Assessment Handbook V1

TheAssessment Handbook

Continuing Education Program

Volume 1, May 2009

Philippine Educational Measurement and Evaluation Association

The Assessment Handbook: Continuing Education Program, Vol. 1, May 2009 2

The Assessment Handbook contains articles and materials presented in the Continuing Education Program of the Philippine Educational Measurement and Evaluation Association.

Copyright © 2009 by the Philippine Educational Measurement and Evaluation Association. Center for Learning and Performance Assessment, De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, 2544 Taft Ave. Manila, Philippines

Publication Division of PEMEAPhilippine Educational Measurement and Evaluation Association


The Assessment Handbook: PEMEA Continuing Education Program®Volume 1, May 2009

Articles

1 The 2010 Secondary Education CurriculumLolita Andrada, Department of Education

12 Revised Taxonomy: Reframing our Understanding of Knowledge and Cognitive ProcessesNeil Pariñas, De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde

26 Assessing and Developing Self-regulated LearningCarlo Magno, De La Salle University, Manila

43 An Assessment ToolkitPaz Diaz, Roosevelt College System, Cainta

53 Assessment for Learning via Alternative AssessmentJimelo Silvestre-Tipay, De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde

62 Portfolio Assessment: A Celebration of LearningLaramie Tolentino, De La Salle University, Manila


The 2010 Secondary Education Curriculum

Lolita AndradaDepartment of Education

The Role of the School Head

• The Challenge of Curriculum Reform• Imperatives of Curriculum Reform• Design of the Curriculum• Managing the implementation of the curriculum: School Readiness for Reform• Managing for Excellence: The School Head as Culture Builder, Leader Builder,

and Leader for Learning

THE CHALLENGE OF CURRICULUM REFORM

1. Maximize the potentials of curriculum change by linking it to increasing student participation and improving the internal efficiency of schooling.

2. Provide opportunities for children to develop 21st Century Core Skills.

21st Core Skills

Digital Age Literacy

• Basic scientific, mathematical, and technological literacies• Visual and information literacies• Cultural literacy and global awareness

Inventive Thinking

• Adaptability/ability to manage complexity• Curiosity, creativity, and risk taking• Higher-order thinking and sound reasoning

Effective Communication

• Teaming, collaboration, and interpersonal skills• Personal and social responsibility• Interactive communication skills

High Productivity

• Ability to prioritize, plan, and manage for results• Effective use of real-world tools• Ability to create relevant, high-quality products


IMPERATIVES OF CURRICULUM REFORM

1. New needs, new curriculum2. The curriculum must remain responsive to national development goals.3. Lean is better.4. Curriculum reform as a process of continuous improvement

FEATURES OF THE CURRICULUM

• Lean- focuses on essential understandings • Sets high expectations (standards-based) – expressed in terms of what students should

know and the quality and proficiency of the skill that they • are expected to demonstrate as evidence of learning• Rich and challenging- provides for a personalized approach to • developing the student’s multiple intelligences• Develops readiness and passion for work and lifelong learning

Figure 1Design of the Curriculum

Figure 2Conventional Curriculum Design

Figure 3Backward Design (Understanding By Design)


Figure 4Curriculum Process

I. Results/Desired Outcomes

Defines what students should be able to know and do at the end of the program, course, or unit of study; generally expressed in terms of overall goals, and specifically defined in terms of content and performance standards.

What learning standards are for• They express what students should know and be able to do to demonstrate their

learning.• They set clear performance expectations for students, helping them understand what

they need to do to meet the expectations.• They guide teachers in designing instruction and assessment around what is important

to learn.

Learning standards may be classified into: • Content standards, which specify the essential knowledge (includes the most

important and enduring ideas, issues, principles and concepts from the disciplines), skills and habits of mind that should be taught and learned. They answer the question, “What should students know and be able to do?”


• Performance standards, which express the degree or quality of proficiency that students are expected to demonstrate in relation to the content standards. They answer the question, “How well must students do their work?” or “At what level of performance would the student be appropriately qualified or certified?”

Essential Understandings

• These are the big and enduring ideas at the heart of the discipline.

Essential Questions

• These are open-ended, provocative questions that spark thinking and further inquiry into the essential meanings and understandings.

II. Assessment

• It defines acceptable evidence of student’s attainment of desired results.• It determines authentic performance tasks that the student is expected to do to

demonstrate the desired understandings.• It defines the criteria against which the student’s performances or products shall be

judged.

Products and Performances

• Students demonstrate conceptual understanding, and content and skill acquisition or show evidence of their learning through products and performances.

• Products and performances promote self-understanding, self-monitoring, and self-assessment.

• They include opportunities for authentic audiences to experience and critique results• They permit choices and combinations of oral, written, visual, and kinesthetic modes

Facets of Understanding

• Explanation• Interpretation• Application• Perspective• Empathy• Self-knowledge

Checking for Understanding

The teacher can determine if students have developed conceptual understanding if they can demonstrate this in a number of ways, that is, by explaining, interpreting, applying, giving their perspective, showing empathy, and revealing their self-knowledge. These are referred to as the facets of understanding.


A student who has understanding of a current event should be able to do the following:

• Explain the event (e.g. Explain why, for example, the MILF is waging war against the government.)

• Interpret it (e.g. Interpret the message that the MILF is conveying when it drives away the residents of a community and thereafter occupies it.)

• Apply it (e.g. Apply their knowledge of the effects of conflicts in predicting what the outcome of this conflict might be.)

• Give his/her own perspective about the event (e.g. Give their perspective on what could influence the MILF to go back to the negotiation table. )

• Show empathy with the people who figure in the event (e.g. Share their thoughts about why the MILF believes its actions are justified (Empathy)

• Reveal self-knowledge about the event (e.g. Express their level of confidence about making a judgment on the crisis in Mindanao in light of what they have read or heard, or the background knowledge they have about the local history of the people of Mindanao (Self Knowledge)

III. Instructional/Learning Activities

• The learning activities are aligned with the standards and are designed to promote attainment of desired results.

• They include instructional resources, both digital and non-digital that students will need to perform the activities and produce the products and performances.


Managing the implementation of the curriculum: School readiness to Reform

Figure 5Implementation of the Curriculum in a Child-Friendly School Environment

Figure 6Managing for Excellence


The Principal as Culture Builder The Principal as Leader Builder The Principal as Leader for Learning

The learning-centered leader focuses on:

1. Ensuring that students learn; 2. Building a culture of collaboration; and3. Achieving results.

The learning-centered leader moves from working with individual teachers to working with teams of teachers in order to promote student learning.

Change is inevitable. Progress is optional.-Anonymous


Revised Taxonomy: Reframing our Understanding of Knowledge and Cognitive Processes

Neil PariñasDe La Salle-College of Saint Benilde

Why is there a need to revise the Bloom’s Taxonomy? What are the major changes made? How can we use the revised taxonomy in teaching and assessing students’ learning?

Background

Although the Bloom’s Taxonomy is named after Benjamin Bloom, the taxonomy was actually the work of the many individuals hired to help manage the influx of veterans into the education system following World War II. Discharged soldiers, home from fighting World War II, were eligible for the GI education stipend, which paid college tuition, textbook fees, living expenses, and support for the ex-soldier’s dependents. The GI stipend enabled many World War II veterans to attend college, flooding campuses with new students even though few new faculty members were hired to educate this deluge of students. In recognition of the life experiences of these veterans, the concept of “credit-by-examination” was developed with support from the Department of Defense. The work that eventually became the Taxonomy of Education resulted from the collective efforts of many including the psychology graduates hired to design, administer, and score tests for college-credit-by-examination, hence their title of “Examiners.” The Examiners first met formally following the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1948. They continued to meet after the annual APA conventions to further their discussions of ways to define and structure intellectual content. They were attempting to make sense of the multiple educational fields needing tests, with a goal of reducing the complexity of their tasks by categorizing knowledge into hierarchies. Once developed, these hierarchies would provide them with a framework for writing test items in a variety of subjects (Pickard, 2007).

These psychology-trained examiners decided a classification system represented an appropriate starting place to measure student knowledge and understanding. As psychologists, they wanted a convenient system for describing and ordering test items, examination techniques, and evaluation instruments; and they believed a classification system would enable educators to compare and study educational programming (Anderson, 2006). They also hoped that their system would serve to establish an order for educational goals. By 1956, their efforts resulted in Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, named by default since Benjamin Bloom was the first name in the alphabetic list of authors (Anderson, 2006.). This classic work on knowledge levels has influenced curriculum theory and practice for the last fifty years. However, its authors always considered it a work in progress, neither finished nor final (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001, p xxxvii). The examiners whose efforts led to the development of the original framework expected it to facilitate the exchange of test items among their cooperating institutions.

Bloom’s Taxonomy contains three overlapping domains: the cognitive, psychomotor, and affective, also known as knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSA). The taxonomy was a means to


express qualitatively the different kinds of intellectual skills and abilities. The cognitive and affective domains provided a way to organize thinking skills into six levels, from the most basic to levels that are more complex. It was a one-dimensional cumulative hierarchy, with achievement at each lower level considered necessary to move up to the next level (Anderson, 2006). The original development committee produced the hierarchical levels for the cognitive and affective domains, but not for the psychomotor domain. Their explanation for this omission was that they saw little need to teach manual skills to college students (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) thus completely overlooking athletics, drama, and applied programs of study such as music.

Requests were made to Dr. Lorin Anderson, a former student of Bloom’s at the University of Chicago, to update the Taxonomy prior to his retirement. At the urging of publishers and education professionals, he agreed to the task, to reflect the enlarged understanding of the teaching and learning processes now available. He and co-editor, the elderly David Krathwohl, one of the editors of the original taxonomy, collaborated with seven other educators to produce the revised Taxonomy (Pickard, 2007).

During the revision processes, the editors identified 19 alternative frameworks, developed to supplement, clarify, and improve upon the original Bloom’s Taxonomy. The alternative frameworks were examined to determine how they might contribute to the revision of the updated taxonomy. Of these, 11 represented a single dimension like the original taxonomy while eight frameworks represented two or more dimensions (Pickard, 2007).

What are the major changes made?

The Revised Taxonomy is seen as “a tool to help educators clarify and communicate what they intended students to learn as a result of instruction” (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001, p 23). Incorporated into the Revised Taxonomy are advances in teaching and learning since publication of the original. The term knowledge was deemed an inappropriate term to describe a category of thinking and was replaced with the term remembering. In addition, the revision reconceptualized the original single dimension taxonomy into two dimensions with both a Cognitive Process Dimension and a Knowledge Dimension.

Figure 1Cognitive Domain of the Bloom’s Taxonomy


Table 1The Revised Taxonomy

The Revised Taxonomy is not a cumulative hierarchy, as the original was. Instead, the six stages are viewed as a “cognitive processing” dimension. Our current concepts of learning view students as active participants in the learning process. Students select the information to which they attend and construct their own meanings from the selected information. This constructivist perspective of learning emphasizes how learners cognitively process new knowledge as they engage in meaningful learning. Thus, the cognitive process dimension reflects students’ cognitive and metacognitive activity as expressed within the opportunities and constraints of the learning setting. “This constructivist process of ‘making sense’ involves the activation of prior knowledge as well as various cognitive processes that operate on that knowledge” (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001, p. 38). In addition to the cognitive processing dimension, the Revised Taxonomy authors identified four general types of knowledge: factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive which make up the Knowledge Dimension.

