Educational Psychology Chapter 14

How reliable is your assessment

1. Day to day changes in students, their health, motivation, mood and energy level. 2. Variations in the physical environment- Variations in room temperature, noise level, and outside distractions. 3. Variations in administration of the assessment- Variations in instructions, timing, and the teachers repsonses to students questions. 4. Characteristics of the assessment instruction- The length, clarity, and difficulty of tasks. 5. Subjectivity in scoring- Judgments made on the basis of vague, imprecise crietria.

Criterion referenced versus norm-referenced assessments

1. Criterion referenced- Designed to tell us exactly what students have and haven't accomplished relative to predetermined standards or criteria. Example would be a spelling test of 20 words. If the student gets 20 words, they know how to spell all the words. 2. Norm-referenced- Reveal how well each student's performance compares with the performance of peers- perhaps classmates or age-mates across the nation.

Standardization

Refers to the extent to which an assessment involves similar content and format and is administered and socred in the same way for everyone.

Predictive Validity

The extent to which an assessment instrument accurately predicts future performance in some arena.

Construct Validity

The extent to which an assessment instrument actually measure an abstract, unobservable characteristic.

Practicality

The extent to which assessment instruments and procedures are easy to use.

Content validity

The extent to which assessment questions and tasks are a representative sample of the overall body of knowledge and skills being assessed.

Validity

The extent to which it measures what it's intended to measure and allows us to draw appropriate inferences about the characteristic or ability in question.

Reliability

The extent to which it yields consistent information about the knowledge, skills, or characteristics being assessed.

Table of Specifications

Two-way grid that indicates what topics should be covered and what students should be able to do with each topic.

Recognition Task

(a multiple choice, true/false, or matching question) asks students to identify a correct answer within the context of incorrect statements or irrelevant information.

Recall Task

(a short answer question, word problem, or essay task) requires students to generate the context answer themselves.

Recognition assessment forms

1. An alternative response item is one for which there are only two or three possible answers (T/F, fact versus opinion) for all items in a series. 2. Multiple choice item consists of a question or incomplete statement (the stem) followed by one correct answer and several incorrect alternatives (distractors). 3. Matching item presents two columns of information; students must match each item in the first column with an appropriate item in the second.

Informally observing students behavior

1. Ask questions during a lesson 2. Listen to what and how much students contribute to whole-class and small-group discussions 3. Have students write daily or weekly entries in personal journals. 4. Observe how well students perform physical tasks.

Promoting Learning

1. Assessments can motivate students to study and learn. Assessments are especially effective as motivators when they're criterion-referenced, are closely aligned with instructional goals. 2. Assessments can influence students' cognitive processes as they study. They'll study more on things that they believe will be on the assessment. 3. Achievement can serve as learning experiences in and of themselves. The very process of completing an assessment on classroom material helps students review the material and learn it better. 4. Assessments can provide valuable feedback about learning progress. Assessment feedback must include specific information about where students have succeeded where they've had difficulty and how they might improve.

Other key strategies for enhancing students' learning through classroom assessment practices.

1. Describe the instructional goals and objectives being assessed in clear, understandable language. 2. Assess students' progress frequently rather than infrequently. 3. When giving an assessment, communicate a desire to enhance understanding and promote mastery, rather than to pass judgment. 4. Help students recognize important differences between genuine mastery and more superficial knowledge. 5. Engage students in constructive discussions of one another's work, with a focus on ideas for improvement. 6. Give students opportunities to revise their work based on feedback they've received.

Formative versus summative assessment

1. Formative assessment- involves determining what students know and can do before or during instruction. 2. Summative assessment- involves conducting an assessment after instruction to make final determinations about what students have achieved.

How to yield a higher reliability for an assessment

1. Include a variety of tasks, and look for consistency in students' performance on different kinds. 2. Define each task clearly enough that students know exactly what they're being asked to do. 3. Use a checklist or rubric that identifies specific, concrete criteria with which to evaluate students' performance. 4. Try not to let expectations for students' performance influence judgments of actual performance. 5. Avoid assessing students' achievement when they're unlikely to give their best performance. 6. Administer the assessment in similar ways and under similar conditions for all students.

Informal versus formal assessment

1. Informal assessment- involves a spontaneous unplanned observation of something a student says or does. for example, When Jaffa continually squints when she looks at the board, we might wonder if she needs an eye exam. 2. Formal assessment- Is planned in advance and used for a specific purpose. For example, whether students can apply the Pythagorean theorem to real world problems.

Most critical strategies for enhancing students' learning and achievement through our classroom assessments

1. Make assessment criteria explicit and concrete for students. 2. Give students regular feedback about how they are progressing. 3. Suggest concrete and realistic steps that students can take to improve.

Paper-pencil versus performance assessment

1. Paper-pencil assessment- Present questions or problems that students must address a paper-or perhaps, an electronic equivalent. for example a word processing document. 2. Performance assessment- Students physically demonstrate their abilities, for example and oral presentation.

Strategies for including students in the assessment process and helping them develop important self-monitoring and self-evaluation skills.

1. Solicit students' ideas about assessment criteria and rubric design. 2. Have students compare self-ratings of their performance with teacher ratings. 3. Ask students to write practice questions similar to those they might see on an upcoming paper-pencil test. 4. Have students keep ongoing records of their performance and chart their progress over time.

Standardized test versus teacher developed assessments

1. Standardized tests- Tests developed by test construction experts and published for use in many different schools and classrooms. Good to use only when you want to assess students' general achievement and ability levels. 2. Teacher-developed assessments- Used when we want to assess students learning and achievement related to specific instructional objectives.

Most useful rubrics

1. They focus on only a few key attributes of skilled performance and describe these attributes in clear, concrete terms. 2. They also focus on attributes that students can realistically acquire with appropriate instruction and practice. 3. They are applicable to many tasks within the content domain.

Traditional versus authentic assessment

1. Traditional assessment- Focus on measuring knowledge and skills in relative isolation from real world tasks. Examples would be spelling quizzes, math word problems. 2. Authentic assessment- Measuring students' knowledge and skills in a real life contest. Examples can be telling students to bake a cake, or converse in a foreign language.

Dynamic assessment

A teacher assesses students' ability to learn something new; typically in a one on one situation that includes instruction, assistance, or some other form of scaffolding.

Response to Intervention (RTI)

A teacher regularly assess student's progress, keeping a lookout for students who have exceptional instructional needs.

Rubric

A two dimensional matrix that identifies criteria for assessing different components to each component.

Teacher developed assessments

Can and should give us information we can use to help students improve.

Common Core State Standards

Identify appropriate assessments of students' progress in reading, writing, and mathematics.

Assessment

Process of observing a sample of a students behavior and drawing inferences about the student's knowledge and abilities.

RSVP Characteristics of Good Assessment

Reliability, standardization, validity, and practicality. Validity is the most important of all of them.

Curriculum based measurement (CBM)

Useful both in basic skills instruction and in a reposne to intervention approach to identifying persisitent learning problems.

Horns Effect

We might expect inappropriate behavior from students with a history of misbehavior, and our observations might be biased accordingly.

Halo Effect

We're more apt to expect academic or social competence from students we like or admire and thus perceive their actions in an overly positive light.

Constructed-response task

When a recall task requires a lengthy response- and especially when it also involves elaborating on, analyzing, synthesizing, or applying information in new ways.