Chapter 1 Taking Stock

Introduction

This chapter will help you articulate how and why you are currently evaluating your students. As well, it provides a baseline from which further planning can begin. It's like making an initial trip to a financial planner. The first thing that planners require you to do is to list all your assets and liabilities so that they (and you) can identify what needs to be done in order to provide a more thorough and appropriate plan for you to reach your financial goals. They know, too, that the very act of requiring you to build an organized picture of where you stand will often suggest what further action needs to be taken, without any prodding from them. They, of course, stand ready with the expertise to help you follow the path you have set yourself.

At the same time, they will use the initial visit to introduce some technical terms and concepts common in the world of financial planning. These will enable you to enter into the language and way of thinking of their world. By analogy, the objectives of this chapter are:

to assist you to prepare a student evaluation inventory of your current teaching.
to introduce you to, or to refresh your memory of, some key concepts in the field of student evaluation that will help you understand the subsequent planning activities.

The Student Evaluation Summary Inventory

The various activities of this chapter lead to the completion of a Student Evaluation Summary Inventory Sheet on pages 15 and 16 that will be a record of assessment techniques you have used in the past and that will also serve as a planning structure. The information required to complete each section will be generated on the respective worksheet and then will be summarized on the Summary Inventory Sheet. For example, Worksheet 'B', on page 8, allows you to generate information that you can summarize on the Summary Inventory. You may find that you can summarize the information for one or more of the Inventory sections without using the specific worksheet. If so, ignore the worksheet that relates to that particular box and work directly with the Summary Inventory Sheet.

Student Instructional or Assessment Grouping: Worksheet 'A'

Turn to Worksheet 'A' on the next page. Consider the instructional groupings or the assessment groupings of students within your current teaching assignment.

Here is an example at the high school level. If your teaching assignment is two classes of Grade 10 English, one class of Grade 9 English, and one class of Grade 9 Health, you might decide that because you teach the health course very differently from the English courses, there are really two student assessment groups: all the English classes (one group) and health (the other group). Or you might feel that you treat the Grade 10 classes much the same, and the grade 9 classes much the same, too, although different from the Grade 1 0s. So the instructional and assessment groupings in this case might be: Grade 10 English (one group) and Grade 9 English and Grade 9 Health (the other group).

If you are a teacher who teaches most subjects to one grade, different factors might enter into your student assessment groupings. You may decide that, due to the similar instructional methods employed, you will use similar assessment techniques to assess student progress across subject areas.

You will find your detailed knowledge of your specific teaching assignment allows you to easily identify your instructional or assessment groupings. The points below may also help.

Decide on the student instructional or assessment groupings that apply to your specific teaching assignment.

Give each of them an easily remembered name. Enter these on Worksheet ‘A’.

Photocopy sufficient Summary Inventory Sheets and Worksheets ‘B’, ‘C’, and ‘D’ to allow one per grouping.

Fill in the spaces indicated on these planning sheets with the name of each grouping.

All of the subsequent steps will be carried out for each student assessment group.

Student Instructional or Assessment Grouping:

Worksheet ‘A’

Description of Grouping	Similarities in instructional or student assessment techniques that caused me to group these together
Grouping #1	Easily remembered name to characterize this grouping:
Grouping #2	Easily remembered name to characterize this grouping:
Grouping #3	Easily remembered name to characterize this grouping:
Grouping #4	Easily remembered name to characterize this grouping:

Student Assessment Techniques Currently Used: Worksheet 'B'

Before considering the contents of this worksheet, take a moment to become familiar with the meanings of three central terms, measurement, assessment, and evaluation.

Measurement is collecting information on the frequency or extent of something.

Assessment, a broader term, involves collecting information on the progress of students" learning. It may include, but is certainly not limited to, measurement activities. Observation data also provide information for assessment. Some writers feel that the old meaning of the term Assessor', as one who takes time to sit with a person in order to develop an understanding of that person's situation, captures what a teacher does when assessing a student.

