1. In your experience, how does assessment determine what a student learns and doesn’t learn?
In my experience, especially in higher education, assessment is the main determining factor that guides the student’s learning. What is going to be on the test dictates the information the student mainly reviews. In this situation, everything not immediately important to know is not learned. For this reason, the specific details of specific topics may not be learned unless there is incentive or reason to seek out the details found only in a rabbit hole. In grad school for nutrition, there is so much information to learn about nutrition that it is impossible to learn everything as we discuss certain topics. Our teacher taught information via a framework and everything else was extraneous information.
2. How does assessment relate to what is valued and what is not valued?
Alike to my previous response, especially in higher education, if left up to the student to surmise, they will understand that only the information covered and conveyed by the instructor is important. This can be problematic because students usually assume that an instructor with much knowledge and experience has waded through all of the knowledge on a topic and determined that what they are sharing is the most important. In fact, this is usually not the case. Most have not been through all of the information but just perpetuate what they were communicated was important. Usually only thoughtful instructors will challenge their students to stretch their thinking with other topics that may not align with the required curriculum. There is also an aspect of required components to cover, especially in accredited programs, that require fulfillment of competencies. If this is present, there typically is not room for deviation from the main topics (or even questions), communicating that other things are not valued.
3. In your classroom, what do you imagine is worth assessing and not worth assessing?
I strongly believe it is just as important to test the necessary content knowledge as it is to test the meta cognition skills that aid in excelling in learning and psychological development across all subjects.
When asked, “When is assessment more harmful than good? What do we need to do as educators to ensure that our classroom created assessments are not examples of poor assessment? How does your example align or not align with the five principles of assessment?” I gave the following answer, and I think it is pertinent to this question.
“I have seen many teachers regard assessment as the be-all-end-all, disregarding any reason or understanding of why or how a student has come to their scores. When assessment is treated like this and kids and their value are judge solely on their scores, I believe it is extremely detrimental. When scores are considered to dictate the outcomes of students’ whole future (school is a student’s life, after all), the pressure is built on students and teachers. Students are incentivized to perform at all costs (cheating, unhealthy habits, etc.) and teachers are incentivized to behave in ways that begin to align more and more with Campbell’s Law.
I think it’s pertinent to not only assess in ways that mitigate the most anxious feelings but aim to build students’ resilience so that when they do face adversity in school (only a matter of time), they are able to get back up when they are knocked down. Alike, creating a classroom culture that facilitates trust among the students, the group to the teacher, and the teacher to the individual is absolutely paramount; it’s really non-negotiable. If you show you can lead well as the teacher, the students will follow. These things align with ‘Engineering classroom discussions, activities, and tasks that elicit evidence of student achievement’ and ‘Activating students as learning resources for one another.'”
Another thing to ponder is this opinion:
Facilitating the development of soft skills in kids is the most valuable thing a teacher can do. Anyone can learn technical things with enough repetition and practice. Internal, personality-driven skills though, are a totally different and oft-neglected aspect of students’ eventual abilities and how well they will be able to figure things out themselves. That’s really the most important thing, isn’t it?
MASTER HOGAN 