Only written tests as means of assessment are too limited to realize understanding. Yet, by broadening the range of activities which pursue the same objective and provide evidence of understanding, the teaching and learning process is enriched. Our role of teachers as task designers is to be adapted to assessors, assuming a role that we might not be that familiar with.
Hence, learning by doing is highly effective in our students. Wiggins points out the ‘doing of a problem’ as means of assessment, through undergoing different processes and experimenting. Albeit, this kind of activities have to be carefully planned in order to go through different thinking skills and be able to raise evidence of the processes. When the latter has been achieved successfully, there is understanding.
As guidelines, the three basic questions help to organize our work as assessors by questioning the kinds of evidence we need to find; questioning student responses in order to determine if the expected results were accomplished; and if the evidence gathered allows us to conclude students’ knowledge, skill, or understanding.
In so far as GRASPS and the six facets (explain, interpret, apply by, see from the point of view of, empathize with, reflect on) build understanding through the efficient collection of evidence, and can be used as a rubric to measure the level of understanding of a learner process. On the one hand, GRAPS provides the purpose, the setting and the expected steps of the process to be followed. On the other hand, the six facets put forward the progression from various points of views which raise evidence of the procedure.
To wrap up, the question now is if we teachers know how to do this, and actually put this into practice in the classroom? How willing are teachers to go beyond the simple tasks and putting into the assessors’ shoes?
Finally, this Calvin & Hobbes's strip summarises how important evidence and explicitness in our classroom are:
5 comments:
Dear Loreto,
I guess that the answer to your question could be that we teachers have to have a complete range of shoes to change whenever we need to...
We need first of all the teacher's shoes, the ones that in my case are very comfortable and love wearing them, then you have the psychologist pair, which can be a little taugher to wear or you just like them for a few minutes in a day, the sociologist' sneakers...hmmmm...wore only when we have time to analyse life and ah! the assessor's shoes!hmm...high heels, difficult to wear and too fancy for some of us....sometimes their color doesn't match you class so you just change them for something more "traditional" and take the safe way...
Yes, we have to start wearing those high heels and got used to the feeling of teaching with them, otherwise you can be dressed like a princess but wearing, dirty, old fashion and worn out shoes...
Vicky
Loreto:
I found very interesting the title of your post: “Putting is somebody else’s shoes because it really shows the task that teachers have to do in this stage: putting in the shoes of assessors. Assessors’s job is to work with a range of available evidence that enables them to check on students’ progress. Talking about students, judgments about their learning have to be valid, reliable and comparable. Answering your questions if teachers know how to do this and therefore putting it into practice, researches have shown that this objective has not been successful. Most of the teachers concerned about marks and not about learning. This misunderstanding has been the problem why understanding has not been achieved.
Hi dear Loreto!
I agree with you when you mention the idea of “learning by doing”, which we know is absolutely real. We know our students “learn” by doing of a problem, as Wigging said. However it is not only a matter of “planning funny activities which probably will make our students feel more comfortable, but also a matter of working as assessors who are dealing with teaching and who have to think about making our students use their minds in order to think about big ideas which finally will make them get that precious “understanding”, that sometimes appears to be far away from the students’ real life.
XOXO
Hi Loreto!!!
Interesting analogy! To put in someone’s shoes….difficult task when we don’t get to use. I totally agree with you when you say that “our role of teachers as task designers is to be adapted to assessors, assuming a role that we might not be that familiar with” . According to this I ask myself if I’m going beyond the simple tasks and putting into the assessors’ shoes. It’s clear that I do my best but as I can see it’s not enough to achieve the so precious goal: understanding. The guideline presented by the authors seem to be very clear and useful, but I guess to think like an assessor takes time and work beginning with the issue that we have to change our students’ mind when understanding what learning is.
Regarding the two questions you have made at the end of your commet, I would say that most of the teachers probably know or are familiared with the facets mentioned in GRASPS, but the problem is that we don't really know how to put it into practice. And this is obviously due to the fact that we are not used to think like assessors, we think like designers. Our main concerns are planning activities, covering content and geting grades.
In our specific case, we have no excuse to start thinking like assessors, as we are now really aware of the importance of gathering evidence.
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