Table 2The Cognitive Processing Dimension of the Revised Taxonomy

Dimension Examples of the cognitive processes involvedRemember: can the student recall or remember the information?

define, duplicate, list, memorize, recall, repeat, reproduce state

Understand: can the student explain ideas or concepts?

classify, describe, discuss, explain, identify, locate, recognize, report, select, translate, paraphrase

Apply: can the student use the information in a new way?

choose, demonstrate, dramatize, employ, illustrate, interpret, operate, schedule, sketch, solve, use, write

Analyze: can the student distinguish between the different parts?

appraise, compare, contrast, criticize, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, examine, experiment, question, test

Evaluate: can the student justify a stand or decision?

appraise, argue, defend, judge, select, support, value, evaluate

Create: can the student create new product or point of view?

assemble, construct, create, design, develop, formulate, write

Anderson, L. (2006)


Table 3The Detailed Cognitive Processing Dimension of the Revised Taxonomy

CATEGORIES

& COGNITIVE ALTERNATIVE

PROCESSES NAMES DEFINITIONS AND EXAMPLES

1. REMEMBER- Retrieve relevant knowledge from long-term memory

1.1 RECOGNIZING Identifying Locating knowledge in long-term memory that is consistent with presented material (e.g., Recognize the dates of important events in U.S. history)

1.2 RECALLING Retrieving Retrieving relevant knowledge from long-term memory (e.g., Recall the dates of important events in U.S. history)

2. UNDERSTAND-Construct meaning from instructional messages, including oral, written, and graphic communication

2.1 INTERPRETING Clarifying, paraphrasing, representing, translating

Changing from one form of representation (e.g., numerical) to another (e.g., verbal) (e.g., Paraphrase important speeches

and documents)

2.2 EXEMPLIFYING illustrating, instantiating

Finding a specific example or illustration of a concept or principle (e.g., Give examples of various artistic painting styles)

2.3 CLASSIFYING Categorizing, subsuming

Determining that something belongs to a category (e.g., Concept or principle) (e.g., Classify observed or described Cases of mental disorders)

2.4 SUMMARIZING Abstracting, Generalizing

Abstracting a general theme or major point(s) (e.g., Write a Short summary of the events portrayed on a videotape)

2.5 INFERRING Concluding, Extrapolating, Interpolating, predicting

Drawing a logical conclusion from presented information (e.g., In learning a foreign language, infer grammatical

Principles from examples)

2.6 COMPARING Contrasting, mapping, matching

Detecting correspondences between two ideas, objects, and the like (e.g., Compare historical events to contemporary Situations)

2.7 EXPLAINING Constructing models

Constructing a cause-and-effect model of a system (e.g., Ex-plain the causes of important 18th-century events in France)

3. APPLY-Carry out or use a procedure in a given situation

3.1 EXECUTING Carrying out Applying a procedure to a familiar task (e.g., Divide one whole number by another whole number, both with Multiple digits)

3.2 IMPLEMENTING Using Applying a procedure to an unfamiliar task (e.g., Use New-ton's Second Law in situations in which it is appropriate)


Table 3The Detailed Cognitive Processing Dimension of the Revised Taxonomy (continuation)

CATEGORIES

& COGNITIVE AL TERNATIVE

PROCESSES NAMES DEFINITIONS AND EXAMPLES

4. ANALYZE-Break material into its constituent parts and determine how the parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose

4.1 DIFFERENTIATING Discriminating, distinguishing, focusing, selecting

Distinguishing relevant from irrelevant parts or important from unimportant parts of presented material (e.g., Distinguish between relevant and irrelevant numbers in a mathematical word problem)

4.2 ORGANIZING Finding coherence, intergrating, outlining, parsing, structuring

Determining how elements fit or function within a Structure (e.g., Structure evidence in a historicaldescription into evidence for and against a particular

historical explanation)

4.3 ATTRIBUTING Deconstructing Determine a point of view, bias, values, or intent under-lying presented material (e.g., Determine the point of view of the author of an essay in terms of his or her political perspective)

5. EVALUATE-Make judgments based on criteria and standards

5.1 CHECKING

Coordinating, detecting, monitoring,

testing

Detecting inconsistencies or fallacies within a process or product; determining whether a process or product has internal consistency; detecting the effectiveness of a procedure as it is being implemented (e.g., Determine if a scientist's conclusions follow from observed data)

5.2 CRITIQUING Judging Detecting inconsistencies between a product and external criteria, determining whether a product has external consistency; detecting the appropriateness of a procedure for a given problem (e.g., Judge which of two methods is the best way to solve a given problem)

6. CREATE-Put elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganize elements into a new pattern or structure

6.1 GENERATING Hypothesizing Coming up with alternative hypotheses based on criteria (e.g., Generate hypotheses to account for an observed phenomenon)

6.2 PLANNING Designing Devising a procedure for accomplishing some task (e.g., Plan a research paper on a given historical topic)

6.3 PRODUCING Constructing Inventing a product (e.g., Build habitats for a specific purpose)

Anderson, L., & Krathwohl, D. E. (2001)


Within the knowledge dimension is basic information that students must remember to be acquainted with a discipline or solve a problem. Labeled factual knowledge, this may include terminology of the discipline or knowledge of specific details. Factual knowledge includes the discrete facts and basic elements that experts use when communicating about their discipline, understanding it, and organizing it systematically; there is little abstraction to factual knowledge. Because of the explosion of knowledge within all subjects, curriculum designers, textbook authors, and teachers must decide what is critical to include and what is of lesser importance. Many educators now recognize that memorization of discrete facts is not highly productive knowledge, since so much information today is a few keystrokes away on the internet (Pickard, 2007).

Conceptual knowledge is more complex than factual knowledge and includes three subtypes: 1) knowledge of classifications and categories, 2) knowledge of principles and generalizations, and 3) knowledge of theories, models, and structure (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). When students can explain the concepts in their own words and transfer information to new situations they have acquired conceptual knowledge. Chamberlain and Cummings (2003) indicate that concepts can be defined and characterized, and that generalizations show relationships among concepts. Classifications and categories of concepts form the basis for principles and generalizations. Principles and generalizations form the basis for theories, models, and structures. Classification, principle, and theory capture the greatest amount of intellect within widely different disciplines (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001).

Both factual and conceptual knowledge deal with products, however procedural knowledge is often a series or sequence of steps to follow. Procedural knowledge also includes criteria of when to use various procedures and reflects knowledge of different processes. Examples of procedural knowledge could include syntax of an essay, or application of art and design principles in a display board for interior design. Meaningful learning provides students with the knowledge and cognitive processes they need for successful problem solving. Problem solving occurs when a student devises a way of achieving a goal never before accomplished, often by reformulating the problem into a more familiar form, recognizing the similarity, and applying the method in solving for the new knowledge.

The fourth dimension of knowledge is metacognitive knowledge, an awareness of and knowledge about one’s own thinking. The metacognitive knowledge concept is an emerging milestone in our understanding of learning since the publication of the original taxonomy. Today emphasis is on making students more aware of and responsible for their own knowledge and thought (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). Students may acquire some of the information from their study, but may not have the ability to monitor the learning conditions or make adaptations within their learning process to facilitate acquiring more than superficial understanding and knowledge. One way in which students can be helped to develop their metacognitive knowledge is to ask them to log the amount of effort they make in completing assignments and studying for tests. When they begin to reflect on how much effort they have made, they become aware that often they fail to make the necessary effort in their study, which is reflected in less than optimum achievement (Marzano, Norford, Paynter, Pickering & Gaddy, 2001).


Table 4The Major Types and Subtypes of the Knowledge Dimension

MAJOR TYPES AND SUBTYPES EXAMPLES

A. FACTUAL KNOWLEDGE - The basic elements students must know to be acquainted with a discipline or solve problems in it

AA. Knowledge of terminology Technical vocabulary, musical symbols

AB. Knowledge of specific details and elements

Major natural resources, reliable sources of information

B. CONCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE- The interrelationships among the basic elements within a larger structure that enable them to function together

BA. Knowledge of classifications and categories

Periods of geological time, forms of business ownership

BB. Knowledge of principles and generalizations

Pythagorean theorem, law of supply and demand

BC. Knowledge of theories, models, and structures

Theory of evolution, structure of Congress

C. PROCEDURAL KNOWLEDGE-How to do something, methods of inquiry, and criteria for using skills, algorithms, techniques, and methods

CA. Knowledge of subject-specific skills and algorithms

Skills used in painting with watercolors, whole-number division algorithm

CB. Knowledge of subject-specific techniques and methods

Interviewing techniques, scientific method

CC. Knowledge of criteria for determining when to use appropriate procedures

Criteria used to determine when to apply a procedure involving Newton's second law, criteria used to judge the feasibility of using a particular method to estimate business costs

D. METACOGNITIVE KNOWLEDGE-Knowledge of cognition in general as well as awareness and knowledge of one's own cognition

DA. Strategic knowledge Knowledge of outlining as a means of capturing the structure of a unit of subject matter in a text-book, knowledge of the use of heuristics

DB. Knowledge about cognitive tasks, Including appropriate contextual and

Conditional knowledge

Knowledge of the types of tests particular teachers administer, knowledge of the cognitive demands of different tasks

DC. Self-knowledge Knowledge that critiquing essays is a personal strength, whereas writing essays is a personal weak-ness; awareness of one's own knowledge level

Anderson, L., & Krathwohl, D. E. (2001)


How can we use the revised taxonomy in teaching?

A major contribution that the revised taxonomy can make is in the way educators think about instruction. The intersection of the cognitive process dimensions and the knowledge dimensions can facilitate instructional planning and assessment. When educators plan how they will assess learning, the intersection of the cognitive processing and knowledge dimension can facilitate the selection of learning activities that will provide for modeling and practice using the intended assessment format. Use of the revised taxonomy enables educators to specify how they expect students to use specified knowledge and thus provide learning experiences to assist students to reach that cognitive stage. The matrix also streamlines the list of verbs used in generating learning objectives to precise descriptions of the expected outcomes (Pickard, 2007).

Figure 2The Knowledge and Cognitive Process Dimensions of a Learning Objective


Table 5Sample Learning Activities about the Topic “Travel”

Remembering How many ways can you travel from one place to another? List and draw all the ways you know. Describe one of the vehicles from your list, draw a diagram and label the parts. Collect “transport” pictures from magazines- make a poster with info.

Understanding How do you get from school to home? Explain the method of travel and draw a map. Write a play about a form of modern transport. Explain how you felt the first time you rode a bicycle. Make your desk into a form of transport.

Applying Explain why some vehicles are large and others small. Write a story about the uses of both. Read a story about “The Little Red Engine” and make up a play about it. Survey 10 other children to see what bikes they ride. Display on a chart or graph.

Analysing Make a jigsaw puzzle of children using bikes safely. What problems are there with modern forms of transport and their uses- write a report. Use a Venn Diagram to compare boats to planes, or helicopters to bicycles.

Evaluating What changes would you recommend to road rules to prevent traffic accidents? Debate whether we should be able to buy fuel at a cheaper rate. Rate transport from slow to fast etc.

Creating Invent a vehicle. Draw or construct it after careful planning. What sort of transport will there be in twenty years time? Discuss, write about it and report to the class. Write a song about traveling in different forms of transport.

Figure 3Pie Chart of Cognitive Processes, Activities, and Products

Table 6. Revised Taxonomy – verbs, materials/situations that require this level of thinking, potential activities and productsREMEMBERING UNDERSTANDING APPLYING ANALYZING EVALUATING CREATING

VE

RB

S

Tell, List, Describe, Relate, Locate, Write, Find, State, Name, Identify, Label, Recall, Define, Recognise, Match, Reproduce, Memorise, Draw, Select, Write, Recite

Explain, Interpret, Outline, Discuss, Distinguish, Predict, Restate, Translate, Compare, Describe, Relate, Generalise, Summarise, Put into your own words, Paraphrase, Convert, Demonstrate, Visualise, Find out more information about

Solve, Show, Use, Illustrate, ConstructComplete, ExamineClassify, ChooseInterpret, MakePut together, Change, Apply, Produce, Translate, Calculate, Manipulate, Modify, put into practice

Analyse, Distinguish, Examine, CompareContrast, InvestigateCategorise, IdentifyExplain, SeparateAdvertise, Take apartDifferentiate, Subdivide, deduce,

Judge, Select, Choose, Decide,Justify, Debate,Verify, Argue,Recommend, Assess, Discuss, Rate, Prioritise, Determine, Critique, Evaluate, Criticise, Weigh, Value, estimate, defend

Create, Invent, Compose, PredictPlan, ConstructDesign, ImaginePropose, DeviseFormulate, Combine, Hypothesize, Originate, Add to, Forecast,

MA

TE

RA

ILS

SIT

UA

TIO

NS

Events, people, newspapers, magazine articles, definitions, videos, dramas, textbooks, films, television programs, recordings, media presentations

Speech, stories, drama, cartoons, diagrams, graphs, summaries, outlines, analogies, posters, bulletin boards.

Diagrams, sculptures, illustrations, dramatisations, forecasts, problems, puzzles, organisations, classifications, rules, systems, routines.

Surveys, questionnaires, arguments, models, displays, demonstrations, diagrams, systems, conclusions, reports, graphed information

Recommendations, self-evaluations, group discussions, debates, court trials, standards, editorials, values.

Experiments, games, songs, reports, poems, speculations, creations, art, inventions, drama, rules.

PO

TE

NT

IAL

AC

TIV

ITIE

S &

PR

OD

UC

TS

Make a list of the main events .Make a timeline of events.Make a facts chart.Write a list of any pieces of information you can remember.List all the …in the story.Make a chart showing..Make an acrostic.Recite a poem

Cut out or draw pictures to show a particular event.Illustrate what you think the main idea was.Make a cartoon strip showing the sequence of events.Retell the story in your own words.Paint a picture of some aspect you like.Write a summary report of an event.Prepare a flow chart to illustrate the sequence of events.Make a colouring book.

Construct a model to demonstrate how it will work.Make a diorama to illustrate an important event.Make a scrapbook about the areas of study.Make a papier-mache map to include relevant information about an event.Take a collection of photographs to demonstrate a particular point.Make up a puzzle game showing the ideas from an area of study.Make a clay model of an item in the area.Design a market strategy for your product.Dress a doll in costume.Paint a mural.Write a textbook outline.

