I’ve been in Washington State for almost 18
years now, serving the community in technical
colleges as the coordinator for outcomes
assessment efforts across the system.
And in that capacity I’m to being something
of a lightening rod for faculty who resent
what they see as the intrusion of assessment
into their normal routines.
As one example, some time ago a community
college faculty member complained to me that:
Well this complaint is typical of comments
I’ve heard over the years and in many ways
the perspective is perfectly understandable.
For many people higher education assessment
work is inevitably associated with the
dominant and often misguided strategy
in this county involving a large dose of
high stakes tests and external accountability
processes based on those tests.
There is a different way however,
and it’s one grounded in the core elements of
effective instructional practice.
Pat Cross has once called assessment
‘the zipper between teaching and learning.’
And that’s a very apt metaphor for its role,
but in my mind, it’s even more tightly woven
into the process than that.
Good assessment is simply part of the
learning process, not just a means of
documenting or judging that learning.
Assessment can’t really be separated from instruction.
Good teachers are continually gathering
evidence and providing feedback about
how well students are performing
but they often don’t consider this work
to be assessment - It’s just good teaching.
I believe that the most powerful learning
involves changing our students’
understandings of core concepts and ways
of interpreting the world around them.
And I think that a key part of promoting that
kind of learning involves focusing attention on
what the students’ understandings and working
models are both prior to and during learning.
I would argue that the best way to do this
is by focusing on assessment as learning,
by examining and refining the kinds
of classroom assessments that can,
and frequently do, happen every day.
Clearly it’s one thing to argue that
an emphasis on classroom assessment
is important and another thing entirely
to actually do something about it.
The culture of American education,
and particularly of higher education,
makes it extremely difficult to even begin
to truly understand, much less improve,
what happens behind the classroom door.
On the other hand, I think it is possible with
sufficient resources and some logistical support.
A significant number of teachers are quite
willing to share their work and learn from each other.
This collective aspect of assessment involves
teachers using actual assignments and student
work to provide a powerful springboard for
conversations about what works
and what doesn’t, grounded in specific
and real classroom context.
So I would suggest that, if so-called assessment
projects are really getting in the way of good
teaching, then indeed its not worth doing.
But as I’ve tried to suggest here briefly,
something like that wouldn’t really qualify
as an assessment in my book.
Assessment as learning is nothing more
than the act of observing, attempting to
understand and provide feedback on the ways
in which students are grasping, integrating and
applying the material and concepts they are
confronting in your classes.
And I have yet to see a good teacher who
doesn’t do this sort of assessment in some
fashion, regardless of what she may choose to call it.
If assessment of learning is really an
unattainable goal, then why bother giving
students any sort of assignments or tests
in ones’ classes at all?
Certainly it’s true that drawing clear, causal
inferences in the complex circumstances of
college classrooms is extremely difficult.
But I don’t believe that the inability to draw such
inferences means that assessment is
impossible or that we shouldn’t try to
understand more deeply what learning
is taking place and how it occurs.
The work is simply far messier and requires
more complex approaches than most people
want to acknowledge, especially those
who are so concerned with easy, quantifiable
answers that they are willing to reduce
assessment to simple grids and checklists
which often wind up being nothing more than busy work.
Finally, to this critic I would say, “If you love
teaching as you say you do, the question is:
does sharing your enthusiasm for your discipline
represent all that matters about teaching?
Or by saying you love teaching are you really also
saying that you love learning as well – that
you love your discipline, you want your
students to at least understand it,
if not love it the way you do?”
I expect it’s the latter.
I really believe that most good faculty,
especially after teaching for a while, would
say that, ‘Of course, learning matters.”
If so, then assessing this learning is not
something to be despised or ignored as
irrelevant or impossible, but embraced as an
essential aspect of learning and the best way
to truly understand and improve that learning.