Chapter 2 What Is Continuous Performance-Based Assessment?
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What Is Continuous What Is Continuous Performance-Based Performance-Based
Assessment?Assessment?
C H A P T E R
Grant Wiggins: Performance-Based Assessment
• Testing should represent central experiences in learning.
• Give students an opportunity to showcase learning in areas where they should be competent.
• Wiggins and McTighe (1998): Three basic types of assessment:
1. Quiz and test items
2. Academic prompts
3. Performance tasks and projects
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Grant Wiggins—Performance-Based Assessment (continued)
Characteristics of Performance-Based Assessment
• Open-ended
• Complex
• Authentic
• Require the presentations of worthwhile tasks designed to be representative of performances in the field
• Emphasize higher-level thinking and more complex learning
• Expect students to present their work publicly
(continued)
Characteristics of Performance-Based Assessment (continued)
• Articulate criteria in advance so that students know how they will be evaluated.
• Involve the examination of the process as well as the products of learning.
• Embed assessments so firmly in the curriculum that they are practically indistinguishable from instruction.
Worthwhile Tasks
• Performance-based assessments can include game play, dance or gymnastics routine, track meet or swim meet, and projects (e.g., design a fitness center).
• The tasks that physical activity experts (e.g., announcers, officials) are required to do can provide ideas for possible performance-based assessments.
Higher-Level Thinking and Complex Learning
• Successful assessments make students analyze, synthesize, and evaluate.
• Many complex decisions for choice of skill or strategy during game play.
• Game play assessments evaluate the students’ ability to make choices.
• Assessments using higher-level thinking are more challenging and meaningful.
Articulate Criteria in Advance
• Providing students with criteria helps demystify the assessment.
• Allows them to focus on important factors while completing assessment.
• Writing down expectations helps students understand what exactly is expected of them.
Assessments Are Firmly Embedded in Instruction
• Performance-based assessments have an instructional component, so learning and assessing can work simultaneously.
• Reciprocal teaching style requires students to analyze the performance of a partner with criteria from the teacher.
• Peer teaching instructional model requires students to take the information provided by the teacher and teach someone else.
Student’s Work Is Presented Publicly When Possible
• Game play and athletic activities are done with an audience.
• Audience affects assessment in two ways:
– Holds people accountable for their best work.
– May change the focus for the assessment.
• An audience, real or simulated, provides an element of authenticity (Wiggins 1989a).
Process and Product of Learning Are Both Important
• The process of learning is just as important as the final product.
• The process students use to complete the task and assessment task must be included in the evaluation criteria.
Types of Performance-Based Assessments
Teacher observation Essays
Peer observation Open-response questions
Self-observation Journals
Game play and modified game play
Student projects
Role-plays Student performances
Event tasks Student logs
Interviews Portfolios
Teacher Observations
• Observing students and providing oral feedback is not an assessment.
• Assessments must result in a written record that documents students’ learning.
• Focus on varying ability levels when assessing large classes.
• Use observations for parent–teacher conferences.
Peer Observation
• With peer observation, students have their own personal teacher to do an evaluation of performance.
• Checklists or simple rubrics can be used to provide feedback.
• Teach students how to do assessments in which criteria are important.
• Encourage students to evaluate honestly.
• Peer observation should not contribute to the observed student’s grade.
Self-Observation
• Self-observations can improve performance and develop a skill important for adult learning.
• Teachers must educate students about doing this type of assessment.
• Specific criteria are necessary for guidance.
• Self-observations are not appropriate for student grades.
Game Play and Modified Game Play
• A performance-based evaluation done while students are playing a sport or activity.
• Various aspects can be evaluated: psychomotor skills, knowledge of rules, use of strategy, teamwork.
• Provides the first step in improving game play performance.
• Small-sided games are easier to evaluate because there are fewer people to observe.
Role-Plays
• Scenarios developed by teachers to assess some components of physical activity.
• Great for assessing the components of affective domain.