Design a questionnaire to gather information.Write a commercial to sell a new product.Conduct an investigation to produce information to support a point of view.Construct a graph to illustrate selected information.Make a jigsaw puzzle.Make a family tree showing relationships.Put on a play about he study area.Write a biography of the study person.Prepare a report.Arrange a party and record as a procedure.Review apiece of art including form, colour and texture

Prepare a list of criteria to judge a ……..show? Remember to indicate priorities and ratings.Conduct a debate about a special issue.Make a booklet about 5 rules you see as important to convince others.Form a panel to discuss views.Write a letter to .... advising on changes needed at …Write a half yearly report.present your point of view.

Invent a machine to do a specific task.Design a building to house your study.Create a new product, give it a name and then devise a marketing strategy.Write about your feeling sin relation to …Design a record, book or magazine cover.Sell an idea.Devise a way to …Compose a rhythm or put new words to an old song.

teachers.net/lessons/posts/355.html www.teachers.ash.org.au/researchskills/dalton.htm Dalton.J & Smith.D [(1986) Extending Children’s Special abilities – Strategies for Primary Classrooms www.lgc.peachnet.edu/academic/educatn/Blooms/critical_thinking.htm

Table 7Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy Planning Framework

Hig

he

r-o

rde

r th

inki

ng

Actions Products Learning ActivitiesCreating

(Putting together ideas or elements to develop an original idea or engage in creative thinking).

DesigningConstructingPlanningProducingInventingDevisingMaking

FilmStoryProjectPlanNew gameSongMedia productAdvertisementPainting

Evaluating

(Judging the value of ideas, materials and methods by developing and applying standards and criteria).

CheckingHypothesisingCritiquingExperimentingJudgingTestingDetectingMonitoring

DebatePanelReportEvaluationInvestigationVerdictConclusionPersuasive speech

Analyzing

(Breaking information down into its component elements).

ComparingOrganisingDeconstructingAttributingOutliningStructuringIntegrating

SurveyDatabaseMobileAbstractReportGraphSpreadsheetChecklistChartOutline

Lo

we

r-o

rde

r th

inki

ng

Applying

(Using strategies, concepts, principles and theories in new situations).

ImplementingCarrying outUsingExecuting

IllustrationSimulationSculptureDemonstrationPresentationInterviewPerformanceDiaryJournal

Understanding

(Understanding of given information).

InterpretingExemplifyingSummarisingInferringParaphrasingClassifyingComparingExplaining

RecitationSummaryCollectionExplanationShow and tellExampleQuizListLabelOutline

Remembering

(Recall or recognition of specific information).

RecognisingListingDescribingIdentifyingRetrievingNamingLocatingFinding

QuizDefinitionFactWorksheetTestLabelListWorkbookReproduction


How can we use the revised taxonomy in assessing students’ learning?

The knowledge dimension will help you consider the type of knowledge that you are trying to assess (factual, conceptual, procedural or meta-cognitive). The cognitive dimension will help you create different types of questions that relate to different cognitive skills.

The table, therefore, can be used to generate different types of questions – that is, questions that cover a spread of the knowledge/cognitive domain (rather than a series of questions that repeatedly assess the same thing). So, given a specific topic, and thinking about the different types of knowledge and cognitive skills, it should be possible to come up with a number of diverse questions on that topic.

The taxonomy table provides a means of categorising the questions. For example:

1. Define a ‘computer database’. (remembering factual knowledge)

2. Explain three key characteristics of a computer database. (understanding conceptual knowledge)

3. Relate each of these characteristics to a database package with which you are familiar (applying procedural knowledge).

4. Compare the database facilities of a dedicated database package to those of a general purpose spreadsheet package. (analysing procedural knowledge)

5. Suggest criteria that could be used to help users decide whether to use a database or spreadsheet package for a specific task. (evaluating procedural knowledge)

The questions could be mapped onto the taxonomy table as illustrated in the Table below.

Table 8Mapping Questions in the Revised Taxonomy

Knowledgedimension

Cognitive dimension

1. Remember

2. Understand

3.Apply

4. Analyze

5. Evaluate

6. Create

A. Factual knowledge

Question1

B. Conceptual knowledge

Question2

C. Procedural knowledge

Question3

Question4

Question5

D. Meta-cognitive knowledge


Mapping the questions onto the taxonomy table gives an indication of the relative complexity of the questions. The mapping also confirms that the questions are diverse since they occupy different cells in the table and therefore assess different cognitive abilities.

Different questions will occupy different cells in the taxonomy table; similar questions will occupy the same cells in the table. Simple questions will occupy cells close to the top left-hand corner; complex questions will be further away from the top left-hand corner. In general, you would expect lower level papers to have more questions towards the top left-hand corner of the table and higher level papers to have questions towards the middle and bottom right-hand corner. But every paper –irrespective of its level – should map onto a range of cells (rather than repeatedly assessing the same type of knowledge or cognitive process). This provides the necessary discrimination to allow candidates to perform at varying levels and receive different grades (Elliott, 2002).

Once a paper has been constructed, the taxonomy table can be used to analyse it. This could be done to check the balance of a paper – in other words, to check if different types of knowledge have been examined and various cognitive skills assessed.

Dalton (2003) applied the revised taxonomy in identifying the following types of assessment activities:

Table 9Possible Assessment Strategies in the Revised Taxonomy

Remember Understand Apply Analyze Evaluate Create

Factualknowledge

Multiple Choice - recall definitions as taught

Modified True/False

Multiple Choice - interpretation

Short-answer essay

Multiple Choice - Apply memorized facts to simple authentic situations

Multiple Choice - best answer

Lab: high inference

Differentiation interlineal set

Knowledge mapping

Problem-solving item set

Multiple Choice - best answer

Discussion (formative)

Essay (rated on use of principles)

Essay (rated on use of procedures)

Review/critique

Constructed response

Exhibition

PortfolioConceptualknowledge

Matching Recall order

e.g. concept,category, principle definitions

Match cause-effect

Multiple Choice - predict using principles; examples and non-examples; summaries

Comprehension item set

Choose best (new) definition

Match classification

Lab: high inference

Pictoral item set

Apply concepts to solve an authentic problem

Proceduralknowledge

Recall steps of procedures

Recall sequencing

Interlineal item set

Lab: low inference

Interactive video, simulation

Instrumented lab


Remember Understand Apply Analyze Evaluate Create Visual

observation, rating

Project Pictoral item

set Instrument-

aided observation

Anecdotal (formative)

Demonstration with rating scale, checklist

Exhibition Performance

References

Anderson, L. (2006). Taxonomy academy handbook. Retrieved April 11, 2009, from http://www.andersonresearchgroup.com/tax.html

Anderson, L., & Krathwohl, D. E. (2001). A Taxonomy for learning teaching and assessing: A revision of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives [Abridged]. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc.

Chamberlain, V. J. & Cummings, M. N. (2003). Creative instructional methods. New York: Glencoe McGraw-Hill.

Dalton, E. (2003). The “new Bloom's taxonomy,” objectives, and assessments questions. Retrieved Feb. 20, 2007, from http://gaeacoop.org/dalton/publications/ new_bloom.pdf

Elliott, B. (2002). Using the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy for the creation of examination questions. Retrieved Feb. 20, 2007, from http://www.bobbyelliott.com/ Taxonomy.htm

Marzano, R. J., Norford, J. S., Paynter, D. E., Pickering, D. J. & Gaddy, B. B. (2001). Handbook for classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Pickard, M. J. (2007). The new Bloom’s taxonomy: An overview for family and consumer sciences. Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences Education, 25, 45-55.


Developing and Assessing Self-regulated Learners

Carlo MagnoDe La Salle University, Manila

AbstractThe report focuses on aspects in the development and assessment of self-regulated learning in the school context. The nature of self-regulated learning was discussed by identifying its critical characteristics. Different models showing the components and process of self-regulation was presented in order to focus different ways of assessing it as a construct. Different studies are then presented to show the effects of developing self-regulation in the classroom context. The need to assess self-regulation as part of the teaching and learning process is discussed under certain needs in the school setting. Different protocols with examples are shown in assessing self-regulated learning as applied in the classroom.

Who is a self-regulated learner?

Teachers generally commend students that are more independent in their studies, diligent in listening inside the classroom, focused on doing their task inside the classroom, gets high scores in tests, able to recall teachers instruction and facts lectured in class, and submits quality work. However, teachers see problematic students when they miss assignments, inattentive during lectures, volatile during class activities, fails to recall instructions taught in the classroom, submits poor work and worst is not submitting any work at all. These two scenarios differentiate self-regulated studentswith those who are poor in regulating their learning. Self-regulated learners are generally characterized as independent learners, ability to control their learning, focused in their studies, plans and studies in advance to obtain high scores in tests, and uses strategies to recall instruction. By showing these characteristics, self-regulated students eventually performs well and obtains successful academic outcomes. Self-regulation is generally defined by Zimmerman (2005) as “self-generated thoughts, feelings, and actions that are planned and cyclically adapted to the attainment of personal goals” (p. 14). Zimmerman (2002) further explained that self-regulation is “a self-directive process by which learners transform their mental abilities into academic skills” (p. 65).

There are various contexts where self-regulation can be practiced. It can be applied in sports to regulate one’s performance, in health to attain potent physical condition, in the industrial setting to determine effective employees, and in managing one’s emotions (emotion regulation). This report focuses on self-regulated learning in the academic context. In the academic setting, one of the main goals is to develop students to be self-regulated learners. Learners that are self-regulated become independent of their own learning and thus control their own learning in general. Self-regulation entails students that carefully plan their actions, set goals, and use a variety of strategies in accomplishing a task. Zimmerman (2002) further characterizes self-regulated students as having superior motivation, adaptive learning methods, and views their future optimistically.


There are numerous ways of characterizing a self-regulated learner. Generally the characteristics involve traits that enable a student to achieve their goals. These traits are organized into a set of components in order to frame specific variables for self-regulation. These components are processes are used in order to attain goals. Zimmerman (2002, p. 66) presented six components of self-regulation:

The component skills include: (a) setting specific proximal goals for oneself, (b) adopting powerful strategies for attaining the goals, (c) monitoring one's performance selectively for signs of progress, (d) restructuring one's physical and social context to make it compatible with one's goals, (e) managing one's time use efficiently, (f) self-evaluating one's methods, (g) attributing causation to results, and (h) adapting future methods.

There are several studies indicating that self-regulated learners turn out to perform well in school related tasks (Blakey & Spencer, 1990; Collins, 1982; Corsale & Ornstein, 1980; Kluwe, 1982; Lopez, Little, Oettingen, Baltes, 1998; Rock, 2005; Schneider, 1985). There is also an established theory that learners who self-regulate have increased self–efficacy or beliefs in one’s ability to execute actions (see Bandura & Schunk, 1981; Schunk, 1981, Schunk, 1983; 1984). It is also notable that self-regulated learners are more motivated (see Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Corno & Mandinach, 1983). Specifically for the Filipino adolescent, students’ who see the consequence of their actions and those who structure their environment for study showed to be more mastery oriented (developing competency and gaining understanding) (see Magno & Lajom, 2008). In a developmental perspective, the study of Magno and Lajom (2008) showed that all components of self-regulation increased from high school to college students.

Models of Self-regulation

There are several models of self-regulation that are used depending on the specific area how self-regulation is viewed. Bandura (1986) sees self-regulation as a triadic process where there is an interaction of personal, behavioral, and environmental aspects. Framed in this theory, the behavioral aspect of self-regulation involves self-observation and strategically adjusting performance. The environmental aspect includes observing and adjusting environmental conditions or outcomes. Covert regulation (personal) includes monitoring and adjusting cognitive and affective strategies.

Based on the social cognitive perspective, Zimmerman (2002; 2005) derived the process involved in self-regulation. In this cyclical process, self-regulation in a three-phase structure (forethought phase, performance phase, and self-reflection phase). The forethought phase is the stage where the learner analyzes the task by planning and setting goals. Analysis of tasks is influenced by learners’ self-monitored beliefs, intrinsic interest, and goal orientations. After careful planning the learner proceed to the performance phase or the execution of a task. While executing a task, the learner maintains self-control by establishing self-instruction, imagery, attention focusing, and strategies used for accomplishing the task. The performance phase is also accompanied by self-observation by self-recording and self-experimentation. After the performance, the self-regulated learner reflects on the execution which is the self-reflection phase. In


this phase the learner judges how well they have planned and executed the task through self-evaluation and causal attribution. The start to react on the plan and execution whether they are satisfied and identify what possible adaptations can be used when engaged in the same task again. Their reflections are carried out in the forethought phase the next time they engage in a task that will require them to self-regulate.

There are other models of self-regulated learning. For example, Craver and Scheir (2005) sees self-regulation as a feedback loop. The process starts with a goal, standard, or reference value. Then the performance is compared with the output value (comparator). If the output is same or exceed the reference value, then performance is successful, if not, there is discrepancy. Shah and Kruglanski (2005) see self-regulation as a network of goals. They use a connectionist perspective where goals and means are viewed as a network of complex cognitive associations.

