Blogg 2
Examining Assessment Conference Proceedings October 1999
Compiled by Bev Webber
NZCER
Hi fellow readers. I've been reading over the weekend, inparticular the above titled document. One of our recommended readings (yeah)
I'd like to entice comment from one of the concluding paragraphs.... about professional development and assessment practices.
"It is also clear that the nation's teachers need continuous training, guidance and assistance in deriving, applying and interpreting good assessment practices, whether these have formative or summative purposes...As the array of assessment tasks becomes ever larger, and the responsibilities of teaching become greater, the professional development of teachers is cruical to their understanding and use of good assessment. (Webber 1999 p.107)
As I sit here and reflect on my own professional development and assessment practices, I can say that through our schools (secondary school) professional learning time we have been developed to some extend. In a full staff we had fellow colleagues from a range of departments present the sorts of formative assessment that made their teaching and students learning journey successful. The tasks ranged from a simple 'fist of 5' feedback to the collation and tabled record keeping of student voice answers. Whaow. There was alot of positive, constructive and directed 'assessment' happening that had a purpose. Following a full staff meeting we returned to smaller cluster groups and reflected on our departments formative assessments. The next step could/should have been to choose an assessment task that we hadn't used before, applly it and give feedback on how it went.
The first question to my readers is, "When was the last time your knowledge of assessment practices was professionally developed?"
When have you had the opportunity to share the types of assessment you present to your students, or work with fellow colleagues to develop assesment tasks that work for your area of education or when was the last time you were critiqued for the assessment processes you present in your class?
(Is this too much in one sentence?)
Webber (1999) writes, "it is impossible to spearate good formative assessment from good teaching and learning"
How do we as professionals know when our assessments wether they be formative or summative are 'good'?
CHEERS I look forward to your comments
SANDY
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Hi Sandy,
ReplyDeleteAn interesting topic and some really good thought-provoking questions. In my personal experience (at Intermediate Schools)I have found that the professional development regarding formative and summative assessment has usually been integrated in with teaching and learning Professional Development - which is either conducted in house or with the involvement of specialists eg. GATE and Social Sciences advisors from School Support Services. Examples include NUMPA, Inquiry based Social Sciences unit, TGFU (Teaching Games for Understanding) etc...As a whole staff we have looked at formative assessment strategies and how to better use summative assessment data and a lot of sharing etc.. is done in teaching teams. There is also a lot of informal sharing of ideas and teachers will go and observe different teachers in action when they get the chance. With our first and second year teachers this on a regular basis. The schools I have taught at have not been involved in any Ministry contracts focusing purely on formative assessment. Since the beginning of this year though, my current school has been involved with e-asTTle. I think it would be great to have more professional development in this area, as I know from even what we have looked at so far in this course, it has given me food for thought and really reinforced for me the need for students to become 'assessment capable'.
Also thanks Sandy for your comments on my blog - they gave me food for thought also!
Thanks,
Ange
Hi there
ReplyDeleteI wonder what will happen to primary teaching and assessment as the imposed National Standards regime hits the ground. John Hattie made some interesting points in the Herald today.
Regarding assessment and student motivation at secondary level, I wonder if the plethora of units and easily attained credits has sent a signal to students that there is always an easy way out. This would take away fear and anxiety and reinforce complacency. Also, education in a teenager's life has to compete with social interaction, which has been made all the more immediate due to rapid advents in communications technology. Students really value having their own cell phone(s), access to Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, and so on. How does solving a dozen quadratic equations compete with that?
This looks good
ReplyDeleteHi Sandy
ReplyDeleteSorry it has taken me so long to get back to you. I am trying to get my brain to think back to assessment - aahh thats right it was "one of the straws that broke the camels back" !!
I do think assessment is an evolutionary thing and that I got very bogged down with too much detail - so much so that it became overwhelming. I wonder if this is how the students feel?
More time friendly assessment that still allows the teacher to teach - or perhaps one of those great gadgets of modern technology, that we always carry with us, could become a tool that accumulated, assessed and analysed information learnt. Wouldnt that be great!
Sorry I am not more constructive Sandy.
Deb Clark