Assessment for Learning

A Holistic Approach to Science Assessment

Throughout my experience in the BC education system, as a student, as an Educational Assistant, and as a Teaching Candidate, it is easy to see that there are students who are motivated by grades and those who are not. Often, it is those few students motivated by grades who seem to focus on their achievement rather than their learning and avoid taking on new challenges; the students who are not motivated by their grades simply try to get by, again uninterested in their own learning (Kohn, 1999). So, the question to me is, what is the point of assessment if it is not motivating the students, informing their learning, or helping them engage in school?

 There is a type of assessment that can answer my question; and it is holistic assessment. This assessment centers around the student being an individual with unique ideas, aspirations, strengths, and events occurring in their life. In holistic assessment, students are given choice to provide demonstrations of their learning (Williams & Hin, 2015). Instead of exclusively given one test to demonstrate understanding of a concept; students can represent their learning through several different ways to show that their knowledge meets the learning objective or curriculum (Williams & Hin, 2015). By giving students choice in how to represent their learning, time to reflect on their understanding, and how to improve it, we grant students ownership and a sense of involvement in their own learning (White , 2017). In turn, this holistic assessment gives students a chance to use their own strengths and place themselves in the learning rather than dissociating when they hear the word test. Overall, when used correctly, holistic assessment can be a tool used to motivate students in their own learning by seeing where they meet the criteria, where they can improve all in terms of their learning- not based on a single letter.

These principles inspired me to use holistic assessment in my future classroom.  I thought that this was inspired to create a more welcoming and engaging classroom using these principles. So, during my first practicum, I tried to apply the principles of holistic assessment within a Science 9 class.

Growth in My Assessment Practices

The Project

In order to help guide students through the project, students were also given a check list of all the required information that should be included. This checklist included labeling the stages and key components, description of how components are moving through the cell, the key differences between plant and animal cells in mitosis, and to make it visually appealing. Lastly, I gave students the value that each category would be marked out of in order for students to know how many things they should be including.
In Science 9, one unit that I thought would be a challenge for students was mitosis and meiosis because of the new terminology therefore, I wanted to create a project that could be assessment but also help students in their learning. So, I created a project for the mitosis. After the lesson, and a worksheet, students were given the project: Modeling the Cell Cycle. In this project where students could use their notes and textbook to create something that shows me their understanding of the structures in the cell and the movement of those structures through the different phases of mitosis.

Figure 1. Summative Mitosis Project Given to Students

To follow, I marked each project on the rubric below. I created this rubric showing what beginning and extending look like in terms of description with a scale of the marks that could be obtained given in between. At the time of giving the students this assignment I felt like I had created a holistic project with an assessment to match. However, when I started to mark their projects, I really felt the flaws in my rubric, and how my assessment was not as I had originally perceived it to be.  

 

Figure 2. Summative Assessment Rubric Used

 

Successes

Choice

            My first success was creating a project that had choice. This choice created many entry points where students of all ability could enter the learning space. The flexibility in how students represented their learning ensured that no matter where the students are at in their learning, there is a difficulty of project that students should be able to position them selves within the learning (Ministry of Education, 2013).  In order to support students actually creating that unique project was by supplying a cart of manipulatives, poster paper for a written expression, or even presenting the information through story. I felt that this allowed students ownership over their project by using their interests and strengths to relate the content to themselves (White , 2017). In addition, the flexibility in terms of materials and research allowed for students to extend either by creating more detailed or complex models. This way, all students could show their learning to their best ability.

Formative feedback

During the class time that I gave students to work on this project, I had taken the time to give students formative feedback. I was able to circulate the room, examine students work, and have informal conversations with them about their progress the strengths in their projects (White , 2017). I also made sure to highlight the components of the project that they may have been forgetting and clarify the concepts that were confusing to students.

Future Modifications

Learning progression

In the future, I would like to better integrate the learning progressions into my assessment plan. Previously, my assessment had felt choppy since mitosis and meiosis are such similar processes, it would have made more sense to assess them together and give students more time to learn them. So, in my new assessment plan, students would learn mitosis formatively, then the summative project would occur later in the unit and encompass students understanding of mitosis and meiosis. The way I plan to do this, would be by following the “key strategies in teacher assessment” (Black & William, 2018). In doing this, I would enact the following plan:

1. Teach the lesson on mitosis then allow students to work on a work sheet to learn the content. This is the point where students have a chance to learn and explore the new concepts.
2. Have students work together to develop criteria of what they need to know about mitosis. At this point students can, and will, be actively self-assessing their understanding of mitosis and reinforce their learning with peers.
3. Have students use manipulatives to move through the stages of mitosis and describe what is happening to a peer. Then repeat this presentation to the educator where they can create targeted formative feedback based on their strengths and at what points they were missing the criteria that we can created as a class.
4. After learning meiosis, a very similar process to mitosis, have the class co-create criteria of their summative assessment on both concepts. Then we can do the summative project that I had previously created although on the topic of meiosis and asking students to highlight the additional difference between meiosis and mitosis.