A personality systems perspective in self-regulation identify ways how positive and negative affect influence self-regulation as a cognitive system. This was operationalized in the model of Magno (2008) where systems of activation and inhibitions to self-regulated learning were identified and their effects on self-regulation were tested. The activation system was composed of self-determination, disengagement, initiative, and persistence while negative affect is composed of anxiety, worry, thought suppression, and fear of negative evaluation. It was found that the activation and inhibition systems served their purpose. The activation system increased with self-regulation while the inhibition system identified as negative affect decreased self-regulation. This showed that experience of negative affect such as worry, anxiety, thought suppression, and fear of negative evaluation interfered with the use of self-regulation. When levels of the activation system (high and low) were varied, it was found that individuals who used high levels of the activation system who used self-regulation were not affected by the negative affect. Those individuals with low levels of the activation system, their self-regulation were negatively impacted by the inhibitions such as the negative affect. This model provides a theoretical perspective of identifying certain conditions how to make self-regulation work and not work well.

Moreover, Winne (1995; 1997) views self-regulation as composed of metacognition, intrinsic motivation, and strategy use. Metacognition is the awareness of the learners in their own academic strengths and weaknesses, cognitive resources that they can apply to meet the demands of tasks, and how to regulate the engagement of tasks. Intrinsic motivation is the belief in incremental learning, high value placed on personal progress, and high efficacy for learning. His process model of self-regulation starts with task and cognitive conditions that individuals set. These conditions provide information on how the task in the environment will be evaluated. The second phase involves setting goals and planning how to reach them. This includes decision making supplemented by information retrieved from memory, framing goals, and assembling a plan to approach them. The third phase involves enacting tactics by controlling and monitoring used during the performance. The products of self-regulation may turn out as definition of a task, goals and plans, studying tactics and adaptation. The last phase involves adapting metacognition. In the past phase the learner makes major adaptations to those parts of the model under their control.

The various models of self-regulation provides a view on how self-regulation involves other variables, its process, how its components are interrelated to each other.


The Need to Develop Self-regulated Learners

Contemporary principles in education espouse that the process of student learning involves not only teaching the content but the process on how to learn the content as well. Being aware in the process of learning a material involves self-regulation.

One of the direct applications of self-regulation can be used in teaching. This means that self-regulatory processes can be taught to students. Schunk and Zimmerman (1998) showed in their study that when self-regulation was taught to students, it increased their motivation and achievement. Self-regulation can be taught through modeling by parents, teachers, coaches, and peers. There is much room for different research to propose ways on how to teach students to self-regulate since current literature focuses too much on its conceptualizations and factors that influence it. Zimmerman, Bonner, and Kovach (1996) raised issues that (1) few teachers are preparing students to effectively learn by themselves, (2) students are seldom given choices regarding academic tasks, (3) few teachers encourage students to establish specific goals for work and teacher learning strategies, (4) students are rarely asked to evaluate their own work, and (5) very few teachers assess students beliefs about their own learning. These issues were raised due to the lack of models, strategies, methods, and techniques that teachers can use as exemplars in implementing the instruction for self-regulation. This notion is often raised because teachers rely mostly on strategic formulas in their process of teaching especially in the Philippine context (Magno, 2007). Teachers need to change their perspective about their belief on what learning is and what their teaching should become from conventional ways of teaching content. Since learners are believed to self-regulate their learning, teachers should concentrate on how to activate their students’ self-regulatory processes. Focusing on techniques of teaching students to self-regulate concerns much of the need to identify ways to activate it which is proposed in the present study.

Some of the research attempts that translate self-regulation into the actual teaching practice were shown in the work of de la Fuente Arias, Justicia, and Garcia Berben (2006), Fok and Watkins (2007), and Paris and Paris (2001). It is important to mention these studies because self-regulation when used in teaching demonstrates different ways of activating it among students.

The study by dela Fuente Arias, Justicia, and Garcia Berben (2006) developed a teaching-learning process using the “Interactive Model of Regulated Teaching and Self-regulated Learning.” In their new model, they improved the “presage-process-product” model of Biggs (2001) where the interactive dimension of the teaching-learning process becomes the primary function and the model explicitly incorporates the dimension of regulated teaching and self-regulated learning. They provided evidence that improvement of general teaching strategies, adjustments in the evaluation system, and improving specific teaching strategies (regulation of teaching) as implemented in their teaching-learning model have produced a general improvement in general learning behavior and in students’ specific learning strategies (self-regulated learning), as measured through the evaluation scales used.


The study by Fok and Watkins (2007) used a constructivist teaching approach which is typically a self-regulation technique and investigated its effect using the Learning Process Questionnaire (LPQ) and the Constructivist Learning Environment Scale (CLES). The constructivist technique employed involves students to give their own examples, authentic problems, testing own ideas, challenge each others’ conceptualizations, group presentations, self-analysis, self-reflective thinking, and evidence to support ideas, and present ideas. The study found significant post-test gains among the high achieving group on the learning process and constructivist learning environment after the constructivist technique. This shows that a constructivist learning environment that includes self-regulation is effective in developing deeper approaches to learning.

Paris and Paris (2001) described 12 principles that teachers can use to design activities in classrooms that promote students self-regulation. They emphasized that self-regulation can be taught with explicit instruction, directed reflection, metacognitive discussions, and participation in practices with experts. Self-regulation can be promoted indirectly by modeling and activities that entail reflective analyses of learning.

There are also other studies that employed self-regulation in the classroom setting and tested the procedures on their effectiveness on students’ performance in different tasks and subject areas.

The study by Glaser and Brunstein (2007) examined whether self-regulation procedures would increase the effectiveness of a writing strategies training designed to improve 4th graders' (N = 113) composition skills. The strategy training included methods of direct instruction and cognitive modeling as well as phases of guided and independent practice to help students acquire effective strategies (e.g., the widely used story grammar strategy) for planning and redrafting stories. Students who were taught composition strategies in conjunction with self-regulation procedures were compared with (a) students who were taught the same strategies but received no instruction in self-regulation and (b) students who received didactic lessons in composition. Both at posttest and at maintenance (5 weeks after the instruction), strategy plus self-regulation students wrote more complete and qualitatively better stories than students in the 2 comparison conditions. They also displayed superior performance at a transfer task requiring students to recall essential parts of an orally presented story.

The study of Azevedo and Cromley (2004) examined the effectiveness of self-regulated learning (SRL) training in facilitating college students' learning with hypermedia. The training included planning (planning, subgoals, prior knowledge activation), monitoring (feeling of knowing, judgment of learning, self-questioning, content evaluation, identifying the adequacy of information), strategies (selecting new informational source, summarization, rereading, and knowledge elaboration), task difficulty and demands (time and effort planning, task difficulty, and control of context), and interest. Undergraduate students were randomly assigned to either a training condition or a control condition and used a hypermedia environment to learn about the circulatory system. Students in the self-regulation group were given a 30-min training session on the use of specific, empirically based self-regulation variables designed to foster their conceptual understanding; control students received no training. Pretest, posttest, and verbal protocol data were collected from both groups. The SRL condition facilitated the shift in learners' mental models significantly more than did the


control condition; verbal protocol data indicated that this was associated with the use of the SRL variables taught during training.

The study by Fuchs et al. (2003) assessed the contribution of self-regulated learning strategies, when combined with problem-solving transfer instruction, on 3rd-graders' mathematical problem solving. SRL incorporated goal setting and self-evaluation. Problem-solving transfer instruction taught problem-solution methods, the meaning of transfer, and four superficial-problem features that change a problem without altering its type or solution. The problem-solving transfer also prompted metacognitive awareness to transfer. The effectiveness of transfer plus SRL was contrasted with the transfer treatment alone and to teacher-designed instruction for 16 weeks. Students were pre- and posttested on problem-solving tests and responded to a posttreatment questionnaire tapping self-regulation processes. SRL positively affected performance.

A local study by Dedel (2002) taught students in an experimental group different strategies like orientation, planning, action, and checking (OPAC) strategies to enhance students' problem-solving skills and conceptual understanding in teaching selected topics in mechanics. Although the study did not explicitly mention that the OPAC strategies are self-regulation in itself. The strategies are similar with conceptualizations on the components of self-regulation. Consistent with the findings of other research, the OPAC problem-solving strategy used in physics instruction significantly enhanced students' achievement in terms of problem-solving skills and conceptual understanding.

Developing self-regulation among students can be integrated in the teaching and learning process. Certain classroom activities that involve the active participation of students can help them develop self-regulation. For example, in a mathematics class where students learn concepts of fraction, identify similar and dissimilar fraction, add and subtract factions (see table 1). A group of teachers devised some activities where self-regulation is tapped in different subject areas (Tables 1 to 3).

Table 1Self-regulation Activities in a Third Grade Mathematics Class

Self-regulation component

Student and Teacher Tasks

Goal-setting Students will verbalize at the start of the lesson what will be their specific goals for the topic on fraction.

Time management Students create a daily schedule and express in fraction how much time is devoted for specific activities.

Learning strategies Students are taught with strategies in identifying the Least Common Denominator (LCD).

Self-evaluation Students solve board work and let the other students evaluate of the answers are correct. The other students also point out where the mistake is.

Seeking help or information

Students are paired and they test each other how well they add and subtract fractions. They teach each other the correct answers for the items missed.

Motivational beliefs Students whose works shows exemplary and acceptable proficiency are posted on the board.


Table 2Self-regulation Activities in a Second Year High School Class on Anatomy



Goal-setting Students list down the future benefits of knowing the parts of the different body systems. What will the good consequences if they have mastered the labels for the parts.

Time management Students allot specific time of their day to restudy and memorize the parts presented in class.

Learning strategies Students list down different memory strategies to easily remember the parts of an organ or body system.

Self-evaluation The students once in a while are reviewed if they can recall the parts of a specific organ.


Students will go to the library and seek other references to determine the complete parts of the organ rather than relying on a single reference.

Motivational beliefs After taking the test, students are given feedback that they can still make it for the next test.

Table 3Self-regulation Activities in a Fourth Grade Class on Reading



Goal-setting Students aim to finish reading a children’s novel (ex. Harry Potter) within two weeks.

Time management Students are required to read a children’s novel and time themselves how long they finish a chapter with 8,000 words.They will constantly time themselves each chapter to monitor if they are improving.

Learning strategies Students are asked by the teacher once in a while to report the events that they read already in the novel to check their pace and understanding. They are taught specific reading strategies such as skimming, scanning etc.

Self-evaluation They stop after each paragraph and check if they understand what they are reading. They will reread in case they did not fully understand a part of the text.


Other students share the strategies they use to read the text with better comprehension. Other students will be encouraged to try the strategies.

Motivational beliefs Students with good book reports will be given awards. Students will be given a selection on which book to read and select the ones that they will be interested on.


Why Assess Self-regulated Learning in Schools?

It is important to assess student self-regulation in the school setting under two accounts. First, most schools based major decisions and classroom interventions on results of achievement, aptitude, and diagnostic tests that are based on ability of students. It assumed that these abilities are gained overtime as a result of instruction. The problem with this issue is the representativeness of the test items in the form of instruction that has taken place. Most of the time, there is mismatch between the approach and philosophy used in teaching and learning inside the classroom and the kind of assessment that will take place. Traditional standardized tests are commonly used to assess if students have learned from instruction. There is mismatch when the classroom instruction is based on contemporary constructivist approach to teaching which is not captured by traditional paper and pencil tests. Second, most of the assessment of learning is focused as an outcome and not as a process. Traditional paper and pencil tests such as an achievement test is usually administered towards the end of the school year that assumes to measure the collective learning of students overtime. Much of the concern is the outcome of learning and there are no specific steps to assess what went on during the learning process. There should be subsequent assessment that takes place in the classroom while students are learning. Third, most of the assessment is focused on ability as a construct and not on certain cognitive and strategic processes of students thinking. If there are such assessments on the affective domain, it is concentrated on personality and vocational interests. This is brought about by the paradigm and focus of homeroom and other guidance programs in the grade school and high school. Because of the nature of these assessment orientations, schools fail to determine what is currently going in the students learning process. Much of the concern is fast tracking the students and not on the interventions that could be done while students are learning. Given these scenario, aspects of students learning process such as self-regulation should be included as part of the assessment package given to students. Self-regulation can be assessed both as an outcome and process. As an outcome, there are available assessment tools that provide a rating on the extent of student self-regulation. As a process there are certain techniques that teachers can use while conducting instruction such as think aloud techniques (see Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995), error detection tasks (see Baker & Zimlin, 1989), and observation of performance (see Turner, 1995).

Certain protocol techniques will be described that can be helpful in assessing academic self-regulation in the classroom context. These assessment techniques are classified under seven protocols: Questionnaires, structured interview, teacher judgments, think aloud techniques, error detection tasks, trace methodologies, and observation of performance. These classification are based on Winne and Perry’s (2005) assessment of self-regulation as aptitude and event.