Evaluation is making a judgment about the degree of merit or worth of the information collected.

To use a simple example, taking attendance is making a measurement. Adopting student attendance as a factor that affects student learning is an assessment decision. Deciding that a certain number of absences is a threat to a student's success is making an evaluation.

What about a numerical grade? Is a student's mark of 70% in a course a measurement, an assessment, or an evaluation? On the surface, it looks like a measurement: "Well, 70% is what Pat got! I developed the test and graded Pat's responses, but beyond that I had nothing to do with it. Therefore, the 70% must be a measurement." Actually, you did have something to do with it. If all the students had received less than 10%, you would have realized that the test was too difficult for Pat and the other students and you would have changed the nature of your test. Therefore, your testing methods and standards have been arrived at through a process of evaluation. Knowing what you know about your course objectives, your students, and your testing procedures, you have developed and arrived at a system where, to use the definition above, 70% does represent a judgment about the degree of merit or worth of Pat's performance. You have evaluated Pat.

Evaluation can take place even when there has been no measurement. Film critics do this every day. Which is the better movie, Batman or Gone With The Wind? Such evaluations are often seen as being subjective and open to challenge. Very often, the confidence we have in subjective judgments depends upon the esteem in which we hold the evaluator and the level of expertise that we feel has been brought to the evaluation task.

Measurement and assessment can theoretically take place without a context of judgment. Evaluation cannot. A person may weigh 60 kg. That is a measurement, one that is quite easy to carry out with reasonable accuracy. To evaluate that fact, that is, to make a judgment about whether 60 kg is in some sense 'good', one needs to consider the fact in relation to some external standard or standards. In essence, there are three ways in which standards can be used when evaluating.

Norm-referenced standards
In this type of evaluation, one compares assessment data with typical data collected from many other comparable people. If the census book shows that most other people of the same sex, height, and skeletal type have weights in the range of 50 to 53 kg, then one may make the evaluative judgment that 60 kg is in some sense 'not good'. This evaluation is made in the context of what 'good' means in this situation. In current western society, 'good' tends to be equated with being of average or below-average weight. In some cultures, the evaluation would turn out very differently. On the island monarchy of Tonga, the evaluation might be that the person, being of above-average weight, is marked as someone of high status.
Criterion-referenced standards
Here, the measurement is compared to some absolute standard, termed a criterion. A criterion may be set arbitrarily but usually there is some degree of logic behind it. One example might be that only people weighing 55 kg or less will be accepted for the space shuttle program. This criterion would have been set because of the design constraints of the rocket engines that govern the total weight that can be lifted into orbit. In this instance, the 60 kg person would be evaluated as failing to meet the criterion.
Self-referenced standards
The third type of external reference point is oneself. The comparison being made here is how one's performance today compares with one's performance earlier. To continue the illustration, consider the case where the person weighed 90 kg a year earlier when a diet program was begun. In this instance, a weight of 60 kg might be evaluated as a great improvement over the previous state of affairs, even if it were still above the norm weight of comparable people and even if it disqualified the person from going into space.

A Further Point on Standards

Although these three external reference standards have been treated separately, they can all enter into one evaluative decision. If a doctor has to make an overall evaluation of how 'well' our 60 kg person is, he or she will refer to all three types of standards by assessing them in light of other available medical and personal knowledge of the patient. The doctor will arrive at a professional evaluation: "Based on the average weights of people like you, and bearing in mind the various criterion level weights that have been set to warn against the onset of weight- related diseases such as diabetes and heart attacks, and taking into account the progress you have made on your diet, as your physician I would say that my professional evaluation of your condition is that you are in very good health."

