This document summarizes key points from chapters 1, 5, and 6 of an educational psychology textbook. It discusses the purpose of grades as communicating student achievement, criteria for effective grades, and the importance of formative versus summative assessment. It also outlines fixes to support student learning, including not using formative assessments to determine grades, emphasizing more recent achievement over time, and involving students in the assessment and grading process.
This document summarizes key points from chapters 1, 5, and 6 of an educational psychology textbook. It discusses the purpose of grades as communicating student achievement, criteria for effective grades, and the importance of formative versus summative assessment. It also outlines fixes to support student learning, including not using formative assessments to determine grades, emphasizing more recent achievement over time, and involving students in the assessment and grading process.
This document summarizes key points from chapters 1, 5, and 6 of an educational psychology textbook. It discusses the purpose of grades as communicating student achievement, criteria for effective grades, and the importance of formative versus summative assessment. It also outlines fixes to support student learning, including not using formative assessments to determine grades, emphasizing more recent achievement over time, and involving students in the assessment and grading process.
Educational Content Standards: public, published statements
of the expected outcomes of learning o what the students are expected to know, understand, and be able to do Effective grades need to meet four overarching criteria for success: o Accurate o Inaccurate grades most often result from teachers determining them by: Blending achievement with behaviours Poor-quality assessment Inappropriate use of the mean in combining data o Meaningful Communicate useful info to students and to everyone interested in or needing to know about their learning Must directly reflect specified learning goals o Consistent Performance standards need to be the same from teacher to teacher o Must support learning School is about learning, not numbers Formative Assessments: designed to help students improve and in most cases not be used to determine grades Summative assessment: designed to measure student achievement and are use to make statements of student learning status at a point n time to those outside the classroom Mark or score: the number (or letter) given to any student test or performance that may contribute to the later determination of a grade Grade: the symbol (number or letter) reported at the end of a period of time as a summary of student performance the primary purpose of grades is to communicate student achievement to students, parents school administrators, postsecondary institutions and employers Bailey and McTighe (1996) secondary purposes for grading include providing teachers with information for instructional planning o selection and placement of students Underpinning Issues: o Fairness:
fair does not mean equal; yet, when it comes to
grading, we insist that it does equity of opportunity adaptations should not be limited to students who have specifically been identified as needing o Motivation: Grades are Extrinsic motivators Works well for students that get good grades, but not as much for students that do not The primary reward for learning should be intrinsic Success for each individual is seeing oneself get better Most effective ways to change behaviours: Using non-coercion Prompting the person to self-assess If authority is necessary, having the student own the consequence o Objectivity and Professional Judgement Real issues are accuracy and consistency, more than objectivity versus subjectivity Grading must not be a private practice, but a shared practice
Lecture 2: Chapter 5- Fixes to Support Learning -
Fix 13: Dont use information from formative assessments and
practice to determine grades; use only summative evidence o Learning is a process in which students increase their knowledge, skills, and understanding as a result of effort, instruction, feedback from teachers and peers, and selfassessment and adjustment o Learners must understand that it is acceptable to take risks and make mistakes o Diagnostic Assessment: takes place prior to instruction; designed to determine a students attitude, skills, or knowledge to identify student needs o Formative Assessment: designed to provide direction for improvement and/or adjustment to a program for individual students or for a whole class, such as observation, quizzes, homework, instructional questions, initial drafts/attempts o Summative Assessment: designed to provide information to be used in making judgements about a students achievement at the end of a sequence of
instruction, such as final drafts/attempts, tests, exams,
assignments, projects, performances o Key components of assessment for learning are: Sharing the learning goal(s) with students from the beginning of the learning Making adjustments in teaching as a result of formative assessment Providing descriptive feedback to students from assessment Providing opportunities for students to self- and peerassess so that they understand their strengths and what they need to do to improve o Motivation for homework should come from students clear understanding that it will contribute to their learning o An assessment plan should start with the desired results, then summative assessment, then diagnostic assessment(s), and finally formative assessments o Student Involvement: Students who are involved in every aspect of assessment are more able to distinguish between practice and performance Strategies to involve students: Engage students in reviewing strong and weak samples to determine attributes of a good performance or product Have students practise using criteria to evaluate anonymous strong and weak work Have students work in pars to revise an anonymous weak work sample they have just evaluated Fix 14: Dont summarize evidence accumulated over time when learning is developmental and will grow with time and repeated opportunities; in those instances, emphasize more recent achievement o Allow new evidence to replace, not simply be added to, old evidence o Emphasize more recent achievement, with more recent evidence replacing previous evidence Fix 15: Dont leave students out of the grading process. Involve students; they can- and should- play key roles in assessment and grading that promote achievement o Assessment process is done WITH them and not TO them o Involve students in developing the rubrics o Have students track their progress and achievement and communicate about their learning with others
o This type of learning can attract better parent attendance
Chapter 6 Summary - Two givens that cannot be questioned in any school o Ensure that all assessments are of high quality o Involve students in the assessment process - Six musts that can be questioned with regard to implementation, but nor in terms of basic principles: o Use learning goals-based curriculum, instruction, assessment, grading, and reporting with no single-subject grades except for grades 11 and 12 o Use performance standards with clear descriptions of a limited number of levels with no percentages o Separate achievement from behaviours with no mark penalties for late work, academic dishonesty, or attendance o Use summative assessments for (almost) all the evidence for determining grades; use no-mark, comment-only formative assessment o Emphasize more recent evidence in the determination of grades when learning is cumulative and developmental o Use professional judgement that arises from careful and limited number crunching with no zeros, and calculation of the median and mode in addition to or in place of the mean