This new method allows students the time and practice with identifying the structure and movements through different methods including work sheets, manipulatives, and conversation before asking them to create their final demonstration of learning (Black & William, 2018). I think the use of a more end of unit summative assessment gives students more opportunity to learn the content, create contextualized ties, make the learning more important to them. In addition, the extra time gives students the chance to create the project independent of factors that are happening outside of school. In this way, even if a student has a bad day, there is time and space to make up that learning and crate a great project.

Formative and Self-Assessment

This alternative unit structure would have allowed for more time for more constructive feedback. There is space for students to examine their own understanding compared to the criteria that we made. There are also built-in times for formative feedback where students can take that feedback and put it back into their final summative project. Showing their own progressive learning through the unit (White , 2017), as compared to previously when I had just pointed out their mistakes and they made the change. I do not feel that this has the same impact on their learning. Moreover, in the new model, they can take that feedback and figure out how they can apply it to the new context of meiosis and that more so shows their learning progress (White , 2017).

Criteria

The first change that I would have made to the criteria or rubric that I used to assess the project, would be the wording. I would have liked to fill in the wording for each of the components. In this way, it would have been more evident what work was worth what value. I think that one way that I would have done this was through this co-creation, we can also assess exemplars and non-exemplars so that students have a concrete understanding of what kind of work is beginning or extending. Not only does better wording of a rubric create a clearer marking guide for the teacher, but also for the students. When the students are a part of creating the marking criteria, it allows students to really understand what is beginning and what is extending, and how that assessment has been developed. That transparency in assessment really makes it more welcoming to students (White , 2017). In addition, it also gives students a better sense of ownership and involvement in their own learning as well (Williams & Hin, 2015).

To follow, I would have also changed the content of the assessment.  When I was looking over the curriculum, there is no “visually appealing” competency. It is not fair to either take away or add marks for things that are outside of the curriculum (White , 2017). To make assessment open to students and a part of the learning it must be from the learning continuum itself, not on arbitrary things like what a teacher looks nice. It may be that a student really tried, but a teacher sees it as no effort. When really the visual appeal of the poster does not show you whether the student understands the concept or not. So instead, I would have rather stick to the verbs of the curriculum and assess on the clarity of “communication of scientific ideas” (British Columbia, 2021; White , 2017).  This way, students feel that they are being fairly assessed.

Conclusion

Overall, what I have learned from the process of creating a project, and assessment, and marking, is that assessment is hard, and it takes many iterations to create one that is the ideal. But the way that we can create out best assessment is by bringing in holistic assessment to the foundation of our teaching practice. This means that our assessment practices need to be included in the way that we create our unit or year plan. In this way, we can give students the time to learn, the feedback so that they can iterate on their understanding leading to a summative demonstration of the best version of their learning. In addition, our jobs as educators, we need to give students the clarity in expectation of learning outcomes. At this point, students can make their learning unique and individual to that person. I feel that brining these ideas into the foundation of my teaching practice will help me create more holistic assessments in the future.

 

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References

Black, P., & William, D. (2018). Classroom assessment and pedagogy. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice, 551-575.

British Columbia. (2021). Science 9. Retrieved from BC Curriculum: https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/curriculum/science/9/core

Kohn, A. (1999, March 19). From Degrading to De-Grading. Retrieved from Alfie Kohn: https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/degrading-de-grading/

Ministry of Education, O. (2013). Learning for All: A guide to effective assessment and instruction for all students, Kindergarten to Grade 12. Ontario: The Ontario Public Service.

White , K. (2017). Softening the Edges. Bloomington: Solution Tree Press.

Williams, S., & Hin, L. (2015). Holistic Assessment:Creating Assessment with Students. In S. Tang, & L. Logonnathan, Taylor’s 7th Teaching and Learning Conference 2014 Proceedings: Holistic Education: Enacting Change (pp. 389-397). doi:10.1007/978-981-287-399-6

 

 

 

 

A few links to start with or refer to:

Transforming Assessment – BC’s New Curriculum
https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/node/88

BC’s K-12 Assessment System – BC’s New Curriculum
https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/assessment

Dylan Wiliam – YouTube – Assessment for Learning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiu-jY-xaPg

Dylan Wiliam – YouTube – Assessment Strategies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcJdZGz6ifY

Dylan Wiliam – YouTube – Formative Assessment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYdVe5O7KBE

Assessment: The Bridge Between Teaching and Learning – from Voices in the Middle, Volume 21, Number 2, December 2013
https://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/VM/0212-dec2013/VM0212Assessment.pdf