Student Self-Assessment: what I ask myself

Ms Ellen Cornish and Dr Don W Jordan

This article by two of our regular contributors, Ms Ellen Cornish and Dr Don Jordan, contributes to the discussion about Child Centred learning as it provides a practical example of how assessment is about more than testing rote learning. The article looks at student self assessment. A comprehensive self assessment rubric is provided to support a unit of work called Feeling Good, Feeling Great, The Human Body

  Ellen Cornish is a very experienced Early Childhood and Primary School teacher from Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.

Dr Don Jordan had an extensive career in Tasmanian schools and completed his doctorate at Curtin University in Western Australia. Both Don and Ellen have had experience in other countries, either as visiting teachers or consultants. They have contributed several articles to SCLT.

Our classroom teaching experience has demonstrated to us that whilst our own teacher-made and standardized tests gave us information about our student’s learning, these tests did not provide us with all the information we required or to allow our students the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of what it is they had learnt. Nor did these testing regimes give students feedback on their own learning.

There is generally considered to be three types of assessment, formative, summative, and diagnostic, although the three assessment methods outlined below, in reality, are often concurrent. What was important to us was the predominant assessment approach we used to guide our teaching practice.

The first is formative assessment which is designed to give feedback to both teacher and students about how student learning is progressing during a unit of work. Formative assessment does more than measure what students have learned: it also provides feedback on how students are understanding and allows for constant adjustment to teaching strategies. The distinction is often made between assessment of learning (past) and assessment for learning (future), where the student is central to moving from assessment of learning to assessment for leaning. This formative framework allows the flexibility for student self-assessment to occur.

Secondly, summative assessments summarises through examination or test, what students have learnt at the completion of a unit of work usually expressed as a mark or grade, elements of which can also be used as part of student’s self-assessment.

Thirdly, and perhaps the most important, we used diagnostic assessment to assess student’s prior knowledge or misconceptions, and to assess their skill levels, before beginning a unit of work. It was very important for us to be aware of our student’s current level of knowledge and understanding. Asking students to consider ‘What I already know about’ and ‘What I would like to know about’ was a powerful ‘tuning’ in activity for us as well as our students, as it demonstrated that what they know and understand already is legitimate knowledge. This gave us a baseline from which we then adjusted our teaching programme.

We wanted our students to demonstrate their learning to us in a way that did not rely on standardised testing. We realized that we could not expect our students to participate in a wide range of learning experiences offered in our classrooms, and then require them to show what they had learnt through standardised tests that focus narrowly on linguistic and logical mathematical skills.

We required alternative forms of assessment that would generate relevant information for both the student’s and our needs. We selected assessment methods that would provide the relevant information we wanted, to inform us and our students of where our students were in their learning. We also wanted to be sure we maintained authentic assessment strategies.

We define student assessment as students judging the quality of their own work, based on evidence and explicit criteria, for the purpose of developing higher order skills. We knew that if we encouraged our students to self-assess their own learning, they would monitor their own progress. Involving our students in the assessment process meant that we needed to teach them how to assess their own progress, against quality standards.  This self-evaluation is a potentially powerful technique because of its impact on student performance. With practice, they learnt to:

• Reflect on and evaluate their progress and skill development.
• Identify gaps in their understanding and capabilities.
• Discern how to improve their performance.
• Learn independently and think critically.

Benjamin Bloom’s (1956), six levels of learning; (remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating and creating), became very important in our thinking and questioning of our students, to help them develop critical thinking and understanding. His six levels, from the simple recall or recognition of facts, as the lowest level, through increasingly more complex and abstract mental levels, to the highest order was presented to students in the form of rubrics.

We required students to practise using rubrics by providing a critique on the work of their peers, and then to apply the same criteria to their own work. This experience has shown us that students must first learn to peer assess if they are to self-assess effectively.

Howard Gardner’s (2006a), eight intelligences; verbal / linguistic, logical / mathematical, visual / spatial / musical / rhythmic, bodily / kinaesthetic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal and naturalist, suggest that people learn in different ways. Gardner’s belief is that we should get away from tests and instead look at a wide range of sources about how humans develop skills important to their way of life. He states that each person has eight different kinds of intelligence. These occur concurrently and are generally developed to differing stages.  In particular, the Interpersonal (people) Intelligence and Intrapersonal (self) Intelligence aspects are often incorporated in activities in which students work cooperatively and reflect on their learning in class sharing time.

This implies that teachers should use a range of teaching and assessment strategies and provide a range of activities in key learning areas that will enable students to use their strengths and develop greater competencies.

Benjamin Bloom’s six levels of learning and Howard Gardner’s eight intelligences organised in a learning matrix, provided us with a powerful approach which enabled our students to self-assess and to take responsibility for their own learning.

We have referred to our previous article ‘Feeling good, Feeling great: the Human Body, as a unit of work to illustrate student self-assessment using a matrix of Bloom’s levels of learning and  Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences, to develop a student self-assessment rubric.