Before using any of the protocols in assessing self-regulation, users must be critical of the methods and rigors on how the tools were established that concerns their validity and reliability. The process of establishing the tests and scales first involve the construction and selection of items based on a framework, an empirical model, or grounded on some empirical data. The underlying factors of the items are then explored


using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) techniques. The underlying factors are further tested by using a more rigorous method called Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). On some instances the test developer may opt to use a different approach such as the Item Response Theory (IRT). In this approach items are good if they have acceptable item characteristic curves based on the logit measures. In such cases items with good fit (Mean Square within 0.8 to 1.2, z standard score of below 2.00), high point biserial correlations (indicative of item discrimination for a one-parameter Rasch model), adequate item information functions, and devoid of item differential functioning (free of bias). On the second criteria, responses to items should indicate acceptable reliability or consistencies. Most commonly internal consistencies of test are established using Cronbach’s alpha, split-half, or interitem correlation. Tests and scales of self-regulation evidence to have acceptable validity and reliability are safe to use.

Protocols in Assessing Self-regulation

Questionnaires. Self-regulation questionnaires are composed of a set of a sample items that are responded numerically. The items are classified under certain factors of self-regulation. A score is derived per factors and interpreted whether it is above or below norms. Examples of questionnaires that are commonly used in literature that measures self-regulation are the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI) (Weinstein, 1987), Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) (Pintrich, Smith, Garcia, & McKeachie, 1991), and the Metacognitive Strategies Inventory (MAI) (Scraw & Dennison, 1994). The LASSI and MSLQ are standardized and available in the market. The MAI is have consistent psychometric properties and across adults in different samples. The issue with these questionnaires is that the items typify strategies and scenarios within a western context. In the Philippine setting, Magno (2009) developed the Academic Self-regulated Learning Scale (A-SRL-S). The A-SRL-S was based on the model derived by Zimmerman and Martinez-Pons (1986; 1988). The A-SRL-S measures students’ academic self-regulation under seven subscales: Memory strategy, goal-setting, self-evaluation, seeking assistance, environmental structuring, responsibility, and organizing. What is new in the A-SRL-S is the responsibility subscale that is not present in the foreign scales. The subscale on responsibility typifies the high regard of a Filipino student for their studies. The items on this subscales reflects prioritizing one’s studies, concern for tasks related in school, and immediately attending to school related tasks. The subscales of the A-SRL-S was confirmed in a measurement model with good fit (RMR=.02, GFI=.94, CFI=.91). The items showed high internal consistencies (refer to Table 4). Convergent validity was also established where all factors increase with each other (refer to table 5). Apart from the foreign questionnaires the A-SRL-S was analyzed using an IRT approach, specifically using the one-parameter Rasch model. The items also showed adequate fit using the one-parameter Rasch model with acceptable item characteristic curves (ICC’s).


Table 4Properties of the A-SRL-S

Subscales M Variance Cronbach’s Alpha

No. of

items

CFA Standardized

Parameter estimate

Person Reliability

Item Reliability

Memory Strategy 2.53 .81 .82 14 .70*** .76 .99Goal-setting 2.73 .99 .87 5 .54*** .42 .80Self-evaluation 2.84 .70 .84 12 .69*** .80 .84Seeking assistance 3.12 .68 .74 8 .62*** .30 .97Environmental structuring

2.82 .94 .73 5 .51*** .34 .95

Responsibility 2.95 .69 .75 5 .68*** .27 .97Organizing 3.26 .69 .78 6 .65*** .71 .77***p<.001

Table 5Convergent Validity of the Subscales of the A-SRL-S

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)(1) Goal-setting ---(2) Memory Strategy 0.52*** ---(3) Self-evaluation 0.32*** 0.55*** ---(4) Seeking Assistance 0.27*** 0.39*** 0.49*** ---(5) Environmental Structuring 0.25*** 0.27*** 0.35*** 0.31*** ---(6) Responsibility 0.28*** 0.43*** 0.48*** 0.44*** 0.41*** ---(7) Organizing 0.42*** 0.43*** 0.35*** 0.41*** 0.38*** 0.51*** ---***p<.05

The advantage of using questionnaires is the economical way of administration, scoring, and interpretation. Questionnaires can be administered to numerous students at a single time. This ensures consistency in the instructions given for respondents and control for the testing conditions. Scores can be obtained by computing for means on the certain factors. The numerical scores are easily interpreted by constructing norms for groups of standards for interpreting scores. Generally high scores indicate the optimum presence of self-regulation characteristics measured and low scores indicate less of the characteristic. Interventions may be suggested for students with low A-SRL-S scores.

Structured Interview. Assessing self-regulation through structured interview was pioneered by Zimmerman and Martinez-Pons (1986; 1988). They devised an interview called the self-regulated Learning Interview Schedule (SRLIS) composed of 14 self-regulation strategies under six different learning contexts. If a response occurred that do not belong in the 14 categories, it is classified under a new category (others).


Table 6Self-regulated Learning Strategies Based on the SRLIS

SRL Category Example of responseSelf-evaluation I check my solution in a math problem if it is correct.Organizing and Transforming

I make an outline of information presented in long paragraphs from various references.

Goal-setting and planning

I study one week before the schedule of the exam.

Seeking information I search the internet for references that I can use when searching for information.

Keeping records and monitoring

I keep all my notes for future reference.

Environmental structuring

I go to a quiet place where I can study well.

Self-consequences If I got low on a test, I make sure to study well for the next test.

Rehearsing and memorizing

I keep on repeating the important facts learned in class so that I will not forget about it.

Seeking social assistance

If I could not figure out how to solve a math problem I ask the help of my teacher.

Reviewing records I make sure that I review my books and notes to prepare for an exam.

The responses in the interview can be quantitatively scored in three ways:

Strategy use, strategy frequency, and strategy consistency. The first two ways are scored by coders and the last is estimated y students. Strategy use is scored dichotomously as having occurred or not in the six contexts. Strategy frequency is counting the number of times a strategy is mentioned. Strategy frequency is rated by students based on the frequency of using the mentioned strategies (1=seldom, 2=occasionally, 3=frequently, 4=most of the time). The instrument demonstrated discriminant validity across high and low ability groups.

In subsequent studies of Zimmerman, eight prompts were provided that measures each self-regulation strategy: Rehearsing and memorizing, organizing and transforming, seeking information, self-evaluation, goal-setting and planning, keeping records and monitoring, self-consequencing, and environmental structuring. These prompts were adapted by Magno (2008) for the Filipino context. The responses were scored by the respondents using strategy frequency.


Table 7Adapted SRLIS for Filipino College Students

Self-regulation Component PromptRehearsing and memorizing Assume your teacher is discussing with your class the history of

the Philippine revolution. Your teacher says that you will be tested on the topic the next day. What method do you use to help you learn and remember the information being discussed?

Organizing and transforming

Assume your teacher asked your class to write a short paper on a topic on the history of the organization in school that you belong to. Your score on this paper will affect your course card grade. In such cases, what method in particular will help you plan and write your paper?

Seeking information Teachers usually expect much accuracy with students’ math home work. Many of these assignments must be completed without the help of the teacher. What particular method do you use when you don’t understand a math problem when you’re already at home?

Self-evaluation When completing homework assignments such as science reports or English grammar exercises, what method do you use in particular for checking your work after it is finished?

Goal-setting and planning Most teachers give important tests at the end of the semester/term, and these tests greatly affect course grades. What particular method do you use for preparing for these tests?

Keeping records and monitoring

When taking a test in school, what particular method do you use for obtaining as many correct answers as possible?

Self-consequencing Many times students have difficulty completing homework assignments because there are other more interesting things they would rather do, such as watching TV, daydreaming, or talking to friends. What particular method do you use to motivate yourself to complete your homework under these circumstances?

Environmental structuring Some students find it easier if they can arrange the place where they study. What particular method do you use for arranging the place where you study?

The interview is accurate to derive authentic data from students regarding specific self-regulation strategies they use. When these self-regulation strategies are verbalized by students, other students can learn and try the strategies elicited. Teachers can catalogue a list of self-regulation strategies and teach it to future students.

Teacher Judgments. In a subsequent study by Zimmerman and Martinez-Pons (1988), they devised a version of the SRLIS that is used by teaches to assess their students self-regulation strategies. In the study, 12 items were produced that indicate students self-regulated learning strategies that is readily observable by teachers. Students were rated by the teacher for each item using a five-point scale ranging from never (1) to always (5). The self-regulation components measured are seeking information, self-evaluation activities, goal-setting and planning, seeking assistance, organizing and transforming, and intrinsic motivation to learn. When the ratings were


factor analyzed, the 12 items loaded only to three factors. These factors were labeled as student self-regulated learning, student verbal expressiveness, and student achievement.

Teacher’s judgment about students’ self-regulation strategies can be very accurate if they are trained to be observant of students’ behavior. Teachers can look at several situations where self-regulation can occur such as during drills, seat works, group works, tests, recitations, and even during class discussion.

Think aloud techniques. In think aloud techniques, students report their thoughts and cognitive processes while performing a task (Erricson, 2006). There are some studies that made use of the think aloud protocol. For example Greene and Azevedo (2007) studied learning through a science module about the human circulatory system. Students were instructed to say everything that they were thinking while performing the computerized task. Example of prompts for think aloud techniques are:

1. Why do you think it is correct?2. It is easy for you? Why?3. What made it difficult?4. Do you think you can solve it using another technique?5. How accurate are you with your answer?6. Is it easy to work with others or better if alone?

The think aloud protocol is advantageous because it does not limit students of their response on a task. The teacher can detect multiple signs of self-regulation strategies the students are engaging in. This can help teachers by creating tasks that would enrich students to develop further their self-regulation skills.

Error Detection Tasks. Error detection tasks are created to assess students’ ability to monitor their performance and evaluate the material exposed to. The ability to detect errors is a means that a student can exercise metacognitive control because they should have the ability to correct errors after identifying them. Error detection can be done by providing an evaluation of errors conducted. Another technique is by underlining specific spots where the error occurred.

The ability to detect errors is a sign that students have mastered the lesson and have developed evaluation and monitoring skills.

Trace Methodologies. Traces are observable indicators about cognition that students create as they engage with a task (Winne, 1982). Traces of student self-regulation can be assessed by looking at their underlines on texts, highlights on particular information in a text, writes notes in the margin of reading materials, and writes mnemonic devises on the text. These traces indicate that students are isolating information from the rest of the material that they see as important. They serve as cues for students to easily locate and remember needed information. Notes on the margin provide students the needed cue to easily comprehend their method of studying the material. Some notes may also signal specific strategies they use to remember important points of the material.


Trace methodologies help teachers determine what strategies students use to learn a material. This can easily identify and predict students who would be successful in a task or not.

Observation of performance. The most common method of assessing self-regulation is constant observation of students. The teacher can create specific classroom scenarios and activities that tap self-regulation. During these tasks the teacher notes students’ behavior that may indicate self-regulation. Some students are asked how they arrived with their answer, what technique did they use to remember information easily, what strategy was used to understand the problem.

There are varied ways on how self-regulation can be implemented and assessed inside the classroom. Developing self-regulation takes one to believe that it is necessary as a learning process in order to work well. Initial steps to assess and implement self-regulation inside the classroom would be difficult especially if students are not used to it. But once the teacher develops the skill to use it inside the classroom, students would well develop the skills. It should be realized that self-regulation is necessary in order for students to be successful in their performance on academic tasks. If a teacher wants and desires to develop lifelong learners, developing the learners’ self-regulation skills is a key to this success.

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An Assessment Toolkit

Paz DiazRoosevelt College Systems, Cainta

"By mid-way through their first semester, the bases students used to judge their potential success had changed. Instead of citing challenges they had faced and assessing how they had performed, they were most influenced by how they compared with their peers. Some comparisons were based on how fast they could learn new material or complete assignments.”

Mica A. Hutchison-Green (2008)

What is Assessment For?

Are we assessing students against one another or against their own capabilities or against certain standards set by educational authorities? Studies (Green et al, 2008) have shown that students begin to learn early on to judge their potential success not by citing challenges they had faced and assessing how they had performed, but mostly how they compared with their peers or how fast they could learn new material or complete assignments.

Green et al. (2008) suggest that instructors should explain to students that how long it takes them to solve a problem is less important than eventually understanding and solving it. They also suggest that teachers might design group work assignments that let each student contribute to the learning of the others. One suggestion is that “Educators should try, early on, to build students’ self-efficacy by giving them the chance to master particular skills…” and that “instructors need to give students clear and concise feedback” to improve learning and not necessarily to compare themselves with others.

Ultimately, educators should not simply make students memorize specific facts and to judge themselves by how much they have memorized (although that is, of course, the basis of learning) but to give students a more accurate way of measuring their successes and failures. By ensuring that they are using appropriate experience to shape their confidence in lifelong success, studies suggest that teachers can improve students’ attitudes on retention through the excitement of learning.

The examples in this workshop have been gathered from best practices from numerous sources, the sites and references are found at the end of this handout.

First off, some principles of authentic assessment

1. Authentic assessment methods correspond as closely as possible to real world experience


2. Criteria for authentic assessment must be clear and performance behavior assessment should not be overly subjective

3. Using rubrics is particularly useful in assessing criteria that are complex and subjective

4. Authentic assessment includes (a) the teacher observing the student in the process of working on something real, (b) providing feedback, (c) monitoring the student's use of the feedback, and (d) adjusting instruction and evaluation accordingly.

