csse cera 2012 assessment for learning saad chahine
DESCRIPTION
Over the past decades the educational measurement community has widely adopted Assessment for Learning (AfL) and Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment (CDA). AfL and CDA have emerged in parallel to each other and are often treated as mutually exclusive entities. This paper attempts to integrate these two movements in order to support teachers in providing rich descriptive feedback to students. The structure of this paper is to provide a theoretical perspective from educational psychology as to why AfL and CDA may work in children’s learning, then describe an activity that promotes pre-service teachers to take the perspective of students in identifying misconceptions students may have when they are learning in the classroom. The paper then concludes by identifying themes in pre-services teachers thinking about completing an activity that makes them think about children’s thought process.TRANSCRIPT
Supporting Pre-Service Teachers with Assessment for Learning Strategies
Saad Chahine, PhD
12
-05
-27
Assessment and Learning
• Blend of psychometrics and psychological theories of learning
• Assessment for Learning (AfL)– More learning theory
• Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment (CDA) – More psychometrics
Purpose of Assessment
AfL:provide teachers with information that can support their instruction, which, in turn, is intended to enhance students’ learning
CDA:provide individual students with diagnostic feedback from large-scale assessment based on specific measured skills
Misconceptions
Def.Systematic errors that children make in their learning.
•Educational Psychology helps us understand how children learn.
Schema & ZPD
Schema Def.Children develop rules or patterns when they learn.
ZPD Def. Zone of Proximal Development – examine ability to solve problems independently and to solve problems with an adult's help
Role.helps teacher develop questions to identify, diagnose and remedy typical misconceptions that may affect students learning
*note: maybe a very narrow view of AfL and CDA
Teacher Made Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment
• Pre-Service teachers develop a multiple-choice (MC) test
• Use of MC tests in Canada is anecdotally not very wide spread
• MC test development was used to promote perspective taking with pre-service teachers
CDA MC Test Development Activity
• Students received a template and a verbal explanation on how to complete the MC test development activity
• 2 hours in class to practice item development with their peers and 1 hour to debrief
CDA MC Test Development Activity
• Three parts to this activity:Part 1: identify three curriculum expectations/outcomes to measure and associated skills requiredPart 2: identify three misconceptions for each of the skills identified in part 1. Part 3: develop MC items that included the correct response (based on the skill needed to meet the expectation) and distractors (based on misconceptions).
Example of Item
If it is noon and the sun is shining directly above you, you will have:
a) A long shadowb) No shadowc) A short shadowd) Two shadows
(b) correct answer (a) thinks certain objects emit the same type of light, (c) thinks light strength is the same with all distances, and (d) thinks there is always a shadow given from a light source.
Example of Skills Based Blueprint
Reflection Summaries
• Randomly selected 24 Pre-service teachers’ reflections
• 12 from 74 elementary pre-service teachers
• 12 from 66 secondary pre-service teachers
• 6 Themes Identified (difficulty, misconceptions, current teaching practices, perspective taking, learning theory, curriculum)
Difficulty Secondary Teacher (T13):
the skills and misconceptions portion resulted in one thing: curling up into the fetal position. As I rocked back and forth trying to figure out what skills and misconceptions are needed, ….Putting the test together wasn’t as difficult as I thought, but when it came to the skills and misconceptions- I thought I was going to lose it.
Misconceptions Elementary Teacher (T1):
The misconception section of this writing process was very difficult for me to understand. I do recognize the importance of comprehending the student’s answers, even when it is not the correct one, because teachers are able to better understand how these students learn or where they have been mistaken. My only struggle was finding several misconceptions and trying to think of myself as the student.
Current Teaching Practices
Secondary Teacher (T19):
I think the task was useful in that it got us to think about the questions we would put into a test and why we would use particular questions over others. I think if all teachers thought about exactly what they wanted to test for and the misconceptions when they were making tests, most tests would be of better quality!
Perspective Taking
Elementary Teacher (T9):
Putting together a test for students in the fourth
grade like I did here is much different than
putting together a test that say I would take.
You must put yourself in a fourth graders
mindset. You have to think hard at which
misconceptions you may have while learning
this topic or to go back to your own childhood.
Learning Theory
Secondary Teacher (T16)
As I expected, some skills were surrounded by
more misconceptions than others. But as a
French teacher it is of utmost importance that
we constantly search for and dispel
misconceptions, because if they exist for too
long, they become “fossilized” in the students’
internal grammar structures and understanding
of the language.
Curriculum
Elementary Teacher (T2):
The most difficult part of this task was
assessing outcome A10; observing whether or
not a student is able to compare and order
fractions. When I began to create the questions
and answer choices, I kept running into
problems with the numbers I was choosing.
Discussion• AfL is talked about a great deal, but
often not done well in the classroom.
• AfL requires a great deal of planning and perspective taking.
• It is time consuming, but it is also important.
• We can only see improved assessment practices when time and effort is devoted in planning.
