Reimagining american education: Possible futures: Possible futures for equitable educational assessment

2021 ◽  
Vol 103 (4) ◽  
pp. 54-57
Author(s):  
William R. Penuel
Keyword(s):  
Standardized Testing ◽  
Educational Assessment ◽  
Assessment Practices ◽  
American Education ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Student Work

The COVID-19 pandemic led states and districts to take a break from grading students and pause standardized testing. As part of an ongoing series of articles on how schools might reconceptualize their work, William Penuel considers what kinds of assessment practices should be carried forward, as schools attempt to become more equitable. He suggests that schools look to work students create as evidence of learning, that they ensure their assessment practices recognize students’ various cultures, and that they use student work to make connections with families and community members.

Integrating Student Workers Into Museum Practice

2021 ◽  
pp. 205-224
Author(s):  
Kathryn Medill
Keyword(s):  
Strategic Plan ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
House Staff ◽  
Work Study ◽  
Community Sustainability ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Student Work ◽  
Student Workers ◽  
Museum Practice ◽  
Successes And Challenges

Launched in January 2016 at a university art museum on a large campus, the Museum Engagement Student Worker position aims to reimagine the student work-study role. Conceptualized as a role where students can experience and contribute to the museum's internal culture, the program integrates students into the museum's internal fabric and empowers them to act as engagement agents for community members. Museum Engagement Student Workers function as front-of-house staff, provide all public tours, and assist with public programming. This narrative, written from the author's perspective as the manager of the student worker role, examines the successes and challenges of the Museum Engagement Student Worker program using tenets of the museum's strategic plan (innovation, accessibility, engagement, community, sustainability) as points of reference.

Being “in” assessment: the ontological layer(ing) of assessment practice

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Giles ◽  
Kerry Earl
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Classroom Practice ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Educational Assessment ◽  
Assessment Practices ◽  
Assessment Practice ◽  
Phenomenological Inquiry ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Knowledge And Practice

Purpose – Current discourses on educational assessment focus on the priority of learning. While this intent is invariably played out in classroom practice, a consideration of the ontological nature of assessment practice opens understandings which show the experiential nature of “being in assessment”. The purpose of this paper is to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Using interpretive and hermeneutic analyses within a phenomenological inquiry, experiential accounts of the nature of assessment are worked for their emergent and ontological themes. Findings – These stories show the ontological nature of assessment as a matter of being in assessment in an embodied and holistic way. Originality/value – Importantly, the nature of a teacher's way-of-being matters to assessment practices. Implications exist for teacher educators and teacher education programmes in relation to the priority of experiential stories for understanding assessment practice, the need for re-balancing a concern for professional knowledge and practice with a students’ way of being in assessment, and the pedagogical implications of evoking sensitivities in assessment.

scholarly journals The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education

2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Windhorst
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Standardized Testing ◽  
School System ◽  
Assessment Tool ◽  
Free Market ◽  
The United States ◽  
Business Practices ◽  
American Education ◽  
American School ◽  
Main Ideas

Diane Ravitch created quite a national stir when The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education came out last year in the United States.  Here was a highly respected historian of American education publically recanting her previous advocacy of two main ideas shaping educational reform today: 1) the adoption of free market business practices to make schools more competitive, and 2) the use of standardized testing as the main assessment tool of student learning.  

scholarly journals Assessment, Evaluation, and Grading: A Reflection on My Radicalization

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-297
Author(s):  
Priscilla Bremser
Keyword(s):  
Assessment Practices ◽  
Student Work ◽  
Evaluation Systems

The COVID-19 pandemic forced instructors to adapt their assessment practices. For this author, that adaptation led to a reconsideration of evaluation systems, given the ways in which such systems can interfere with learning and perpetuate inequities. The author describes resulting changes in her grading of student work and evaluation of faculty colleagues.

scholarly journals INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICT) AND ITS ROLE IN EDUCATIONAL ASSESSMENT

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
Marina Marina
Keyword(s):  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Communication Technology ◽  
Technology Use ◽  
Educational Assessment ◽  
Assessment Practices ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Support Students ◽  
Significant Factors

This paper identifies the role of ICT in assessment practices in education. The significant factors that schools and teachers should consider include the benefits it can provide to improve and enhance assessment. The primary focus of this paper is: What are the roles ICT can provide to support assessment in education? ICT has several roles and supports in educational assessment practices. This paper empha-sizes its roles in two parts: testing, and tasks. ICT can be used in testing to administer tests, to score the tests, to analyse the result and to facilitate teachers in assessing learning outcomes. Besides, ICT can be integrated in completing student’s task such as portfolio and project-based assessment. ICT provides opportunities for students to create electronic versions of their portfolio. ICT can also support students to complete their project. It is essential for teachers to realise that the rubric used to assess e-portfolios and projects must also assess students’ technology use.

scholarly journals Developing an Inquiring Community of Practice: Case Stories From One Middle School’s Efforts for Partnership

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-152
Author(s):  
Frank LaBanca
Keyword(s):  
Learning Environment ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Project Based Learning ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Student Centered ◽  
Student Work ◽  
Inquiry Based Learning ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Meaningful Relationships ◽  
Enhance Student Learning

