Context:
During my short practicum, I became aware of a style of assessment that is growing in popularity among the teachers at Steveston-London Secondary School. Starting with the innovative Science program at the school, Essential Learning Outcomes or ELOs were created for all junior sciences courses. The goal was to emphasis the learning process and developing skills rather than content. The ELOs worked so well that in the following year, some teachers in the English Department, including my sponsor teacher, decided to adapt their own curricula to include ELOs as well. One of the biggest benefits, it seems, for using ELOs is the clarity it provides for students. They are made aware of all objectives and all necessary skills to be learned and in this way, are expected to reach higher levels of achievement. The ELOs have been seen to motivate students more by showing them exactly what is required f them and the skills are presented in a way so that students understand these skills will be beneficial for their high school lives.
For my extended practicum, I am very lucky to be able to experience a total of three different forms of assessment. The first is the more traditional form of assessment whereby the teacher assigns weight to different activities and projects that students will complete. The second is a spectrum rubric where ESL students are assessed using a graphical rating scale and are not given any numerical or letter grades. The final is the ELOs mentioned above. Given that this will only be the third semester and second year that ELOs have been used at Steveston-London, there is not much information out there for me to consult. This is where my inquiry project comes in. I will I will be looking into how ELOs can maximize the effectiveness of assessment to help students make the most of their own learning.
The ELOs still utilizes percentage grades and a percentage is still the final mark shown on report cards, but students are made aware of what skills they are being graded on. Students must pass all ELOs in order to pass grade 8 but they will have multiple opportunities to show what they’ve learned. Currently, these ELOs only exist for Grade 8 and 9, as only two English teachers in the department are currently using them. The following is the list of skills required for Grade 8 students as dictated on the ELO checklist.
1. Identify three different strategies that can be used if they are struggling with class material/concepts.
2. Successfully demonstrate at least one method of organized note-taking.
3. Make unassisted connections in what they read to their own experiences, other texts or the world around them.
4. Identify major elements of literature and poetic devices, and demonstrate and understanding of literature.
5. Write an unassisted three-part (introduction, body, and conclusion) paragraph that shows use of transitions and textual evidence as well as demonstrates the ability to self-edit.
6. Successfully identify: Different parts of speech, Parts of a sentence, Phrases and clauses
7. Successfully demonstrate oral skills: In Discussions, In Presentations
8. Express themselves in a variety of genres.
Approach/Method:
This project involves a short survey of academic sources related to the the theory of criterion-referenced assessment, its implementation and the outcomes of student-based forms of assessment and its effectiveness in classrooms. I will also relay some information given to me casually by my sponsor teacher who has just completed her second semester using the ELO system. It is important to note that she is one of the main advocators for using the Essential Learning Outcomes in the English Department.
Findings:
I started my research with an overview of assessment itself. Its history, its trends and its implications on teachers and students. Wilbrink writes in “Assessment in historical perspectives” of how our assessment culture is, for the better or the worse, a legacy of societies that long since have gone. Education has been around for a long time but the institution of schooling has not. Comparatively, assessment of students has been around for a long time, stemming back to the start of education while grading has not. As Wilbrink describes in his article, during the medieval times, most education was done through apprenticeship where a master would teach a skill through usage. Structured education was reserved for religious education whereby students were required to memorize texts to learn. Assessment was limited to the recitation of sacred texts. It was assumed that memorization equated knowledge. Following this came the advent of a form of education similar to our modern one. A rector of a latin school in the 1300s, Johan Cele, is credited as the first to use grade levels, to rank students by merit and to test students as a means to promote them from each grade level. The structure of Cele’s school came about because he was required to devise a system of education for a large number of students and it’s surprising how similar the structure is to our schools now. Considering that Cele created his school over 700 years ago, it seems strange that very little has changed about the fundamentals of schools. Even in the colonial schoolhouses of the 19th century, while housed in one room cabins, still retained a levels system and used tests to promote students. During this time, memorization was still the most common form of assessment. Students memorized history facts, mathematical formulas and language was reduced to parts of speech and grammatical rules. While our modern schools place a greater value on higher level thinking, memorization is still an important part of learning now. Students still need to memorize dates and names for History 12 and part of Literature 12 requires students to remember famous writers and quotes from their works. Assessment, therefore, seemed not to have changed drastically either.
My research then led me to Alfie Kohn’s idea of ‘de-grading.’ As Kohn writes in his article “From degrading to de-grading,” there are multiple reasons why students should not be graded. Grades can cause students to be mislead about what is the meaning of knowledge and what does it mean to understand something. Students will use grades solely as extrinsic motivation and choose to do however much work they need in order to receive the highest mark. In this way, students who receive high grades become like “praise-junkies” who wish for all school work to be worth grades. Even topics that may interest the student are reduced to being a means to an end. Grading also spoils the relationship between teachers and students as well as between classmates. Given that we know building classroom communities is crucial to student behaviour in school, it’s important to foster these relationships. Students need to feel that teachers are part of their learning as opposed to these figures on pedestals, doling out grades.