Action or Conative Modes in Learning

Kolbe (1990) identifies four stages in human learning: Fact Finding (instincts to probe, refine and simplify); Following Through (instincts to organize data, reform and adapt); Quick Start-up (instincts to improvise, revise and stabilize); and Implementing or acting (instincts to construct, renovate, and envision).

In Kolbe’s formulation, it is the combination of the striving instinct, reason, and targeted goals that results in different levels of commitment and action.

When a teacher prepares assessment exercises, he or she could follow Kolbe’s stages of learning:

1. Ask for facts; be sure about facts (otherwise an experiment can blow in the student’s face)

2. Follow through; make students organize, reorganize, reform and adapt data or facts they have learned; make mind maps, outlines, draw figures, sing songs, assess cases

3. Hands-on Demonstrations; return-shows, re-write classical texts, field trips, interviews, find exemplars in the community, find masters who are skillful, undertake structured learning experiences

4. Carry out projects (make students present dramas, personal experiences, write new poems and personal songs, translate materials to hip-hop sounds

Activity 1: Assess the following assessment tools and techniques you can use in the classroom

1. Individual Notes: Most important point learned today2. Chain Notes: Student build on what others say as the note paper is passed around or

written by groups3. Matrix Notes: Labels previously prepared by the teacher and students fill in blank

matrix cells4. One-sentence summary5. Layman’s translation of a just-learned technical or scientific concept6. Draw it7. Outline it8. Student-generated exam questions


Activity 2: Assess the following assessment tools and techniques you can use outside the classroom

Keeping a Project Journal:

1. What is a Project Journal useful for? Assess the following:(a) Remembering(b) Evaluating the project (c) Evaluating team members (d) Protecting oneself

2. What to write in the Project Journal. Evaluate the following:(a) First, record what you saw and heard. Try to capture the event exactly—word

for word, scene for scene, with no embellishment or evaluation on your part. "Just the facts man, just the facts."

(b) Second, add your interpretation and understanding. If the meaning you attach to the event is different from the exact words and actions you observed, you must write your interpretation in your journal. You must also consider whether this interpretation is yours alone or if others would have the same interpretation.

(c) Third, add your feelings about what has transpired. Yes techies, it is okay to have feelings about things. Someone has said, "Feelings are facts to those who have them." Our feelings influence us in the same way our facts do.

(d) Fourth, record your response—what you said or did at the time. Again, note exactly what you said and did. If you meant to give a different response you must note that also.

(e) Fifth, note your feelings about your response. Was your response appropriate? Was it too sharp? Too judgmental? Too passive? Not only is it okay to have feelings about our responses, it is vital to evaluate them. Our feelings often give excellent guidance about the appropriateness of our responses.

Activity 3: Invent assessment tools and techniques you can use for social performance

1. For social goals, focus on the performance of the group2. Focus on individuals fitting into the group3. Focus on the group undergoing the following levels of group life:

(a) “Getting to know you”(b) “What are our rules”(c) “Who will lead and who will follow”(d) “Cliques” and In-groups/Out-groups(e) “Working together”(f) “Satisfaction – the group gels”(g) “Dissatisfaction – the group disintegrates”(h) “What next?”


Activity 4: Invent assessment tools and techniques you can use for successful self-direction

1. Backward planning – beginning with desired end results and working on required procedures to meet those results

2. Task Analysis – identifying the skills and knowledge required to learn or perform a specific task to arrive at the end result

3. Back-home action plan

Activity 5: Develop incentives that will motivate learning

Teachers who repeatedly reward student for completing easy tasks results in the student feeling less able and being less motivated. Even rewarding excellence with honor rolls and status may be detrimental if students restrict their interests or avoid hard courses to keep their grade averages high. It is indeed complicated, but carefully selected incentives can still motivate students to excel in learning.

1. Motivational factors at the BEGINNING: When learner enters and starts learning ATTITUDES: Toward the environment, teacher, subject matter, and self NEEDS: The basic need within the learner at the time of learning Suggest Motivational Strategies:

2. Motivational Factors DURING learning: When learner is involved in the body or main content of the learning process. STIMULATION: The stimulation processes affecting learner during the learning experience. AFFECT: The emotional experience of the learner while learning. Suggest Motivational Strategies:

3. Motivational Factors at the END of learning period: When learner is completing the learning process. COMPETENCE: The competence value for the learner that is a result of the learning behaviors. REINFORCEMENT: The reinforcement value attached to the learning experience, for the learner. Suggest Motivational Strategies:

Activity 6: Postcards

1. Geography Lessons2. Celebrations

This task can be produced under the following conditions: In class, individually In class, by partners or triads Outside class, individually as in a homework


Define the situationMake the directions

The completed assessment task can demonstrate the following qualities:

relevant and detailed content organized to support a point of view structure and organization style appropriate for nominated audience and purpose control of written language

Achievement Objective Being Assessed

Learning Outcomes … Students are able to…

Transactional Writing Publish clear concise messages on postcards describing activities, feelings and a place visited during the holidays.

Presenting Use visual features to communicate ideas using layout, illustration by hand or computer generated.

ProcessesThinking Critically Identify and discuss meanings in written texts, drawing on

personal background, knowledge, and experiences.Processing Information Identify, retrieve, record, and present coherent information, using

more than one source and type of technology, and describing the process used.

Supporting Achievement ObjectivesViewing Respond to meanings and ideas in the verbal and visual features

of postcards Shows awareness of how words and images can be combined.

Activity 7: Watching a specific TV show and writing feature articles about it

Example: Family life in the Philippines Watching TV shows about families, including cartoons and sitcoms Extracting evidence from texts – electronic and print Taking notes independently Working in collaborative groups Writing for a specified audience and purpose Identifying and using the conventions of feature articles

Introduce facts sheet to build students' knowledge of current family trends in the Philippines.Instruct them about what to take note of or the angle that they want to write about.Alternatively, they can dramatize, role play, or do a “before-and after” scene.How will you assess the selected activity?


Activity 8: Determine the uses, pros, and cons of the following sample assessment activities. These are not mutually exclusive and can be mixed and matched by the teacher depending on the topics or situations inside or outside the classroom.

Team Quiz: Teacher does a “Data Dump” of factual information. Teacher stops the lecture at intervals, allowing teams of participants to come up with questions on the materials covered so far and to conduct a short quiz contest. This lecture game is especially useful for presenting significant amounts of technical information or conceptual content.

Table Talk: Teacher introduces two contrasting approaches. Participants collect information about the similarities and differences between these two approaches. Teacher organizes, summarizes, and clarifies the information.

Superlatives: Interrupt your presentation at the end of each logical unit and ask teams to identify the most important, the most disturbing, the most surprising, or the most complex idea presented so far. This interactive lecture format is especially suitable when participants know how to take notes and discuss them. It is appropriate for presentations that can be divided into 7 – 10 minute sections.

Questionnaire Analysis: Participants respond to a questionnaire and compute their scores. Teacher helps them to interpret the scores and learn more about the topic. This lecture game is especially useful when the instructional content involves values, attitudes, personality characteristics, or preferences that can be explored through a questionnaire.

Question Cards: After your presentation, ask teams of participants to write 20 short-answer questions based on the content. Collect all questions, shuffle the cards, and conduct a quiz program.

Press Conference: Participants organize themselves into teams and write a set of questions on different subtopics. Teacher responds to the questions in a press-conference format.

Interactive Story: Teacher narrates a case incident in the form of a story. During pauses at critical junctures, participants figure out what happened, why it happened, or what should happen next.

Intelligent Interruptions: Teacher stops the lecture at random intervals and selects a participant. This participant asks a question, makes a comment, or challenges a statement as a way of demonstrating that he or she has been intelligently processing the presentation. This lecture game is especially useful when the instructional content is informational.

Idea Map: While Teacher lectures, participants take notes using an idea mapping approach. At logical junctures, the lecture stops to permit teams of participants to consolidate their idea maps.

Glossary: The Teacher identifies a key term related to the training topic. Teams of participants come up with a definition of the term. The teacher collects these definitions, inserts the correct definition among them, and plays a “dictionary”-type guessing game.

Fish Bowl: Teacher conducts a coaching session with an individual participant. Other participants observe and learn vicariously.


Fictional or Real Case Study: Teacher tells a story that illustrates different steps in a process. Teams of participants create and present their own stories. Cases serve as springboards to student-designed investigations.

Essence: Participants write several summaries of a lecture, repeatedly reducing its length. This interactive lecture is particularly useful with factual, conceptual, or informational content that can be effectively summarized.

Egg-Hunt / Web Quest: Teacher uses examples to explain several related concepts. Later, participants generate examples to demonstrate their mastery.

Debrief: A brief and powerful experiential activity is followed by a debriefing discussion to elicit and share useful insights. This lecture game is especially useful when the instructional content involves counter-intuitive principles, attitudes, and values.

Crossword Lecture: Participants receive a crossword puzzle that contains questions to test the mastery of the major learning points in the presentation. During puzzle-soling interludes, participants pair up and solve as much of the puzzle as possible. This lecture game is suited for any type of content that can be summarized by a series of one-word-answer question (which are converted into crossword puzzle clues).

Bingo: Teacher hands out bingo cards to participants. Teacher then delivers parts of a lecture interspersed with short-answer questions. Participants play bingo by identifying the answers on their cards.

Best Summary: Each participant prepares a summary of the main points at the end of a presentation. Teams of participants switch their summaries and select the best summary from each set. This lecture game is especially useful for informational or conceptual content.

Social Responsibility: understanding the past and creating preferred futures. Students understand that investigating the past and reflecting on the present are essential to understanding self and others and creating preferred futures.

True or False: Teacher displays a series of statements about the topic and asks participants to decide whether each is true or false. Teacher then provides background information related to each statement.

Predictions and Interpretations: Give them real data, as a graph for a short question or to plot themselves as part of a longer exercise. Have them summarize and interpret any patterns they can find.

Making calculations and estimations: Give the students some real data, and make them summarize the data mathematically before moving on to interpretation.

Brainstorming: Especially handy for assessing prior knowledge of a topic, this can be done quickly by individuals (have them write their ideas on an index card) or groups working together.

Tying ideas together: After covering several topics, let the students try and synthesize big ideas from them before you start to do so through lecture. More straightforward syntheses can be done with short questions, or if they need time for reflection, group projects.


Applying what has just been learned in class or reading to solve a problem: It's very important to make sure that students can connect abstract ideas with specific real examples, especially slightly complicated ones.

Collecting student responses: Think about how you will end an interactive activity, gathering student responses and providing, when appropriate, a synthesizing discussion or follow-up assignment. The student responses also provide useful feedback about what students have learned.

Interactive lectures are classes in which the instructor breaks the lecture at least once per class to have all of the students participate in an activity that lets them work directly with the material. These activities allow students to apply what they have learned earlier or give them a context for upcoming lecture material.

Interactive Segments: There is a wide range of possibilities for interactive activities that can be interspersed with lecture segments. Any of these general suggestions for interactive segments could be developed into short think-pair-share questions or activities

Predicting/Evaluating: Used to help students activate prior knowledge. K - Recall what the group KNOWs about the subject.W - Determine what the group WANTs to learn.L - Identify what the group LEARNed as they read.H - HOW the group can learn more

Visualizing: Used to see the description of physical structures, places, spatial relationships, concrete objects, abstract concepts, or visual images. Detailed diagrams provide more formal options of visualization

Creating thumbnails: Thumbnails represent scaled down versions of a final composition. For a project where the final size is 9" x 12", thumbnails might be approximately 2" x 2-2/3", large enough to show some detail, but small enough to work quickly.

Sketching: Sketches can be fun and or loose indicators that don't require great artistic ability to describe a physical phenomenon or an abstract learning

Use of Models – Model Types: Conceptual, physical demonstrations, mathematical and statistical, and visualization. Be aware of technical and pedagogical considerations when using models

Think–Pair–Share: A problem is posed. Students think about it alone for five minutes or less, and then pair up to discuss their views. The pairs share their conclusions with the rest of the class.

Jigsaw: Choose learning material that can be divided into parts, like an experiment, a list, or several articles on a similar topic. Divide students into groups equaling the number of parts. Ask each group to read, discuss, and learn the material. Next, form jigsaw learning groups composed of one member from each of the initial groups. Each new group will contain an expert on each part of the material, so that together the group will learn all of the material. Reconvene the class to go over the material. You may also ask the jigsaw groups to answer questions based on their accumulated knowledge.

Roundtable: Students divide into groups to answer a query. Each group is given only one pen and one piece of paper. Each group member in turn writes down his or her response on the paper. The results are examined and placed on an overhead for


class discussion. There is more accountability for each student if he or she has to explain the written remarks.

