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MMSTLC Science Resources - Assessing Student Understanding

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ASSESSING STUDENTUNDERSTANDING IN SCIENCE

The last focus area we are going to address in depth this year is the notion of assessing studentunderstanding of science, and how this process relates to the instructional efforts of the teacher.Before we get into details of this process, we need to address some broad considerations aboutassessment, so that we have a common understanding of what we want or need to address. The noteson the following pages accompany the presentations around this issue.

Assessment vs. Grading

One of the difficulties in thinking about assessment is that teachers and students so often confuse theconcept with grading. Assessment needs to be viewed as an on-going process intended to further ourstudents’ learning and understanding of the desired materials. Grading is not such a process,considering the way it is used in most classrooms. If we are to assess our students’ learning in order todetermine whether or not they are meeting educational or other objectives within the class, we mustevaluate their learning at a variety of stages along the way, as opposed to a final, cumulative, all-or-nothing process. The underlying assumption that goes with this definition of assessment is that we aredoing this to better assist our students in learning and understanding the concepts and principles weare teaching in our classrooms.

Assessment Grades

Formative SummativeDiagnostic FinalPrivate to student and assessor Part of administrative recordNon-judgmental JudgmentalSpecific GeneralSubtext and process specific Text and Information specificGoal Directed Content drivenFocus is on learning Focus is on “counting” or discipline

Purposes of Assessment

When examining the types of assessment we use within our classrooms, we need to determine thepurpose of the assessment and whether or not it is properly assessing the learning objective of thestudent. When this is not done, it often causes misunderstanding and anxiety on the part of thestudent, both toward the class and the teacher. When determining a method of assessment, one shouldask the following questions:1. What tools are we already using?2. How are we using the results?3. How are we reporting the results?4. To whom are we reporting?5. What school proficiencies (goals) are being measured by the results?6. What are the relative strengths of the process?7. What are the weaknesses?8. What should we do to better achieve our purposes?Once these questions are asked by educators of their own classroom and school, it is much easier todetermine appropriate methods of assessment for the actual instructional goals of the class.

MMSTLC Science Resources - Assessing Student Understanding

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To focus student learning:

1.To inform and guide students as to what they have learned and to suggest what they need to learn sothey can adequately manage the direction of their own work.2. To inform and guide parents for the same reasons.

To focus teaching:

3.To inform day-to-day teaching so that teachers can adjust lesson plans to meet student needs.4.To evaluate teaching effects and the usefulness of their teaching strategies and methods employed inthe classroom.

To improve systems:

5.To determine special services that might be required to assist students.6.To evaluate systems which run the school.7.To evaluate the curriculum as a whole, and make necessary adjustments to accommodate studentneeds.

To influence policy and planning:

8.To inform school boards and larger decision making bodies of the programs and evaluate their needs.9.To inform the public of the quality of educational programs in their schools.

MMSTLC Science Resources - Assessing Student Understanding

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Classroom Assessment

For a broad definition, we consider assessment as “the process of collecting, synthesizing, andinterpreting information to aid classroom decision-making” (Airasian, 1996). Assessments must matchthe content taught in order for the students to demonstrate what they have learned. Effectiveassessments address the learning objectives and the instructional emphasis when they are designed andimplemented. Assessments should never include topics or objectives not taught to the students. Also,assessments can never appraise everything that students learn in class; they can only estimate whatstudents have learned by sampling tasks from a much larger possible range of tasks. Ideally, we, asteachers, try to address this limitation by giving students several opportunities to show what they havelearned through different media (e.g., answering tests and quiz items, completing student sheets,collaborating in groups, presenting projects), and at different points during the course of study, so thatwe get a broader view of the student’s understanding of the concepts and skills, rather than a meresnapshot on what might be a bad day for the student.During the process of learning science through inquiry in our classrooms, there are many opportunitiesto assess student understanding. Assessment can include formal and informal assessments. Formalassessments examine products such as written or oral responses (Pellegrino, 2001). These might includetests, quizzes, artifacts, investigations, student sheets, and presentations, among other, tangiblethings. According to Pellegrino informal assessments are “intuitive, often sub-conscious, reasoningteachers carry out everyday in classrooms.” These might include checks for student understanding likeclassroom questioning and assessment conversations. These informal assessments are more based onhabits of mind from the teacher, as well as their abilities as observers of learners.Ideally, all of the assessments a teacher or school may conduct with students are formative in nature.According to Black and William (1998) formative assessments encompass all those activities undertakenby teachers, and/or by their students, that provide information to be used as feedback to modify theteaching and learning activities in which they are engaged. The feedback component of assessments iscritical. However, many assessments have to be summative in nature in order to measure whatstudents have learned at the end of some set of learning activities and to assign a grade.Classroom assessment may look at various “grain sizes” for teachers to better understand theirstudents’ knowledge and depth of understanding of the content, processes and skills of science. Someassessments might allow the teacher to get a glimpse into the individual thoughts of students and to beable to respond to each to address their learning needs. Others might provide a broader view of thegeneral understanding of small groups, or the class as a whole. Either way, when a teacher developsand uses an assessment, they need to be ready to analyze the work or responses of the student so thatthey can utilize this information to better craft their own instruction. As a result, the teacher needs tolook at a variety of factors within the design of the individual assessment. These might include the

type of learning desired

, the nature of the

understanding of the content

(and its place relative tothe learning goals of the classroom), the

prior knowledge or skills

a student might have to address aparticular topic or task, and the ways in which the student

communicates their knowledge to others

.As we focus on the design of assessments, we’ll look at each of these categories.

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