• Teachers can present challenging real-world problems and evaluate decisions made.
• They may be live, videotaped, or written.
• Can be used in student portfolios.
Event Tasks
• Performance tasks that can be completed within one class period (NASPE 2004).
• Include psychomotor activity.
– Example: Have students create a game with certain equipment and assess their knowledge of the elements and strategies of a game.
• Adventure education event tasks can evaluate problem solving, cooperation, and team building.
Interviews
• Interview students to evaluate knowledge.
• Can be used to sample student knowledge rather than assess every student.
• Information gained can be used in planning future lessons.
• Benefits students for whom English is a second language, those with learning disabilities, and those with writing deficiencies.
Essays
• Used to evaluate cognitive knowledge.
• Students are given a realistic task and an audience, and a product is created.
• Tasks are open-ended so students have a variety of ways to answer them.
• Allow for student creativity.
Open-Response Questions
• Students are presented with a real-world scenario or problem and given an opportunity to solve it.
• Assess how students apply knowledge in the real world.
• The answer tends to depend on the situation and there are several ways to respond correctly.
• Requires higher-order thinking to respond.
Journals
• Provides an excellent opportunity to assess the affective domain.
– Used to self-assess skills.
– Can help a teacher become aware of a student’s struggles, competence, sense of teamwork, or fair play.
– Requires students to write critical elements of a skill and assess cognitive knowledge.
• Do not evaluate or grade affective domain.
Student Projects
• Require time outside of class to complete.
• Students use knowledge gained in class and apply to real-world setting.
• Use higher levels of thinking by creating a new product, analyzing a situation or performance, or making an evaluation.
• Teachers should not penalize students for limited resources.
Student Performances
• Used as culminating events in performance-based assessment.
• Teachers design parameters for culminating performance before the unit begins.
• Examples are gymnastics routine, class tournament, training for a run.
• Students are required to use higher-level thinking skills.
Student Logs
• Method of recording results from practice sessions.
• Students can document improvement.
• Logs can document practice or out of class activity.
• Teachers can use information in logs to help students.
• Used to document effort.
Portfolios
• Collections of materials or artifacts that demonstrate competence.
• Used to document growth over time.
• Working portfolios involve a place where students gather diverse information about mastery.
• Evaluation portfolios are turned in for assessment and should include narrative or reflections.
How Performance-Based Assessments Change Instruction
• Main purpose of assessment should be to document student learning.
• Teachers encouraged to coach students to reach a level of excellence.
• Changes in teaching philosophy are necessary.
Teacher Becomes a Coach
• Teacher becomes a coach who brings out optimal performance.
• Teachers and students work together to enhance student learning.
• Assign projects and assessments and coach students to excellence.
Greater Use of Formative Assessment
• Provides information teachers use to adapt instruction for meeting students’ needs.
• Students are given additional chances to demonstrate mastery.
• Formative assessment functions as excellent feedback throughout instruction.
• Summative assessments do not allow any second chances to improve.
Assessments Are Progressively More Difficult
• In progressive assessments, students evolve from the performance and assessment of simple to more complex skills.
– Must be authentic.
– Can be used to track students’ performance.
• Checkpoints: Teacher can monitor student performance across trials and time.
Learning and Progress Seen Through Multiple Lenses
• Multiple assessments are needed in order to see a clear picture of students’ ability.
• Single assessment form is not sufficient to measure complex material in units.
• Several types of assessments give complete idea of students’ learning.
Advantages of Performance-Based Assessment
• Direct observation of student learning
• Good instructional alignment
• Interesting assessments
• Instructional feedback
• Measures multiple objectives and concepts
• Active student learning
• Higher-order thinking skills
• Multiple chances to get it right
• Enjoyable for students
Issues When Using Performance-Based Assessments
• Concerns about reliability and validity
• Failing to set criteria for an assessment
• Teaching to the test
• Assessment is time consuming
• Parents completing the assessment
• Focusing assessment on irrelevant content