Voting: A show of hands to keep students involved and to determine what the class believes as a group. This exercise works well in large classes. It refocuses the students' attention. It can clarify larger issues into smaller subsets. It requires students to engage the material. Start off with a general query, and then explore the subject further.

End of Class Query: In the last three minutes of class ask the students to write on ¼ sheets of paper anonymously two things they learned and what questions remain.

Trade a Problem: Divide the class into teams and have each team construct review questions. Each question is written on an index card (each team can have a different color). The answer to each question is written on the back of the card. The teams then trade cards. Without looking at the answers, one member of the team reads each question. The team decides by consensus on an answer. If the team's answer does not agree with the original answer, they should add their answer on the back of the card as an alternative. Cards continue to be traded. The teacher may then want to conduct a whole-class discussion on the questions with more than one answer.

Concept Map: Divide the class into groups and give each group a pen and a large piece of paper or a transparency. Each group should write down the topic being studied in the center of the paper inside a circle or rectangle, then place key examples or related concepts inside smaller shapes and connect them to the main topic. There are many possible models of the relationship among concepts, i.e. chains, spiders, or more complicated ones.

Minute Paper: Pause after 15 minutes of class and ask students to take a minute to write a two-sentence summary of what he or she has learned so far. Depending on how much time you want to devote to this, the students could pair up and help each other better understand the material for a few minutes or a few could report to the class.

Activity 9: Managing the Class for Authentic Assessment

1. What are the characteristics of a class where the teacher uses authentic assessment techniques?

2. What will you do if other teachers claim your class is too noisy and the students are enjoying too much?

3. How would you manage such a class?4. What are the problems and situations you should look out for?5. What are the difficulties you may run into?6. How would students react to authentic assessment techniques? 7. What if all students care about are numerical grades?8. Would students want to undergo these kinds of assessment techniques when all their

parents ask are for them to have high grades, to be in the Honor Roll, or on the other hand, just pass their classes and obtain a college diploma no matter what?

9. What effects would authentic assessment have on the students’ chances to pass government regulatory examinations?


10. What effects would authentic assessment have on the students’ chances of finding jobs after their graduation?

Activity 9: What are Rubrics? What are the Uses of Rubrics? Write Rubrics for this assignment:

You have asked your students to write a 12- to 15-minute speech addressing the youth in their school or organization, using the excerpt below from Jose Rizal's The Reign of Greed, following Aristotle’s rhetorical framework: Ethos, Logos, and Pathos. Each student will deliver the speech before the class.

Where are the youth who will consecrate their golden hours, their illusions, and their enthusiasms to the welfare of the land? Where are they who will generously pour out their blood to wash away so much shame, so much crime, so much abomination? Pure and spotless must be victim be that the sacrifice may be acceptable! Where are you, youth, who will embody in yourselves the vigor of life that has left our veins, the purity of ideas that has been contaminated in our brains, the fire of enthusiasm that has been quenched in our hearts? We await you, O youth! Come, for we await you.


Assessment for Learning via Alternative Assessment

Jimelo L. Silvestre-TipayDe La Salle-College of Saint Benilde

Scenario Analysis

Scenario 1:

A high school English teacher assigns students to read three novels by the same author and develop a thesis statement about a common theme, consistent character development, or social commentary in the novels. They must then defend that thesis in a term paper with references. To set students up for success, the teacher begins by providing them with a sample of an outstanding paper to read and analyze. The next day, the class discusses what made the sample outstanding.

As their next assignment, the teacher gives students a sample paper of poor quality. Again, they analyze and evaluate its features in some detail. Comparing the two papers, students list essential differences. The class then uses this analysis to collaboratively decide on the keys to a high-quality paper.

After identifying and defining those keys, the students share in the process of transforming them into a rubric—a set of rating scales depicting a continuum of quality for each key. The teacher provides examples of student work to illustrate each level on the quality continuum.

Only after these specific understandings are in place do students draft their papers. Then they exchange drafts, analyzing and evaluating one another's work and providing descriptive feedback on how to improve it, always using the language of the rubric. If students want descriptive feedback from their teacher on any particular dimension of quality, they can request and will receive it. The paper is finished when the student says it is finished. In the end, not every paper is outstanding, but most are of high quality, and each student is confident of that fact before submitting his or her work for final evaluation and grading (Stiggins, in press; Scenario 1 adapted by permission).

Scenario 2:

Gail is a 5th grader who gets her math test back with “60 percent” marked at the top. She knows this means another F. So her losing streak continues, she thinks. She's ready to give up on ever connecting with math.

But then her teacher distributes another paper—a worksheet the students will use to learn from their performance on the math test. What's up with this? The worksheet has several columns. Column one lists the 20 test items by number. Column two lists what math proficiency each item tested. The teacher calls the class's attention to the next two columns: Right and Wrong. She asks the students to fill in those columns with checks for each item to indicate their performance on the test. Gail checks 12 rights and 8 wrong.


The teacher then asks the students to evaluate as honestly as they can why they got each incorrect item wrong and to check column five if they made a simple mistake and column six if they really don't understand what went wrong. Gail discovers that four of her eight incorrect answers were caused by careless mistakes that she knows how to fix. But four were math problems she really doesn't understand how to solve.

Next, the teacher goes through the list of math concepts covered item by item, enabling Gail and her classmates to determine exactly what concepts they don't understand. Gail discovers that all four of her wrong answers that reflect a true lack of understanding arise from the same gap in her problem-solving ability: subtracting 3-digit numbers with regrouping. If she had just avoided those careless mistakes and had also overcome this one gap in understanding, she might have received 100 percent. Imagine that! If she could just do the test over…

She can. Because Gail's teacher has mapped out precisely what each item on the test measures, the teacher and students can work in partnership to group the students according to the math concepts they haven't yet mastered. The teacher then provides differentiated instruction to the groups focused on their conceptual misunderstandings. Together the class also plans strategies that everyone can use to avoid simple mistakes. When that work is complete, the teacher gives students a second form of the same math test. When Gail gets the test back with a grade of 100 percent, she jumps from her seat with arms held high. Her winning streak begins (Stiggins, Arter, Chappuis, & Chappuis, 2004; Scenario 2 adapted by permission).

ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING: OUR ASSESSMENT LEGACY

“The real voyage of discovery consists, not of seeking new landscapes but see through new eyes.”

Accurate Assessments + Effective Use = Students Success

Effect of Previous Practices: rank students on achievement by graduationNew Expectation: Assure competence in Math, Reading, Writing, etc.

Implications?Assessment and grading procedures had the effect of helping some students

succeed now must serve to help all students succeed.

Testing Explosion1950s College Admission1960s District wide Testing1970s Statewide Testing1980s National Assessment1990s International Test2000s NCLB Every Pupil Test


Mistaken beliefs about how to use assessment to support school improvement:

1. High-stakes tests are good for all students because they motivate learning2. If I threaten to fail you, it will cause you to try harder3. If a little intimidation doesn’t work, use a lot of intimidation4. The way to maximize learning is to maximize anxiety

Remedy: We can’t, won’t shouldn’t stop the high pressure testing; so how dowe help more (all) students expect to succeed?

5. It is the adults who use assessment results to make the most important instructional decision.

Remedy: Build assessment systems that inform annual decisions, the ones made every 3-4 minutes and everything in between

PROFOUND MISTAKETeachers and leaders don’t need to understand sound assessment practices – the

testing people will take care of us.

COUNTER BELIEFThey do need to understand sound assessment practices.

ASSESSMENT LEGACY

1. Assessment has been far more a matter of compliance than of teaching and learning

2. Disregard of the information needs students and teachers who make the most frequent and highest impact decisions

3. Assessment that drive as many students to give up in hopelessness as they spur to more learning

4. And we fail to provide practitioners with the assessment understandings needed to help

OUR ASSESSMENT FUTURE

Remedy: Balance day-to-day classroom assessment in support of learning with periodic assessments verifying learning

Crucial DistinctionAssessment of Learning

How much have students learned as of a particular point in time?Assessment for Learning

How can we use assessment to help students learn more?


Students - accurate Assessments

Teachers - stronger desire to learn

Administrators - increasedachievement

Policy Makers - accountabilityfor performers

OVERVIEW

Assessment for Learning

TEACHER’S ROLE1. Identify the Standard2. Deconstruct it to enabling

the targets3. Transform to Student-

friendly version4. Create accurate classroom

assessments5. Use with students to track

growth

STUDENT’S ROLE1. Strive to understand what

success looks like2. Use each assessment to

understand how to do better next time

EFFECTS1. helping students to understand what good work looks like2. helping them to compare their work with standards of excellence3. help them understand how to close the gap

STRATEGIES1. Student-friendly targets from the beginning2. Models of strong and weak work3. Continuous descriptive feedback4. Teach self-assessment and goal setting5. Teach one facet at a time6. Teach focused revision7. Teach self-reflection to track growth

Assessment OF Learning

Assessment FOR Learning

Reason Check status Improve learning

To inform

Others about students Students about themselves

Focus Standards Enabling Targets

State Standards (Writing, Math, Reading)

KNOWREASONSKILLS

PRODUCTS

Example High Stakes External Assessment

Classroom Tests used for grading

Assessments that diagnose needs or help students see

themselves improve

Place in Time

An event after learning

A process during Learning


A Time for Action1. Policy balancing assessment OF and FOR learning2. Local assessment systems balanced to serve all users3. Learning community professional development in assessment OF and FOR learning

Alternative Assessment: A Definition

Alternative assessment 1) includes alternatives to standardized or traditional tests for finding out what a student knows or can do; 2) is intended to show growth and inform instruction; 3) is criterion-referenced, not norm-referenced test (it compares performance against established criteria or standards, not against a peer population; 4) is authentic when it is based on activities that represent actual progress toward a broad range of instructional goals (not just cognition) and reflects tasks typical of classrooms and real-life settings; and 5) may include teacher observation, performance-based assessment, and student self-assessment (Pierce & O’Malley, 1992).

Alternative assessments are likely to be more authentic or real in nature than traditional assessments, and therefore, be more closely aligned with the true goals that teachers have for their students’ learning.

The primary rationale for an increased use of alternative forms of assessment is that they are thought better at providing teachers and administrators with a more complete picture of what each student might know and understand about a science related skill or concept rather than comparing the knowledge of individuals to a standardized norm.

Alternative assessments also are intended to help students begin to self-assess and take responsibility for their learning

Alternative assessment uses activities that reveal what students can do with language, emphasizing their strengths instead of their weaknesses.

Alternative assessment instruments are not only designed and structured differently from traditional tests, but are also graded or scored differently.

Because alternative assessment is performance based, it helps instructors emphasize that the point of language learning is communication for meaningful purposes.

Source (Haury, 1993; Mitchell, 1992; Stiggins, 1991 b; Vandervoort, 1983; Wiggins, 1989, 1992, 1993 b & d).

Alternative assessment methods work well in learner-centered classrooms because they are based on the idea that students can evaluate their own learning and learn from the evaluation process. These methods give learners opportunities to reflect on both their linguistic development and their learning processes (what helps them learn and what might help them learn better). Alternative assessment thus gives instructors a way to connect assessment with review of learning strategies.


Features of alternative assessment:

Assessment is based on authentic tasks that demonstrate learners' ability to accomplish communication goals

Instructor and learners focus on communication, not on right and wrong answers Learners help to set the criteria for successful completion of communication

tasks Learners have opportunities to assess themselves and their peers

Designing tasks for alternative assessment

Successful use of alternative assessment depends on using performance tasks that let students demonstrate what they can actually do with language. Fortunately, many of the activities that take place in communicative classrooms lend themselves to this type of assessment. These activities replicate the kinds of challenges, and allow for the kinds of solutions, that learners would encounter in communication outside the classroom.

The following criteria define authentic assessment activities:

They are built around topics or issues of interest to the students They replicate real-world communication contexts and situations They involve multi-stage tasks and real problems that require creative use of

language rather than simple repetition They require learners to produce a quality product or performance Their evaluation criteria and standards are known to the student They involve interaction between assessor (instructor, peers, self) and person

assessed They allow for self-evaluation and self-correction as they proceed

Alternative assessment methods

Effective alternative assessment relies on observations that are recorded using checklists and rubrics.

Checklists

Checklists are often used for observing performance in order to keep track of a student's progress or work over time. They can also be used to determine whether students have met established criteria on a task. To construct a checklist, identify the different parts of a specific communication task and any other requirements associated with it. Create a list of these with columns for marking yes and no.

For example, using a resource list provided by the instructor, students contact and interviews a native speaker of the language they are studying, and then report back to the class. In the report, they are to


Briefly describe the interviewee (gender, place of birth, occupation, family) Explain when and why the interviewee came to the United States Describe a challenge the person has faced as an immigrant Describe how the person maintains a connection with his/her heritage

Students are told that they will need to speak for a minimum of three minutes and that they may refer only to minimal notes while presenting. A checklist for assessing students' completion of the task is shown in the popup window.

Checklists can be useful for classroom assessment because they are easy to construct and use, and they align closely with tasks. At the same time, they are limited in that they do not provide an assessment of the relative quality of a student's performance on a particular task.

