Creating a context for growth focussed assessment

Barnes, N., & Fives, H. (2016). Creating a context for growth-focussed assessment. Middle School Journal, 47(5), 30-37. doi:10.1080/00940771.2016.1226638

Background

The author highlights the unique position middle level educators are in, pertaining to helping students attain greater independence as they transit from childhood into adolescence. According to the authors, these educators could design assessments that capitalize on students’ developing capabilities to engage in more autonomous and challenging tasks.

Aims

This study examined the types of craft knowledge deployed by a fifth grade educator with expertise in classroom assessment to build a growth-centred context for classroom assessment. Craft knowledge is a teacher’s ability to combine all of the varied bodies of knowledge in specific contexts that were honed through experience and reflection in order to teach well.

Sample

The authors adopted a case study approach. The teacher in the study was a fifth grade English/language arts teacher in a middle class suburb of New York City who was identified as having expertise in classroom assessment.

Method

Data included classroom observations, semi-structured participant interviews, and artefacts from the classroom over six weeks.

Findings

The results showed that the teacher adopted numerous key assessment strategies which role-modelled and promoted a growth mind-set. These included:

encouraging risk taking and communicating to students that it is acceptable to make mistakes;

reinforcing trust in both teacher–student and student–student relationships by helping students activate strategies to enhance their learning;

providing feedback that was timely, formative, and process-oriented;

emphasizing effort and growth during student–teacher conferences; and

setting and communicating high expectations to students by explicitly discussing and analysing scoring rubrics with students at the outset of assignments and how the assignments could be improved;

Implications

The authors emphasized that the teacher’s story and the recommended tips for implementation had provided examples of how middle grade educators could support and develop a growth-centred context for assessment in their own classrooms.

Original article retrieved from EBSCOHost.