Peter Lang AG

Chapter 1: Moving Beyond Grade-Getting with Self-Assessment

Author(s): Judith McVarish and Catherine Milne
Source: Counterpoints, Vol. 380, Teacher Educators Rethink Self-Assessment in Higher
Education: A Guide for the Perplexed (2014), pp. 1-14
Published by: Peter Lang AG
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42981546
Accessed: 04-10-2019 02:45 UTC

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Counterpoints

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 Chapter 1

Movin
with Self- Assessment

Judith McVarish & Catherine Milne

My red folder
in the fourth year
suddenly
out of nowhere
wants me to assert

what I achieve
in school

"in my own words."

How can I blow the trumpet
they've taken from me?
- Raychaudhuri, 1998, p. 75

This verse from Sibani Raychaudhuri's poem, Self-assessment, highlights

for us the challenges and possibilities associated with implementing
strategies for self-assessment and self-evaluation in higher education and
teacher education contexts. In order to anticipate that students are able
to self-assess and self-evaluate educators have a responsibility for pro-
viding students with ongoing opportunities and resources so that they
find out how to evaluate their learning and set goals for future learning.

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2 TEACHER EDUCATORS RETHINK SELF-ASSESSMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION

The Status of Assessment in

However, before we can begin to examine
and self-evaluation we need to examine the n
education. As Boud and Falchikov (2007) no
term consequences for career trajectories and
ple make. For students in higher educatio
identify what is important and upon which t
ing resources (Tait & Entwistle, 1996). Brow
note that if you want to change student le
methods of assessment. In addition, self-a
skill - all the many judgments that we ma
do well, and how to best use our resources
lation (of which self-assessment is a part)
tive outcomes that researchers argue ampl
Students in higher education need to ha
skills that help them to recognize what th
know as adult learners and what their tea
understanding or not yet grasping. Witho
and students do not become lifelong learn
cation students are familiar with the conce
rarely asked to provide compelling longitu
ing. Our model for self-assessment and
vide students who are preparing to be
skills as well as a purpose for developing
Traditionally, the dominant assessment
tion is focused on students demonstratin
and producing material that has the exp
grade. In the process, students often rece
their teachers (Boud & Falchikov, 2007). T
an end in itself rather than as a resource
assessment autobiographies, both Boud
ments of the apparent capriciousness of t
the lack of agency many students in hi
they participate in a variety of courses.

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 In the traditional asses
requirements of the cou
series of tasks are prese
tasks to provide eviden
of these tasks has an ass
tasks constitutes 100 pe
performance on tasks is
teacher assumes the rol
matched her/his submi
This model is pervasiv
sistency, becomes par
course structure and im
the first day of class w
course outline availabl
course. The professor
(Professor and students
class) and recognize th
in this course. In this m
include preparing the c
the course content, ass
assigning grades. The s
for grades. For teacher
is highly problematic. E
to teach with the respon
dents it is important th
ment experiences.

Models of Assessment and the Benefit

of Self-assessment and Self-evaluation

Traditionally in a course, students are provided with new knowled

and assessed on their retention of that knowledge by means of a test
some sort where there clearly is one right answer to each question be
asked. This form of test lets the instructor know who has "learned" the

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4 TEACHER EDUCATORS RETHINK SELF-ASSESSMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION

material presented and who has not. Students have one degree o
dom in responding to the test question - to answer correctly or
vide an incomplete or incorrect response (see Figure 1).

(one correct answer)

Assessment Student
Task ' Response

Figure 1. A traditional model o

Recognizing that there i

the elements the professor
rect rubrics were introdu
taking the test, the studen
responses and their level
have a map for how to re
scale with the response the
sense of transparency in
a single degree of freedo

Assessment (one correct answer) .

Task studen« .
^ - ^ Response
(rubric communicates
Rubric
what the student needs to

present for their response)

Figure 2. Assessment model with rubric.

