Whenever I hear educators discuss assessment, the following phrases are bound to arise: "Assessment OF, FOR, or AS learning"; "summative assessment"; and "formative assessment". These three phrases are generally the basis for many disagreements in the professional realm.
The biggest theme I saw arise during this week's reading and podcast was the need for authentic tasks and meaningful assessment, especially when viewed through the students' eyes.
Nat Banting is well-known in Western Canada (and beyond), as he is the creator of FractionTalks.com, as well as the provider of many rich tasks used in classroom all over. He stressed in Episode 110 of the Making Math Moments That Matter Podcast that too often we focus on knowing, when we should be focusing on just sitting with the problem or task at hand. Everything he does in FractionTalks is about simply thinking about what is in front of you and considering it from different angles and perspectives. Similarly, he suggests "obstructing", rather than "instructing" students in the classroom. Quite often we give students exact instructions for what we want them to learn or complete, and then celebrate with them when they achieve the goal. Banting presents a different method in which teachers "leave out" pieces of information or "change the story" thereby forcing students to reset, keep what is useful, and engage in mathematical thinking. This can be equated to "losing a fish" while fishing and the line snaps; you don't blame yourself, the story just changed.
Students like to know "how they did" or "what they got" on various assignments and tests. This is the norm in math classrooms, but it is also a deep 'stop-thinking' mindset. Engaging in the Thinking Classrooms framework, I've found that removing grades and providing constructive feedback on both formative and summative assessment is instrumental in changing students' mindsets. That being said, the question that I'm most often met with in high school is "but what about preparing them for university?" Fook and Sidhu's article "Authentic Assessment and Pedagogical Strategies in Higher Education" got at that exact issue.
Right off the bat, I scratched in the margins "What do universities see as the goal for assessment?" I've often asked myself this and other similar questions. It baffles me how intentionally we work with, scaffold for, and walk alongside our students, only to have them enter university lecture halls where they aren't known, understood, or seen by professors who are no doubt intelligent, but often not skilled in effectively communicating their knowledge. If this is the case, what then is the goal of assessment?
"Students as the main clients in higher education need to be consulted as to their views and perceptions of authentic assessments and to what extent classroom assessments will help prepare them to the needs of internationalization and globalization" (Fook & Sidhu, 2010, p. 155).
"The method of delivery in university has to be student-centered where the educator's main role is more than of a facilitator guiding students through mind probing questions and tasks in testing their critical thinking, decision making as well as problem solving skills." (Fook & Sidhu, 2010, p. 157).
Ah yes, the AfL and the AoLs. Bombs of controversy in a staff meeting. I very much see the need and have bought into the importance. Reminding myself that observations and anecdotals count as every day formative assessment helps me erode any building fear of not having enough quantitative data.
ReplyDelete"Too often we focus on knowing, when we should be focusing on just sitting with the problem."
Oh how this is true. And oh how we feel this even as adults. I can remember even in our Masters Zoom classes where a fun problem would be presented for us to tinker with and I would feel this internal clock ticking. A big take-away from this course so far is to value that math is not a performance sport.
Building Thinking Classrooms invites students to think through problems and reminds students that there are often many strategies as they look around the room.