Finally, this led me to looking at the English ELOs that my sponsor teacher gave me. The idea behind ELOs is to prevent students from moving forward with gaps in their learning. This method of assessment is skills-based and requires students to repeatedly demonstrate an ability that has been shown in the grade 8 IRP to be crucial for students. A numerical grade will still be submitted for each student’s report card and in this way, ELOs can be seen as a transition for students to move away from a grades-centered approach to learning. Ideally, students will see each accomplishment on their ELO list as a step closer to fulfilling the skills needed for the grade, therefore ensuring that their promotion to grade 9 is as smooth as possible. But, the last step in my research was to look into any possible negative effects that skills-based learning can create because while in theory, ELOs sound great, I still didn’t know the practicality of using them in the classroom. While my sponsor teacher told me that students grow to rely on the ELOs and in fact miss them in the later grades, I wanted some more specific issues that could interfere with their use.
From my research, using skills-based learning has, overall, a very positive effect on students’ learning. Assessment because a means and not an end of school work and because students are made aware of skills criteria, they are able to self regulate their improvement. Because of criterion-based assessment, students feel they have more control over the assessment of their work and are less scared of classroom assignments and tests. This result was seen in multiple studies. However, there are still issues that arise from skills-based learning and assessment. I’ve identified the following three issues but I’m sure there are many more to be found.
First, the use of rubrics can change a student’s work immensely. Rubrics that are too detailed can lower creativity and cause students to produce mechanical and conforming work. Rubrics that are too vague can reduce student effort and cause confusion. Overall, rubrics can make marking go faster but it’s easy to lose sight of the whole when using analytic rubrics. Holistic rubrics on the other hand, while keeping sight of the whole, can be hard to understand for students as the skills needed are not always clear to them. Second, the use of authentic assessment can often simplify the processes involved. Even though giving students the opportunity to exhibit their learning in a realistic environment is a great way for teachers to assess knowledge gained, the processes are sometimes simplified in order to mark quickly and efficiently. Third is an issue with many humanities, but especially English, teachers. The matter of giving feedback on work for which there is no definitive right or wrong answer (e.g. essays). The following are some tips to consider:
- Use the same wording in your comment as is on the criteria sheet. Refer to the criteria sheet or rubric whenever possible to ensure that students understand why they received or lost a mark.
- Keep your comments short and concise to encourage students to read them.
- Give students in-class time to read over the comments and respond to them. Consider giving students the chance to edit their writing in class.
- Set practical targets for students. Instead of writing “more evidence needed,” change it to “try incorporating more quotes to back up your ideas” or something similar. This gives students something to work on right away and can help with editing.
- Use student’s names in the comments and refer to past goals. Keep an anecdotal comment for each student about their writing so you can refer to them in the future. For example, letting a student know that you noticed they have improved in a certain aspect.
- Give students specific things to look for when self or peer evaluating. For example, underline the lines you really liked and highlight areas you think need more work.
- If there’s time, consider negotiating a grade with the students. For example, after their work has been handed back and during the time you give students to start editing their writing, students can be called up to discuss what grade they think they should receive. This is very time consuming but should be considered as it can be invaluable for students to be given autonomy in this way.
Implications:
After researching into the concept of assessment and the use of skills-based learning, I understand better how to utilize it in a classroom setting. In most of our courses here, criterion and skills-based assessment has always been touted as being the “better” way to instruct students and I agree wholeheartedly. However, having researched more about the techniques and strategies used in creating lessons and assessment focused on these concepts, I have a much better understanding of the pros and cons when utilizing it in the classroom. As with anything, there are negative effects, such as students obsessing over the criteria in a way that takes away from natural learning but knowing these, it’s much easier to identify issues and deal with them.
Because my sponsor teacher uses this method of assessment and grading, I have been very fortunate to be able to utilize ELOs during my practicum and through the actual use of them, hope to further embellish my knowledge of using skills-based learning and assessment.
Bibliography:
Barney, Sebastian, Mahvish Khrurum, Kai Petersen, Michael Unterkalmsteiner, and Ronald Jabangwe. “Improving Students With Rubric-Based Self-Assessment and Oral Feedback.” Transactions on Education 55.3 (2012): 319-325. Web.
Ceranic, Helena. English Teacher’s Handbook. London: Continuum International Publishing, 2009. Web.
Davis, Andrew. “Criterion-referenced Assessment and the Development of Knowledge and Understanding.” Journal of Philosophy of Education 29.1 (1995): 3-21. Web.
Filer, Ann. Assessment: Social Practice and Social Product. New York: Routledge Falmer, 2000. Web.
Hay, Peter J., & Doune Macdonald. “(Mis)appropriations of criteria and standards-referenced assessment in a performance-based subject.” Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice 15.2 (2008): 153-168. Web.
Hudson, Thom. “Trends in Assessment Scales and Criterion-Referenced Language Assessment.” Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 25 (2005): 205-227. Web.
Jewels, Tony, Marilyn Ford & Wendy Jones. “What Exactly Do You Want Me to Do? Analysis of a Criterion Referenced Assessment Project.” Journal of Information Technology Education 6 (2007): 1-16. Web.
Kohn, Alfie. “From degrading to de-grading.” High School Magazine 6.5 (1999): 38-43.
Vasasova, Zlata. “The Influence of Criterion-Referenced Assessment on Students’ Attitudes towards Education.” The New Educational Review 20.1 (2010): 261-274. Web.
Wilbrink, Ben. “Assessment in historical perspective.” Studies in Educational Evaluation, 23 (1997): 31-48. Web.