August 31, 2010

In their book, Assessment is Essential, Susan K. Green and Robert L. Johnson often associate learning and the importance of assessment of mastery learning as being a vital key in creating citizens who are able to fully participate in the democracy we live in. What? Teachers are working to create productive citizens so they can make good judgments about who to vote for in the next election? I had never thought of teaching in such a way. I have always believed that education and gaining knowledge are important but not for political reasons but for personal growth. I believe that teachers should be working to create responsible individuals of society who have the knowledge and educational background to make decisions for themselves and to work to make their lives as rich as possible. At first when the topic of teaching to create knowledgeable and independent citizens came up I thought to myself, "Wow! I have never thought of teaching this way. Is this a good reason as to why teachers want to assist in creating competent citizens?" After continuing to read the text, I became disgusted by the social agenda that seems to be poking its nasty head into classroom assessment. For the rest of this analysis of the reading assignment, I will discuss topics that jumped out at me and had me (sometimes) questioning everything I know about assessing students.

Performance goals and mastery goals are extremely pivotal in the classroom. How easy would it be for a student to associate high grades with learning? I know I did it and still continue to associate mastery goals with high performance. From my own experience, I would assume that many students incidentally believe that if they are receiving high grades they are learning. What would happen if two weeks, two months, or a year after an exam the students were questioned on the content of that exam? Would they remember what they learned? I think they wouldn't because far too often students are simply remembering specific facts or rules to just get through the test. I am currently studying to become a Secondary Mathematics teacher, so lucky for me math is not just simply learn the facts for one unit and then forget it. Math continually builds upon its self. Lessons and techniques learned in one chapter will likely be used for chapters thereafter. But math is not about learning to find the square root or the derivative of a function, it is about learning to problem solve using your knowledge base. If a future student of mine memorizes how to do simple graphing equations but doesn't fully understand why he or she has learned these things and how to apply them to other more difficult questions, theoretically they could get a high grade on an exam if there were a majority of easy and medium level questions and only a few difficult questions. How do I teach and asses in a way that will allow my students to understand that the emphasis is not on memorizing rules of math but on understanding those rules' role in problem solving? How do I teach mastery goals and not performance goals?

Green and Johnson believe that the way to focus students on mastery goals and not performance goals is all in how one assesses the students. I do have to wonder what would happen if society got rid of all assessments that focused primarily on performance statistics only. If the ACTs and SATs were no longer prevalent, what would colleges use to base acceptance on? What would employers use to determine if an applicant was able? It's easy enough to say that performance based assessing should be taken out of education-but what would it be replaced with? To what standards would students be compared to? The book, Assessment is Essential, discusses how judgment can be harmful to students. If judgment is harmful, then why is it in the classroom setting? My guess is that it has been around for countless years. Did judgment originate in ancient times (for example, did ancient people divide their duties by what they were good at - someone had to be the judge of what was good and what wasn't?) Judgment is also in the democratic society that Green and Johnson believe we are creating productive citizens for. The American government is full of judging - judging whether a candidate will be honest and true to his or her word, judging whether a individual committed a crime, judging whether a law or bill will be helpful to society. Judgment is all around us - it would take centuries to turn a society away from judging (if it is even possible). Therefore, judgment is a necessity in the classroom. The teacher must judge whether the students are learning the material in a way - but teachers should focus on judging in a way that is productive not harmful.

With all this talk about judging students being wrong, I feel completely confused about what myself, as a soon-to-be teacher, will do to assess students in the most effective manner that will benefit myself (in that I can better understand if my teaching methods are appropriate and effective) and for the student (in that they are becoming mastery learners.) From the subjects that Green and Johnson discuss, I'm left with many unanswered questions. I strongly agree that student should feel that if they are working hard at something they will be rewarded - if they have mastery goals then the reward would be that they have a thorough understanding of the subject matter. But we all know that just because one works hard to learn something that does not mean they have a good understanding of it. Green and Johnson note that many students’ efforts become discouraged in the classroom when mistakes are not treated properly. I'm left pondering what I should do when a student makes a mistake in my classroom. I think that it’s necessary to let a student know when he or she has made a mistake - but I think that in my subject area it would be helpful to the student to go through the process they used to find their answer and see where the error occurred or where a rule was forgotten or overlooked. This way the student could see all the places where they did things correctly and where they did something incorrectly. However, I am not sure if this would be helpful in keeping a student's effort optimism up or if it would decrease his or her effort optimism.

Green and Johnson discuss the major purposes of assessment and what each purpose entails. In the formative assessment stage, it is discussed that "homework, quizzes, and class assignments can be used for formative assessment" and that "the key is that these activities do not result in grades that penalize students for wrong answers (17)." This brought up a question that I have always had - when I become a teacher, should I take daily assignments for a grade, only occasionally take the daily work for a grade, or only take a participatory (done or not done) grade? After reading the previous quote, it seems like a teacher should not take the assignments for a grade and if they do, it should be for showing mastery skills or for showing good effort. But when the authors began to discuss avoiding score pollution, I became increasingly confused about how a teacher is supposed to assess students for a grade. I understand that not all assessment is graded (for example, some assessing is observations used to decide whether a technique is working) but it seems as though the authors believe that a teacher should not grade the students at all - but that is not possible because schools require teachers to turn in grades. It is said that "when teachers modify grades or scores because of student effort...the scores do not accurately communicate the level of mastery and can eventually harm the students (25)." I previously stated that I thought I would grade daily work by effort/participatory/mastery skill - now it says that can be harmful to the students. From how I am interpreting the text, it seems as though if I followed this book my students would only get graded on tests. I do not think exam grades should be the only score a student receives. Especially, when some students suffer from exam anxiety and some students may be having issues in their home or personal lives that distracts them from performing at their highest ability on that day. After all of the discussion on what to assess for a grade and what not to assess for a grade, I'm left wondering what a teacher is supposed to grade.

In the end, I feel completely confused about what is the best and most effective way to assess students and especially what is the best way to assess students for a grade. The most enduring thought I left reading with was, that I myself need to work on my critical and mastery thinking. Being a math person, I tend to get stuck thinking that there is only one right answer. However, in more advanced mathematics one must do more thinking outside the box rather than just following certain rules. If I want my students to be critical thinkers and have mastery goals then I must change my own thought process. I'm left believing that if I work on achieving my own mastery goals, then I will understand that there are many different techniques to teach with and many different ways of assessing and if I open my mind to new ideas I will be able to successfully assess my own classroom someday and that my students will become mastery learners for their own personal growth.