At a start-up urban magnet middle school, we are committed to a student-centered inquiry-based learning environment that values extended project-based learning. In order to make projects relevant, we work with community members to harness their expertise in the design, execution, and evaluation of student work. We recognize that partnerships that allow community members to showcase their own talents, skills, and knowledge forge meaningful relationships that enhance student learning.

scholarly journals Convalescence from Modernity: Writing Assessment in the Epoch of Scientism

1969 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Petruzzi
Keyword(s):  
Writing Assessment ◽  
Educational Assessment ◽  
Assessment Practices ◽  
Scientific Practices ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
Irreducible Complexity ◽  
Philosophical Assumption ◽  
Structure Assessment ◽  
Implicit And Explicit ◽  
Educational Methodology

While some argue that post-modernity has overcome the era of modernity, claiming a rupture from previous ways of thinking and acting, reports of the ‘death of modernity’ have been greatly exaggerated. Its tenets continue to order and constitute values—transmitted by cultural dispositions—and frame North American conversations about assessment, technology, and educational methodology. The governing philosophical assumption of writing assessment theory is scientism. It is a modernist prejudice, which is unseen and unquestioned, that assumes scientific thinking is the best—the "strongest" thinking—because it produces quantified, generalized, reliable, and true information.To convalesce from modernity, we must continue to weaken the implicit and explicit cultural dispositions that transparently structure assessment practices. We have failed to persuade stakeholders that we should assess cognitively complex performances, which require hermeneutic interpretation to evaluate students’ deep understandings and our programs’ effectiveness.A postmodern disposition allows us to recover a balanced view of the benefits that scientific practices give us. We can convalesce from the quest for certainty, the fear of subjectivity, and the discourse of technology, and develop a healthier disposition regarding both the power and usefulness of science. Such a recovery would create new dispositions to accept probable truths as events within historical horizons and to assess intellectual activity— how students use and apply knowledge. Only a retrieval of the irreducible complexity of student learning and writing will create the context to revise the practice and theory of educational assessment.Key words: writing and educational assessment theories, Canadian writing assessment, consequences of modernity, discourse of technology, accountability

Assessing Habits of Mind: Teaching to the Test at Central Park East Secondary School

2014 ◽  
Vol 116 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Brent Duckor ◽  
Daniel Perlstein
Keyword(s):  
No Child Left Behind ◽  
Secondary School ◽  
Standardized Testing ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Assessment Practices ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Central Park ◽  
Assessment Procedures

Background/Context Educational researchers and policymakers have often lamented the failure of teachers to implement what they consider to be technically sound assessment procedures. In recent years, the belief that teachers are unwilling or unable to implement appropriate assessment procedures has contributed to the rapid expansion of high stakes, standardized testing in schools. Supporters of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) have contrasted teachers’ assessment practices with standardized testing, arguing that teacher-created classroom assessments lack the technical characteristics required to produce trustworthy measures of student learning or compare large populations of students. Research Question/Focus of Study Through a case study of New York City's Central Park East Secondary School (CPESS), in the years when it served as a model for progressive American school reform, Duckor and Perlstein demonstrate the usefulness of an alternative to reliance on the technical characteristics of standardized tests for constructing and judging assessments: teachers’ self-conscious and reasoned articulation of their approaches to learning and assessment. Research Design In order to determine CPESS teachers’ assessment practices and the process through which they were developed, Duckor and Perlstein conducted semi-structured oral history interviews with a sample of CPESS teachers. They triangulated teachers’ recollections through a content analysis of course assignments, rubrics, grading reports, and other artifacts of assessment at CPESS. The sources of this data included published accounts of CPESS and primary sources provided by teachers or uncovered in archival research. Conclusions/Recommendations Duckor and Perlstein conclude that when teachers are given opportunities for genuine, shared reflection on teaching and learning and classroom practices are tied to this understanding, fidelity to what they call the logic of assessment offers a more promising framework for the improvement of schooling than current forms of high-stakes, standardized accountability. Thus, instead of expecting teachers to rely on data from standardized assessments or replicate features of standardized testing in their own assessment practices, researchers, policymakers and teacher educators should promote fidelity to the broader logic of assessment.

Cheaters Beware

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Donna M. Velliaris ◽  
Janine M. Pierce
Keyword(s):  
Educational Assessment ◽  
Academic Misconduct ◽  
Tertiary Level ◽  
Assessment Practices ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Faculty Assessment ◽  
Assessment Design ◽  
Academic Faculty ◽  
The Many ◽  
Effective Assessment

This descriptive chapter tackles the issue of ‘preventing' academic misconduct via effective assessment design. A dearth of literature is focused on ‘detecting' plagiarism, but assessment (re)design can help ‘prevent' the pervasiveness of ‘cheating' if tasks are relevant, authentic, real-world, educative, and career-focused from the outset. While contemporary society is demanding and complex, many educational assessment practices today remain unimpressively straightforward. Academic faculty are central to confronting cheating. In this chapter, the authors focus on a three-pillar system that empowers higher education institutions (HEIs) to better prevent malpractice rather than reacting to it afterwards. The aim of this chapter is to provide a descriptive investigation into why assessment is so important in the fight against academic misconduct, and a three-pillar approach to bolster assessment practices that will help minimize opportunities for students to engage in academic offences. Within this presentation are included author narratives that will help readers understand the many and varied ways tertiary-level students can challenge faculty assessment design.

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