Self-assessment and self-evaluation offer multiple degrees of free-

dom for articulating learning. Claims and evidence of learning are lim
ited only by each student's awareness of her learning. Students must

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 articulate their own lea
learning. The learning m
dent to learn as a result
ject being taught (see F

Self-assess
- ^ Responses
Self-evaluation ~ y

Figure 3. Increasing the power of students to

application of self-assessment and self-evalua

The self-assessment and self-evaluation model of assessment does

not mean that a student can enter the classroom and decide to learn

only what she decides is important ignoring everything else. For exam-
ple, a class spent one class session on exploring formulas for the areas
of rectangles, triangles, and trapezoids and how to teach young ele-
mentary students these formulas. On her self-evaluation a student
wrote about finding the area of a butterfly on a geoboard by breaking
the wings into triangular sections and piecing them together into a rec-
tangle. She writes in her self-evaluation that she now understands
why base times height equals area and then why one half the base
times the height equals the area of a triangle. Two halves make a
whole, that is the area of the rectangle, but she now came to realize that
the formula for a triangle is one half that of a rectangle because a rec-
tangle is made up of two right triangles. This had nothing to do with
our class exploration but the student applied what she had learned in
class to a different problem and then understood what we had done in
class. If I had assessed solely on our class activity the student's
response would have been simplistic and formulaic. Her self-evalua-
tion provided her the freedom to connect her learning later in the
semester to another problem and explain the interconnectedness of the
learnings. (See Chapter 3 for further examples of student evaluation

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6 TEACHER EDUCATORS RETHINK SELF-ASSESSMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION

claims that acknowledge an initial resistance to an idea or p

sented during the enactment of a course.)
It is the multiple ways students can think about evidence
learning that uncovers new learning for students. How d
what you have learned and where is the evidence for that n
One of the benefits of self-assessment and self-evaluation
reframing the assessment model to emphasize activities such
tion, feedback, and acting on the outcomes of those reflectio
back, roles and responsibilities for students and teach
expanded, especially roles associated with learning rather th
getting. Black, McCormick, James and Pedder (2006), in the
tion of classroom roles and assessment for learning, acknow
expanded role opportunities associated with self-assessment
for the need for teacher education in which teachers investig
uate new assessment strategies. While acknowledging the va
form of professional education, in our self-assessment/ self
model, we also argue for the importance of structures or res
fundamentally change the way professors and students in
the way they use feedback for learning. Both resources and
are needed to bring about change or transformation by
ment practices of professors. Both serve the taking of begi
of students and teachers along the path of discovery asso
self-assessment and self-evaluation. These small initial st
a script for habits of assessment that then become embedde
teachers' practices.

A Short History of
Assessment in Teacher Education

Kvale (2007) reminds us that historically, at all levels of educat

assessment has been used to control, discipline, and select students
claims that the focus on learning is a relatively recent developm
based on the needs of a knowledge society. Brown (reported in Bro
Bull, and Pendlebury, 1997) argues that the focus on examinations a

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 preferred strategy for
first in China almost
European universities
Assessment for selection and certification in both the US and the UK is

much more recent as exams were introduced to select people for entry
into universities, government posts, and professions (Gipps, 1999).
Initially, the introduction of examinations for selection was based on the
idea that students should be able to achieve equitable admission to col-
lege based on academic merit and not factors such as family history or
wealth. Universities acted in this way because it was considered fairer
to select entrants on the basis of exam scores than on the basis of whether

their family could afford to send them to the institution or whether

there was a family history associated with attending the institution.
Over time, the written exam became associated with entry into high sta-
tus professions, so it also became imbued with high status.

Assessment and Standardized Testing

In many institutions of higher education a final examination for a course

of study remains a preferred method of summative (final) assessment.
Such examinations are believed to measure recalled knowledge and
understanding, the ability to solve closed familiar problems modeled in
the course, the ability to structure thoughts and the capacity to write
quickly and independently under pressure (Brown, Bull, & Pendlebury,
1997). One might argue that our goals for learners at institutions of higher
education should be more inclusive than this range of listed abilities.
But even this narrow range of skills can be eroded further with the use of
multiple-choice examinations. In contrast to examinations that contain
extensive written components, multiple-choice examinations are often
preferred because they are cheaper to develop, implement, and grade. As
Kvale (2007) notes, multiple-choice examinations tend to reward the
ability of students to recall information. Ill-defined problems such as
those students might expect to experience in their professional lives are
not tested with multiple-choice examinations (Frederiksen, 1984).
Additionally, the focus on grades and grade point average at higher

