education Press. Almost two years ago the Noyce Foundation asked me to help share some of the best assessment work of our staff and grantees. I thought a book bringing together interesting work in the field might do the trick, so I put together a proposal, convinced the Harvard folks, and found a co-editor, Dan Hickey, who is an expert on assessment.
Together we solicited authors for twelve chapters on assessment projects and practices. Half the chapters describe the use of technology to aid assessment, often building it right into a learning program. Six more use simple paper and pencil tools to get at students' thinking.
The chapters are evenly divided among math, literacy, and science. It's our contention that different subjects require different approaches to assessment, and we provide plenty of real examples from the projects our authors have run. One chapter discusses techniques for teaching science vocabulary to young English language learners. Another examines how students can label and share graphs among networked computers in a classroom, and another describes a process for preparing teachers to look collaboratively and with diagnostic acumen at students' work in mathematics.
Lorrie Shepard of the University of Colorado at Boulder wrote an insightful foreword, discussing how testing can harm learning and how the chapters of the book provide an alternative. And Dylan Wiliam, assessment maven, gave us this blurb:
This is an extraordinary book. The chapters cover practical applications of formative assessment in mathematics, science, and language arts, including the roles of technology and teachers professional learning. I found my own thinking about formative assessment constantly being stretched and challenged. Anyone who is involved in education will find something of value in this book.
Working with the authors of these chapters was a privilege, and I'm proud of the book that resulted. I hope that teachers, curriculum developers, and other educators will find it useful. In coming posts I'll give short summaries of selected chapters.
Monday, May 16, 2011
New State Assessments for the Common Core
Computer adaptive assessment, fairer approaches to assessing English learners, virtual worlds for assessing science inquiry--Will the next generation of state assessments embrace these ideas to give a fuller sense of what students are learning? This morning, PACE of California and the Rennie Center of Massachusetts just released three papers discussing these frontiers in assessment. I flew to D.C. to introduce a panel discussion of the three papers, collectively called The Road Ahead for State Assessments.
Mark Reckase of Michigan State University started off the session by discussing the promise and difficulty of computer adaptive assessment, which is used in tests as diverse as the GRE's for graduate school and the Army's vocational aptitude test. In computer adaptive assessment, the difficulty level of later questions is determined by how a student answers earlier questions. The fact that the test difficulty level adjusts to the student allows a finer discrimination of student skill and knowledge levels with fewer questions. Computer adaptive tests are also better at distinguishing student performance at the tails of the ability distribution. A common test has only a few very easy or very difficult questions, with most questions in the middle; a computer adaptive test can offer many questions at about the level that matches the student's knowledge. But such a test requires a very large question bank and lots of computer hardware that is regularly updated. One of the two new large assessment consortia, the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium or SBAC, plans to include computer adaptive testing in the model it rolls out in 2014.
Robert Linquanti of WestEd next discussed the complex question of testing English language learners in content areas other than English proficiency. He pointed out that group reporting on how "English learners" are performing is always problematic, becasue unlike other demographic subgroups, the subgroup "English learners" is a revolving door. New immigrants arrive all the time, while those who have finally mastered English (and are therefore likely to be higher performers in other content areas as well) are moved out of the category.
Lack of academic English knowledge can lower students' test scores even when they actually understand content well. Linquanti suggested a number of accommodations, such as English dictionaries or glossaries, use of "plain English," math or science tests involving very little language, and others, to allow better estimates of what English learners actually understand in content areas such as math and science. He also suggested that while English proficiency should be reported as a function of time in the English learning system, proficiency in other content areas should be reported as a function of both time in the system and English proficiency.
Finally, Chris Dede and Jody Clarke-Midura discussed the possibility of measuring complex learning in science through immersive virtual environments. In their research, students choose an avatar that interacts with a scientific problem in a virtual world, generating hypotheses, gathering data, making inferences, and arguing from evidence. These virtual performance assessments can be more consistent and less expensive than hands-on performance assessments, and they offer promise for understanding how students use the tools of scientific inquiry. Dede and Clarke-Midura suggest that such assessments should form part of a comprehensive state assessment system.
The challenge for SBAC and the other assessment consortium, PARCC, is that they need to create a complete testing system in two subject areas for use in 2014. With such a short timeline, the temptation will be great to settle for creating systems a little better than what we have rather than groundbreaking innovations. But such innovations are what we need to reverse the curriculum-narrowing impact of current standardized tests and to encourage the teaching of more complex thinking and problem-solving skills. Educators interested in these issues should definitely take a look at the Rennie Center/PACE report.