In school, balancing the importance of the three types of external standards in arriving at an overall evaluation of a student requires the exercise of a teacher's professional judgment, especially when the different standards are tugging in opposite directions. "How is Jean doing in school? Based on classroom tests and the class examination with Jean's peer group, not so well (normative reference). But Jean did pass the system-wide minimum competency test (criterion reference). And class assignments did show improvement over the course of the year (self reference)." Now the teacher has to blend these judgments into one overall judgment. To do this, the teacher needs to know more about why the initial question about Jean was asked. To award a scholarship? Then the normative reference will take on more importance. To promote Jean to the next grade? Now the criterion reference may be the primary consideration. To report to Jean's parents? The answer to that will depend on the parents. Parents/guardians are often interested in self-referenced evaluation judgments.

Deciding on the appropriate blend of student evaluation standards can be a complex matter. Experience; school tradition; parental expectations; and school, school division, and provincial policies can all help. Chapter 3 offers some information on how to develop a school policy on student evaluation.

In summary, evaluation starts with assessing something. This assessment is then judged with respect to norm-, criterion-, or self-referenced standards. These judgments are then blended into an overall judgment that provides an answer to the evaluation question being posed. Breaking down what is often a continuous process into these steps will allow you to construct a more comprehensive student evaluation inventory and, ultimately, a more comprehensive evaluation program.

Now you can complete the task of filling in Worksheet 'B' for the first of your student evaluation groupings. To help you, techniques have been grouped into two major categories.

Ongoing Student Activities
The assessment techniques in this group are intended to be used when students are going about their customary learning activities.
Quizzes and Tests
These assessment techniques are used when students are engaged in test-taking activities.

For each of the techniques you marked on Worksheet 'B', indicate how you organize them and how you record the data you collect from them.

Methods of Organization
These methods are used to organize or conduct assessments, whether they are the ongoing student activity techniques or quizzes and tests.
Methods of Data Recording These methods are used to record the assessment information from Ongoing Student Activities or Quizzes and Tests.

Think about your student instructional or assessment grouping in terms of the assessment techniques listed under Ongoing Student Activities and Quizzes and Tests. Consider how you organize those techniques and how you record the student information (listed across the top of the worksheet). Put check marks in the appropriate boxes to best describe your use of the assessment techniques.

To refresh your memory later, jot down where in your program you use the techniques.

For example, perhaps you identified presentations as an ongoing student activity that you use. If you have your students do these presentations on an individual basis, then you would cheek 'Individual' in the 'Methods of Organization' section along the top of the worksheet. If you use a rating scale for these presentations in order to record your ratings and comments, then cheek 'Rating Scales' in the 'Methods of Data Recording' section of the worksheet.

For printing and copying, this table requires Acrobat Reader

Student Assessment Techniques Currently Used:
Worksheet 'B'

A further example deals with a Grade six mathematics grouping of students who are quite advanced in their knowledge and use of mathematics. You may look down the list of assessment techniques and consider that you gave them a test at the beginning of the term consisting of short-answer, extended open-response, and performance-test questions to establish what these students knew and were able to do. You had them complete this test individually and, since it was corrected/evaluated only by you, it did not involve, at that point, self- or peer-assessment. The analysis of their responses to the extended open-response question was done with a checklist and you used a rating scale with the performance test item. To record this on the worksheet, you would put a check mark in the box that cross-references short-answer items with individual assessments. Extended open- response items would cross-reference to both individual assessments and observation checklists. For performance tests, you would check the boxes that cross-reference with individual assessments and rating scales. Then, in the column at the far right, you would jot down that the test items were used at the beginning of the term in mathematics to establish a baseline of knowledge and skills.

Mark the columns only if you use the technique for student assessment there could be techniques you use for other aspects of your teaching, but not for student assessment. For example, you might use questions to keep students interested in what is happening, but not consider the answers to the questions in your overall evaluation scheme. If you require clarification of one or more of the techniques listed in Worksheet 'B', refer to Chapter 4.

Worksheet 'B' summarizes the types of student assessment techniques you use, how you use them, and how you collect or record the assessment information from them. Transfer the information from Worksheet 'B' to the Student Evaluation Summary Inventory Sheet.