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8 TEACHER EDUCATORS RETHINK SELF-ASSESSMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION

education institutions, especially in the US, leads many students t

more focused on achievement than learning (Becker, 1972; Byrd, 200
Stiggins (2002), writing about standardized testing in schools in
United States, argues that assessment of learning (whatever form
might take) must be accompanied with assessment for lear
Assessment should support learning and not be used solely as a
surement of whether learning has occurred. Accordingly, assessmen
learning should involve the articulation of learning goals in access
language in order to ensure that tasks provide students with oppo
nities to explicate their learning and build confidence. Assessment
tices need to be responsive to identified student needs and allow
adjusting instruction accordingly, involving students in self-assessm
and encouraging students to communicate their learning. The mode
self-assessment and self-evaluation that provided the scaffold for m
of the studies reported in this book provides structure for course
resources to students that are responsive to these requirements.

Assessment and Self-Assessment

We believe that self-assessment and self-evaluation afford students

opportunities to more fully represent their learning than is possible

with other forms of summative evaluation such as standardized test-

ing and serve to ameliorate the influence of teachers' personal tastes

or judgments on student evaluations. Broadfoot's (1996) socio-cultural
analysis of assessment identifies how classroom assessments are often
repressive for the students involved while concurrently restricting
student access to resources. She claims that assessment is such a cen-

tral aspect of many social interactions that people tend to take it for
granted. For example, we often judge others based on the clothes they
wear or their accent. However, in education the issue of assessment
becomes highly subjective when it is applied to teacher decision of stu-
dent learning for the purposes of accountability and selection for fur-
ther learning opportunities.
This centrality is socially constructed in explicit and implicit ways. For
example, teachers assess student understanding by using questions

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 (implicit), evaluation of
students (implicit). They
ing and their own teach
engaged in self-assessm
other so that they mode
of the forms of achievem
of whether a student is
ability measures implem
dent achievement. Br
"discriminating between
as teachers choose the "b
acknowledging the possi
self-evaluation, we believ
students opportunities t
be possible with other f
liorate the influence of

Understanding the "Se

Our understandings of t
have come from a deep
reading has highlighted
have written about the value of self-assessment and self-evaluation and

about how each conceptualizes and uses these ideas. According to the
Oxford English Dictionary self-evaluation is the appraisal of one's actions
or attitudes especially in relation to an objective standard. Self-assessment
is an instance of assessment or evaluation of oneself. The use of the word

se// indicates reflexivity, that is, the ability to think about one's own think-
ing. We found this definition supportive of our own thinking of self-
assessment and the role of "self" in self-assessment. The question we have
is whether self-evaluation is really about applying an objective standard
and how do we understand "objective" and what standards do we apply
in the model of self-assessment that we are proposing.
The most basic form of students' self-assessment is the myriad of
classroom interactions that take place and the sense each participant

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10 TEACHER EDUCATORS RETHINK SELF-ASSESSMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION

makes of the perceived patterns of evaluat

most classrooms "multiple participants a
courses of action in concert with each other
ing to the larger activities that their current
and the relevant phenomena in their surro
1492). Importantly, in a course of study, st
working on a common activity but exper
influencing them, and in turn being influen
we believe we understand each other's b
understand us. Turner (2002) calls this inter
expectation that we share a common world
least for the period of our transactions. In
encounters can be thought of as transaction
tion, thereby associating transactions with e
ful contexts. Within transactions each p
identification of self while concurrently s
and collective effervescence associated with
as learning about the discipline that is the f
For all participants their sense of self com
which they participate in and the sense of s
these interactions. For these reasons we consider classroom interactions
an essential component of teaching and learning in the context of self-
assessment and self-evaluation.

Other researchers have proposed other descriptions of self-assess-

ment and self-evaluation, which informed the development and nature
of self-evaluation and self-assessment and the structures that could be

implemented in a model for self-evaluating and self-assessing.

