Conversation as Assessment
Published January 7, 2008 by Rick Biche
What do students think about when they think about assessment? They may list off the variety of projects, tests and quizzes they face throughout the school year. When asked what their goals are for assessment I bet the answer is something along the lines of “to get a good grade”. This is a closed door statement. Now consider the teacher administering the assessment. What is this teacher’s goal for the assessment. There are a variety of wordings for the answers but the end result is something like “to find out if the students learned”. This is an open door statement.
Most assessment formats work just like this. Notice that the only one learning is the teacher. Students clearly learn along the way but when the assessment occurs, the door is closed on learning. Feedback is given to help students learn, but at least at the middle school level where I teach, written feedback on different types of assessments is not always effective and rarely is it efficacious, usually only being used by students with high internal motivation.
This year my primary means of assessment has been conversation. This still allows me to learn about what students know (a teacher goal), but the learning doesn’t stop with me. Jessica Hagy shows the change I have seen with students below.
The learning continues for the students as well. Students readily redo and improve on their work without specific instruction to do so. By taking the time to sit and discuss science with students individually, they gain the opportunity to be reflective, to ask questions of themselves they may not have asked otherwise. I want my students to be always asking questions and to try to ask the next question. Through these discussions they are starting to do just that.
Filed under Assessment
Conversation is the best tool out there for assessment on all levels. After all Socrates and Plato used it as the only means of learning. What is important to remember though is that students need to be given these tools before they can be expected to use them. They have to be shown how to engage in academic discussion and then given opportunity to practice and refine the skill.
We should also model some reflective conversation and thinking as well. Just like anything else- to use something effectively- time is needed to practice without fear of failure.
I enjoyed reading your post
Cheers
Brad
Exactly, and I think its the learning about the conversation of science that is so engaging right now for me and my students. When my students see that the process of science is also the thinking and discussion that goes on around the experiment, data or concept they realize more, for example, what a “body of evidence” really means. Really my students are novices here. For me the exciting part is to leverage the conversation to cause them to go back and rethink or to think more deeply about assumptions. While they do this, I don’t think it is transparent to them, and that is something I need to work on.
Love this post. After every unit each student comes back with a self-assessment page and we conference. That conversation that we have is worth more than any paper “test.” I love it because I get to ask the question “What would you have done differently?” So even if a kid screws up on something, if they recognized it and can tell me what they should have done instead they will get mucho credit for that.