Assessment Still a Challenge as I See It
By Paul McMahon on May 13, 2009 in Learning for a Flat World and tagged 21stC Learning, Assessment, edtech
Some work I have been doing in the last week has had me reflecting a lot on assessment. I have been looking at a lot of review materials and past papers and seeing how much effort traditional teaching has put into making sure that students clearly understand where the bar is set and what they have to do to reach it. I have also seen kids preparing for high stakes examinations using this material and feeling quite good about themselves for putting the effort into studying this content to be able to recall it on the papers. This had me reflecting on just how good a job we do at supporting the vast majority of kids to aspire to high goals and measure their progress using a 21st Century model of learning.
I know that if we are really trying to reform education and have it meet the individual needs of each and every student and it is a real challenge to put in place an assessment that can be applied fairly for all students. As an aside, I read an interesting post this week about students not being as concerned about making sure every one was treated the same as a measure of “fairness”. Have lost the reference (poor data tracking I know but I am on the road a lot this week)! Still, we know from the success of programs that map how our kids are doing in real time against others, that kids love to have a bar set for them and will work to leap over it.
How about your project-based/challenge-based/inquiry-based units that you are setting for your students? Do you think that you can set a bar that is really clear and visible for your students and that they have every opportunity to try to leap over it?