Mark Reckase of Michigan State University started off the session by discussing the promise and difficulty of computer adaptive assessment, which is used in tests as diverse as the GRE's for graduate school and the Army's vocational aptitude test. In computer adaptive assessment, the difficulty level of later questions is determined by how a student answers earlier questions. The fact that the test difficulty level adjusts to the student allows a finer discrimination of student skill and knowledge levels with fewer questions. Computer adaptive tests are also better at distinguishing student performance at the tails of the ability distribution. A common test has only a few very easy or very difficult questions, with most questions in the middle; a computer adaptive test can offer many questions at about the level that matches the student's knowledge. But such a test requires a very large question bank and lots of computer hardware that is regularly updated. One of the two new large assessment consortia, the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium or SBAC, plans to include computer adaptive testing in the model it rolls out in 2014.
Robert Linquanti of WestEd next discussed the complex question of testing English language learners in content areas other than English proficiency. He pointed out that group reporting on how "English learners" are performing is always problematic, becasue unlike other demographic subgroups, the subgroup "English learners" is a revolving door. New immigrants arrive all the time, while those who have finally mastered English (and are therefore likely to be higher performers in other content areas as well) are moved out of the category.
Lack of academic English knowledge can lower students' test scores even when they actually understand content well. Linquanti suggested a number of accommodations, such as English dictionaries or glossaries, use of "plain English," math or science tests involving very little language, and others, to allow better estimates of what English learners actually understand in content areas such as math and science. He also suggested that while English proficiency should be reported as a function of time in the English learning system, proficiency in other content areas should be reported as a function of both time in the system and English proficiency.
Finally, Chris Dede and Jody Clarke-Midura discussed the possibility of measuring complex learning in science through immersive virtual environments. In their research, students choose an avatar that interacts with a scientific problem in a virtual world, generating hypotheses, gathering data, making inferences, and arguing from evidence. These virtual performance assessments can be more consistent and less expensive than hands-on performance assessments, and they offer promise for understanding how students use the tools of scientific inquiry. Dede and Clarke-Midura suggest that such assessments should form part of a comprehensive state assessment system.
The challenge for SBAC and the other assessment consortium, PARCC, is that they need to create a complete testing system in two subject areas for use in 2014. With such a short timeline, the temptation will be great to settle for creating systems a little better than what we have rather than groundbreaking innovations. But such innovations are what we need to reverse the curriculum-narrowing impact of current standardized tests and to encourage the teaching of more complex thinking and problem-solving skills. Educators interested in these issues should definitely take a look at the Rennie Center/PACE report.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Formative assessment book turned in
I did promise that I'd be back to blogging once I turned in the formative assessment book to Harvard Education Press. It's done--done for now, at least. There are twelve chapters by 24 authors, and then the introductory and concluding chapters written by me and my co-editor, Dan Hickey of Indiana. David Ellis, former president of Boston's Museum of Science sent me the comment that trying to get a bunch of academic authors all to turn in their chapters on time and in the right format is like pushing a wheelbarrow full of toads uphill. I have to say that although they are kindly and attractive toads, they do tend to hop out of the wheelbarrow!
The book will be called New Frontiers in Formative Assessment, and if all goes well it will come out next fall. We hope the audience will include teachers, professional developers, a professor or two, curriculum developers, and assistant superintendents for curriculum and instruction.
First, though, there will be a lot of back and forth with the press and the authors, refining the chapters, copy-editing, and most of all, making the charts and figures consistent, attractive, and informative. When it's done, I think it will be something to be proud of, with chapters on formative assessment in math, literacy, and science, and with and without substantial use of digital technology. We mean the book to paint a hopeful but realistic picture of how to use assessment in the classroom to improve the quality of teaching and the depth of student understanding.
The book will be called New Frontiers in Formative Assessment, and if all goes well it will come out next fall. We hope the audience will include teachers, professional developers, a professor or two, curriculum developers, and assistant superintendents for curriculum and instruction.
First, though, there will be a lot of back and forth with the press and the authors, refining the chapters, copy-editing, and most of all, making the charts and figures consistent, attractive, and informative. When it's done, I think it will be something to be proud of, with chapters on formative assessment in math, literacy, and science, and with and without substantial use of digital technology. We mean the book to paint a hopeful but realistic picture of how to use assessment in the classroom to improve the quality of teaching and the depth of student understanding.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