Klenowski (1995) provides a model for developing standards for eval-
uating learning. She describes self-evaluation as the "evaluation of the
'worth' of one's performance" (p. 146) and the criteria used to make this
evaluation should be based on what students find meritorious.
Additionally she argues that students should be required to desc
future actions informed by their evaluation. Thus, Klenowski claims
self-evaluation is broader than self-assessment "because it ascribes value
to the learning experience" (p. 147) in the broadest sense of ascribing

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 value very similar to ou
Klenowski differentiates between self-evaluation and self-assessment on
the basis of self-assessment being associated only with the award of a
grade based on the self-evaluation that is not consistent with our con-
ceptualization of self-assessment. Similar to Klenowski, our model of
self-assessment ascribes value to teacher and peer feedback allowing stu-
dents to be responsive and emphasizes the need for feedback that allows
students to be responsive. Our position on the formative nature of self-
assessment is similar to that of Boud and Falchikov (1989) who define
self-assessment as:

[T]he involvement of learners in making judgments about their own learning,

particularly about their achievements and the outcomes of their learning. Self-
assessment is formative in that it contributes to the learning process and assists
learners to direct their energies to areas for improvement, and it may be sum-
mative, either in the sense of learners deciding that they have learned as much
as they wished in a given area, or, in formal institutional settings, it may con-
tribute to the grades awarded to students, (p. 529)

Note that they describe self-assessment as both summative, perhaps

leading to a grade, and formative, associated with the learning process. For
us, the summative component is what we describe as self-evaluation.
Sundström (2005) investigating student driver education argued that self-
assessment was associated with students' awareness of their cognition and
their ability to control cognition. It includes students' general strategies for
learning and thinking, knowing when and why to use specific strategies
and the ability to know their strengths and weaknesses related to learn-
ing and cognition and which strategies to apply in specific contexts.
According to Sundström, making a judgment about one's learning
involves one in self-assessment. The meta-cognitive aspect of Sundström's
definition was very appealing to us. We believe all learners are capable of
developing meta-cognitive skills that require them to think about their
thinking. We wanted to make sure our students, who were mainly grad-
uate students going on to become educators, had opportunities and were
encouraged to reflect on their learning, ask questions and raise issues
about which teachers could respond, and begin to recognize the complex-
ity of the relationship between assessment and learning for all learners.

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12 TEACHER EDUCATORS RETHINK SELF-ASSESSMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Why Develop a Model for Self-Assessment and Self-Evaluation

Teacher Education?

Boud and Falchikov (1989) critically examined quantitative studies of

student self-assessment in higher education and identified three meth
ods that have been applied to understand self-assessment:

1) Development of conceptual frameworks associated with

being a reflective practitioner, self-monitoring of teachers
and learners, and developing a concept of learning-how-to-
learn.

2) Implementation of a practical framework that describes

strategies for teacher facilitation of self-assessment and for
introducing and using self-assessment in different contexts.
3) Use of strategies for quantitatively comparing student and
teacher assessment ratings.

Boud and Falchikov (1989) were critical of method three arguing that
the effort used to compare the correlation between teacher assessments
and student self-assessments could be more productively directed
towards developing strategies for incorporating formative self-assess-
ment activities into courses. Such activities would assist students to
develop the ability to make more informed and conscious judgments
about their learning. While agreeing with this position we also recognize
that studies showing correspondence between self-assessment and exter-
nal measures of knowledge and ability raise the question of the role of
self-governance in student self-assessment especially when the external
measures are based on teacher assessments or multiple-choice exams
Such studies undervalue and underreport the contribution that self-
assessment and self-evaluation can make to student learning and tc
external understanding of the complexity and depth of student learning
The model that we have developed incorporates aspects of method:
one and two, conceptual and practical frameworks, for self-assessment an<
self-evaluation including strategies for teacher facilitation that have beei
used by professors in a variety of contexts and a conceptual framewor
that values active experiential learning, the role of collaboration and cor

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 versation in generating new
and self-monitoring of ou
agree that self-assessment
occur during class and stud
ticipate in various tasks an
As we have highlighted e
a perspective of assessmen
ing's sake and not mistake
ized tests. Such a perspec
lower grades of K-12. In th
pened over time with fool
Left Behind legislation or t
at what is perceived as crit
tion policy. One cannot equ
a child's success in school
testing. Yet that is what th
ing opportunities for the
to have a varied range of a
what they can do with the
testing frenzied environme
business models of bottom
a relatively few years, tu
funded, increasingly diver
Beginning with Chapter 2
the archetype of the self-a
chapters in this book highl
tation of our self-assessme
tion. The authors of this
teacher educators, working
testing initiatives. As teach
dents of any age are curiou
own knowing and discovery
university participate in a
them to own the learning
students in K-12 to do the same.

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14 TEACHER EDUCATORS RETHINK SELF-ASSESSMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION

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