I’ll never forget the first “F” I received on a test. It was 4th grade science and I was absolutely crushed. My confidence in science plummeted which followed me through middle school and high school. I always believed that I was just “bad” at science. That is how much a poor assessment grade can affect the confidence and motivation of a young learner.
As an educator, I am torn by the idea of assessing. I understand the anxiety that can be caused by taking a test or the shame that can come from performing poorly. However, assessing my students allows me to see their understanding, or lack thereof, on a topic. So how can we as educators change the way that assessments are enacted for them to be useful for both students and teachers?
One way we can do this is by adapting a social-constructivist approach to teaching and assessing. In “The role of assessment in a learning culture,” Shepard unifies the theories of constructivist, cognitive, and sociocultural theories to develop the new concept of “social-constructivism.” Social-constructivism puts learners, with all their diversity and complexities, at the center of the educational process (Shepard, 2000). In a social-constructivist approach assessments would be challenging, but relevant to the class’s content, assessments would be an ongoing process with explicit expectations to help support student success (Shepard, 2000). This would allow for both teachers and students to use the data gained from the assessments to adjust both the learning process and the teaching process.
I believe that modifying current classroom practices to be more aligned with social-constructivism would lead away from the traditional grading scale and would move more toward a system based on reviewing and revising work. Michigan State University’s MAET program has adopted an “un-grading” approach for their graduate program. Through meaningful communication and constructive feedback, students are able to focus on learning through the evaluation of their own work. This allows them to make deeper connections to the content they are studying.
By placing students at the forefront of their own assessments, we are allowing them to have some agency in their learning. They are allowed to make mistakes and learn from them! This ongoing process of assessing and revising enables students to be active participants in the learning process while still allowing their teachers to be able to gauge student learning and adjust their teaching based on it.
Assessments are an important part of the educational process. But, assessments as we know them, are not the future. Offering students a chance to be engaged in the learning process will not only increase their motivation, but also give them a chance to reach higher levels of thinking. It’s time to ditch the grade books and ditch the anxiety and shame along with them and adopt a more constructive form of evaluation.
Photo of me heading to school before the big F! Taken by my mom, Christina Fleis.
Reference
Shepard, L. A. (2000). The role of assessment in a learning culture. Educational Researcher, 29(7), 4-14.
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