Rubrics

Whereas a checklist simply provides an indication of whether a specific criterion, characteristic, or behavior is present, a rubric provides a measure of quality of performance on the basis of established criteria. Rubrics are often used with benchmarks or samples that serve as standards against which student performance is judged.

Rubrics are primarily used for language tasks that involve some kind of oral or written production on the part of the student. It is possible to create a generic rubric that can be used with multiple speaking or writing tasks, but assessment is more accurate when the instructor uses rubrics that are fitted to the task and the goals of instruction.

There are four main types of rubrics.

1. Holistic rubrics

Holistic scales or rubrics respond to language performance as a whole. Each score on a holistic scale represents an overall impression; one integrated score is assigned to a performance. The emphasis in holistic scoring is on what a student does well.

Holistic rubrics commonly have four or six points. The popup window shows a sample four-point holistic scale created for the purposes of assessing writing performance.

Holistic scoring is primarily used for large-scale assessment when a relatively quick yet consistent approach to scoring is necessary. It is less useful for classroom purposes because it provides little information to students about their performance.


2. Analytic rubrics

Analytic scales are divided into separate categories representing different aspects or dimensions of performance. For example, dimensions for writing performance might include content, organization, vocabulary, grammar, and mechanics. Each dimension is scored separately, and then dimension scores are added to determine an overall score.

Analytic rubrics have two advantages:

The instructor can give different weights to different dimensions. This allows the instructor to give more credit for dimensions that are more important to the overall success of the communication task. For example, in a writing rubric, the dimension of content might have a total point range of 30, whereas the range for mechanics might be only 10.

They provide more information to students about the strengths and weaknesses of various aspects of their language performance.

However, analytic scoring has also been criticized because the parts do not necessarily add up to the whole. Providing separate scores for different dimensions of a student's writing or speaking performance does not give the teacher or the student a good assessment of the whole of a performance.

3. Primary trait rubrics

In primary trait scoring, the instructor predetermines the main criterion or primary trait for successful performance of a task. This approach thus involves narrowing the criteria for judging performance to one main dimension.

For example, consider a task that requires that a student write a persuasive letter to an editor of the school newspaper. A possible primary trait rubric for this task is shown in the popup window.

This kind of rubric has the advantage of allowing teachers and students to focus on one aspect or dimension of language performance. It is also a relatively quick andeasy way to score writing or speaking performance, especially when a teacher wants to emphasize one specific aspect of that performance.

4. Multi-trait rubrics

The multi-trait approach is similar to the primary trait approach but allows for rating performance on three or four dimensions rather than just one. Multi-trait rubrics resemble analytic rubrics in that several aspects are scored individually. However, where an analytic scale includes traditional dimensions such as content, organization, and grammar, a multi-trait rubric involves dimensions that are more closely aligned with features of the task.


For example, on an information-gap speaking task where students are asked to describe a picture in enough detail for a listener to choose it from a set of similar pictures, a multi-trait rubric would include dimensions such as quality of description, fluency, and language control, as the example in the popup window shows.

Five Assessment Myths and Their ConsequencesBy Rick Stiggins

America has spent 60 years building layer upon layer of district, state, national, and international assessments at immense cost—and with little evidence that our assessment practices have improved learning. True, testing data have revealed achievement problems. But revealing problems and helping fix them are two entirely different things. As a member of the measurement community, I find this legacy very discouraging. It causes me to reflect deeply on my role and function. Are we helping students and teachers with our assessment practices, or contributing to their problems?

My reflections have brought me to the conclusion that assessment’s impact on the improvement of schools has been severely limited by several widespread but erroneous beliefs about what role it ought to play. Here are five of the most problematic of these assessment myths:

Myth 1: The path to school improvement is paved with standardized tests.

Myth 2: School and community leaders know how to use assessment to improve schools.

Myth 3: Teachers are trained to assess productively.

Myth 4: Adult decisions drive school effectiveness.

Myth 5: Grades and test scores maximize student motivation and learning.

Rick Stiggins is the founder of the Educational Testing Service's Assessment Training Institute, in Portland, Ore.Vol. 27, Issue 08, Pages 28-29http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/10/17/08stiggins.h27.html?print=1 10/18/2007


Portfolio Assessment: A Celebration of Learning

Laramie R. TolentinoDe La Salle University, Manila

AbstractThis article is a summary of a presentation delivered in the 1st PEMEA Continuing Education Program which aims to equip teachers with a basic know-how of portfolio assessment to enable them to effectively assess student learning and evaluate educational outcomes. The seminar focused on current trends in classroom assessment, particularly the development and use of portfolios in the basic education level.

Classroom assessment has now become more than a technical process of documenting student learning. It has transformed into a tool that also enhances the learning process. The changing focus of classroom assessment is moving towards the evaluation of multiple intelligences through alternative and authentic methods of assessment (Popham,1999). One of these methods is portfolio assessment. Portfolios provide this opportunity to evaluate several abilities exemplified by diverse learners. This characteristic benefits both the teacher and student. The former is able to gather additional evidences of learning while the latter is given a chance to monitor oneself by engaging in a self-evaluation process. The use of portfolios is similar to performance tests since it also allows students to demonstrate their understanding of the subject matter by showing accomplished works. But unlike performance tests, the time spent and the outputs included in developing portfolios makes it a richer source of achievement evidences. Furthermore, the affective aspects of learning such as persistence and effort that contributed to the completion of a particular product are also assessed in the process of creating a portfolio.

Characteristics of Student Portfolios

The first image that will come to mind when one hears the word portfolio is a picture of a portable case containing numerous documents. This is probably why until now most teachers as well as students perceive this assessment task as a mere clerical requirement of storing outputs in a clearfolder , this perception is called folder mentality. This mentality explains why some students equate portfolios with scrapbooking or a simple compiling task. This misconception occurs when the real use and purpose of portfolios are not well expressed and known. Portfolio development is definitely more than a simple compilation task for it requires a purposeful and systematic process of collection and evaluation. This process is geared towards showing evidences of accomplishments aligned with specified learning targets (McMillan, 2001; Popham, 1999). The collection process including the selection of entries is planned and most of the time requires a collaborative effort between students, teachers, as well as parents. Indeed, the portfolio exists to make meaning out of students’ output, to communicate about their work, and to relate their learning to a larger context (Grace,1992). These make portfolios truly an authentic assessment task.

Similar with other forms of alternative assessment, the nature of portfolios could either be product or process oriented. Product-oriented portfolios typically showcase final outputs and also allow the comparison of student products. However, it shows limited evidence of growth since it only includes the revised and final outputs. On the other hand, process-oriented portfolios highlight the evidence of growth since it emphasize the story behind the product. It encourages students to reflect on the strategies they have used as well as to plan for the future.


The use of portfolio encourages active engagement through reflection and self-assessment, a process by which the learner develops critical and creative thinking (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2004). Likewise, it provides a comprehensive documentation of student growth which is useful for both planning instruction and conducting student evaluation. In addition, the products showcased in portfolios may also be used to demonstrate learners’ progress and achievements in specific subject areas and also across the curriculum (Lankes, 1995). This allows the learner to appreciate the relevance of the subject and the interconnection of all subject areas. It may also be used as basis for discussion during parent-teacher conferences for it includes tangible evidences of learning (Grace, 1992).

On the other hand, portfolio assessment just like other methods has some disadvantages needs to be addressed. One of which is the demand for additional time. Unlike selected-response tests, reviewing and commenting on student’s work and portfolio takes longer time. Moreover, extra time is also needed for planning and developing materials as well as for conferring with parents and other teachers. Another drawback is the demand for additional resources such as multimedia equipment or a bigger space for storage (Sweet, 1993). Hence, teachers as well as administrators should be equipped with a thorough understanding of this assessment task and should also be willing to allot time for additional planning, conference, and preparation of strategies. Still, the benefits that could be gained from using portfolios outweigh the abovementioned common drawbacks.

Planning and Developing Portfolios

Portfolio construction indeed requires time and additional preparation but its fruits are definitely worthwhile. Planning is essential for successful portfolio assessment. Part of which is to determine the purpose of using portfolios as a method of assessment. This is done by asking oneself “Why do I want my students to do it in the first place?” The decisions about what products to include in a portfolio should be based on the identified purpose of the portfolio. Without a purpose, a portfolio is just a simple folder of student work. Equally important is the identification of learning targets. These are competencies that students should achieve at the end of an activity or program. From these learning targets the teacher could start devising a more specific plan to further guide the students in the portfolio making process. Involving the students from portfolio planning to assessment encourages personal ownership which makes it meaningful and relevant to the students. According to Stiggins (1997), teachers can help emphasize this ownership by telling students to package their portfolios as their personal storybook, describing their story of learning and growth.

After clarifying the purpose and learning targets, there must be an agreement of what type of portfolio will be developed. This is because the type of portfolio will also determine the selection of entries as well as the criteria for evaluation. Below is a table of common types and formats of student portfolios:


STUDENT PORTFOLIOSTypes Forms

Checklist Portfolios

composed of predetermined work samples

Showcase Portfolios

presents selected pieces of evidence to demonstrate mastery

Open-Format Portfolios

includes work samples chosen by the students

Hard copy or Print media

Special holding cases or displays

Multimedia (CD-Rom)

Online Publishing

The type of portfolio will depend on the purpose of assessment while the form will vary depending on the type of products that will be presented and the age and preference of the students. Nowadays, multimedia and online portfolios are much preferred than the traditional printed media. This is because multimedia and online portfolio makes the work “accessible, portable, examinable, widely distributable, and the performance replayable and reviewable” ((Sheingold, 1992 cited in Barrett, 1994). In addition to this, multimedia and online portfolios make transfer samples of student work from teacher to teacher and school to school easier (Lankes, 1995).

After determining the type and format, it is equally important to discuss with the class what needs to be included. The portfolio is generally subdivided into three parts, the: (a) front matter, which includes the cover page, acknowledgment, table of contents, introduction and setting of expectations to prepare the reader, (b) middle part, which is the heart of the portfolio for it contains the selected work samples and reflections, and (c) back matter, which synthesizes the learning experience and includes a plan of action to pursue lifelong learning. The selection of entries will depend on the purpose and the type of portfolio being developed but all types contain work samples that showcases what and how much the learner’s know, the process he/she went through to acquire and deepen this knowledge and/or skill, and the effort he/she exerted in the learning process. Portfolio development is a collaborative process. The teacher constantly needs to scaffold students by clarifying their conceptions about the purpose of portfolio making and by showing work samples that matches the different levels of the scoring rubric.

Assessing Student Portfolios

Portfolios are assessed using a rubric that the learners are familiar with. A good assessment system allows students and teachers to have a shared understanding of what constitutes good work (Barrett,1994). These scoring rubrics or guides are used for the evaluation of the entire portfolio rather than to each piece of entry. A wide variety of criteria can be used to evaluate the quality of a portfolio. The scoring criteria will depend on the purpose of assessment and type of portfolio being evaluated. Unlike traditional tests, authentic assessment involves students in the evaluation process. Student self-evaluation facilitates better


learning and allows the reader to gain insights about learning strategies used (Popham, 1999). Allowing students to evaluate their efforts and performance promotes appreciation and valuing of the reflection process (Mondock, 1997). However, the teacher needs to clarify to the students that self-evaluation is not a random process of selecting a preferred grade it instead involves a system of justifying the chosen grade. The teacher also has the right to lower or increase the grade if the justification given by the student inaccurately supports the rating. Hence, the final grade is a collaborative outcome between the teacher and the students.

Conclusion

A portfolio basically allows the learner to document and demonstrate what he/she has accomplished. It also allows both the learner and teacher to evaluate the progress achieved in a given period of time. Successful portfolio projects do not happen without considerable planning and effort on the part of both the teacher and the student. A portfolio is definitely a labor of love for it tells a story of a learner’s growth and active engagement in the learning process.

References

Barrett, H. (1994). Technology-supported portfolio assessment. The Computing Teacher, 3, 127-137.

Grace, C. (1992). The portfolio and its use: Developmentally-appropriate assessment of young children. Urbana, IL: ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education.

Kubiszyn, T. and Borich, G. (2004). Educational testing and measurement: Classroom application and practice (7th ed). NY, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.

Lankes, A. (1995). Electronic portfolios: A new idea in classroom assessment.Syracuse. NY: ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.

Mcmillan, J. (2001). Classroom assessment: Principles and practice for effective instruction(2nd ed). MA, USA: Allyn & Bacon.

Mondock, S. (1997). Portfolios: The story behind the story. English Journal, 86(1), 59-64.

Popham, W. J. (2005). Classroom assessment: What teachers need to know (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Sweet, D. (1993). Student portfolios: Classroom uses. Eight Education Research Consumer Guide. Retrieved April 29, 2009 from http://www.ed.gov/pubs/OR/ConsumerGuides/

classuse.html

Stiggins, R. (1997). Student-centered classroom assessment (2nd ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ:Prentice-Hall.

Assessment Handbook V1

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