I have had many opportunities to take part in self-assessment since venturing into my undergrad. It’s not a new tool – in fact, the concept comes from the Greek in their Paideia approach (Orr, 2004). As David Orr says in chapter 1 of Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment and the Human Prospect, “[t]he goal of education is not mastery of subject matter but mastery of one’s person” (Orr, p.13). Now, that’s not to say that learning the subject matter isn’t important. In fact, Orr continues on with his “rethinking education” to make four other statements that very much speak to the subjects that students need to learn in school and how they can relate them to their lives. It’s the focus on self that seems to be forgotten most often, though it’s gaining ground in education.
I remember my school days where assessment was based mostly on the tests and projects that were handed in, at least as far as the students knew. It didn’t matter how well I thought I did, how proud I was of my work, the amount of effort that was made behind the scenes – it was all about the end product. I won’t go as far as to say that, had self-assessment been integrated in my grades, I would have done better. It could have had an impact though.
Self-reflection and self-assessment go hand in hand. One must be honest with one’s self to be able to assess properly. In my many self-assessments, I have been honest and admitted when I could have done more, or done the work better. Not everyone will reflect in the same way. Some will give themselves top marks despite minimal effort. The most, as I have come to realize, will be harder on themselves than I would have thought.
The most recent lesson that I gave had a self-assessment attached to it. It’s one they are familiar with, they’ve used it before and it’s very simple:
- Not yet meeting expectations
- Meeting expectations
- Exceeding expectations
The objective was for them to use their creativity and create a monster with the materials that were given to them. I would say that 90% of the students gave themselves a 2, stating that they failed at creating the yarn creature I was asking them to create. Not one of them gave up, some even created their own style of creature, and all of them were engaged, imaginative and had fun. So how is this not exceeding expectations? My comments to most of them went along the lines of “you didn’t let ‘failure’ stop you from trying again” or “there was no right way to make a creature”. They all got 3s in my books.
So what is it about assessing yourself that makes you tougher to please? I had a discussion with one of my professors recently, after I expressed my feelings of failure and fear of putting myself out there with some of my (not so) hidden talents, and he said something to me that, while simple, has stuck and very much speaks to this topic:
“Why are you expecting perfection from yourself, when you don’t expect it from anyone else?”
I don’t have an answer. But I see it in my own self-assessments and in those of my students. So what do we do to combat this? How do we work our way into treating ourselves as fairly as we treat everyone else?
Bibliography
Orr, D.W. (2004). Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment and the Human Prospect, Island Press, Washington.
Excellent observations Vicki. I wonder, was it the self-assessment or the students understanding of the criteria that caused them to be harder on themselves? Were students assessing their ‘grit’ or were they assessing their end results? What question was posed? Does the language of the assessment affect the outcome (i.e. do we need to use the term ‘not yet meeting’ – what about “Strengths” and “Stretches”? Something like the one column rubric we explored in our inquiry class that allows students to comment on the strengths of their project and also comment on how it could be improved?