Chapter 8 Performance Assessments Assessing Deep Understanding, Reasonings and Skills PDF

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Chapter 8: Performance Assessments: Assessing Deep Understanding, Reasonings and Skills ● What is performance assessment? ○ The teacher observes and makes a judgment about the student’s demonstration of skill/competency in creating a product, constructing a response, or making a presentation ○ Two parts: ■ Task ■ A systematic procedure for evaluation ● Alternative assessments & authentic assessments ○ Performance assessments are sometimes called: ■ Alternate assessments and authentic assessments ■ However, these two terms mean something else ● Alternative: different from paper and pencil tests ● Authentic: performing a task to those encountered in real life ● Performance ○ Students ability to perform tasks by producing their own work with their knowledge and skills ■ Can be demonstrated through presentation/product ○ Alternate assessment ■ Any method that differs from conventional paper-and-pencil tests, most particularly objective tests ○ Authentic assessment ■ Direct examination of a student’s ability to use knowledge to perform a task that is like what is encountered in real life ● What is performance assessment? ○ Authentic assessments are judged by their nature of task completed; students are aware of the judging criteria prior to the assessment ○ Performance assessments may or may not be authentic ○ Characteristics: ■ Students perform, create, construct, produce ■ Deep understanding and/or reasoning skills are needed ■ Allows students to explain, justify, and defend ■ Usually has no single answer ● Strengths of performance assessments ○ Tied closely to instruction ○ Learning occurs while students complete the assessment

○ The teacher interacts with the student as they perform the task providing feedback and prompting ○ Students are better prepared for thinking and performance once out of school ○ Value the task more due to the richness of the implementation/execution ○ Students who have trouble with paper-pencil tests perform better ○ The approach can be applied to various content areas ○ Motivates educators to explore purposes and processes of schooling ● Limitations of performance assessments ○ Reliability ■ Have considerable amounts of measurement errors; similar to essay items ■ Inconsistent student performance ○ Sampling ■ You must gather facts from various students to make generalizations ○ Time ■ Time-consuming to construct ■ Must have scoring criteria ■ Requires interaction from the teacher for all students ■ Time students will take to complete the task is unknown ● Learning targets for performance assessments ○ Deep understanding ■ Involve students meaningfully in hands-on for extended periods of time ■ Focuses on the use of knowledge and skills ■ Responses are constructed in unique ways ○ Reasoning ■ A student is given a problem to solve or are asked to make a decision or outcome ■ Must use a cognitive process such as analysis, synthesis, critical thinking, inference, prediction, generalizing and hypothesis testing ○ Skills ■ Communication and presentation skills ● Involve student reading, writing, speaking and listening ● Each is must be delineated as a specific target ■ Psychomotor skills ● Describe clearly the physical actions that are required ● Identify the level at which the skill is to be performed

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Perception: use senses to be aware of the stimuli Guided response: imitate or follow direction Mechanism: action becomes habitual Complex overt response: correct actions comprised of complex skills ○ Adaption: make adjustments to suit their needs ● Products ○ More engaging and more authentic; are scored more systematically with public criteria and standards ○ Each product needs to be clearly described in some detail so that there is no misunderstanding about what students are required to do ○ Students need to know about the specific elements of the product and how they will be evaluated ● Constructing performance tasks ○ Restricted type performances tasks ■ Target a narrowly defined skill and require relatively brief responses ■ Tasks are structures and specific ■ Similar to short essay questions ■ Used to elicit student explanations of their answer ■ Students may be asked to draw a diagram, a map, a flowchart, etc. ○ Extended type performance tasks ■ Complex, elaborate, and time consuming ■ Include collaborative work with small groups of students ■ Requires a variety of sources of information (library, interviews) ■ Judgments need to be made about which information is most relevant ● Performance task descriptions and contexts ○ Preparing a task description ■ Create a blueprint/outline ■ Clearly, describe the specific targets to be assessed ■ Identify resources needed ■ Identify scoring procedures ● A task is authentic if: ○ Is realistic ○ Requires judgment and innovation ○ Asks the students to “do” the subject ○ Simulates the contexts in which adults are

○ Assesses the student's ability to efficiently and effectively use a repertoire of knowledge and skills ○ Allows opportunities to rehearse, practice, get feedback, and refine the performances or product ● Performances task questions/prompt ○ Suggestions: ■ Integrate the most essential aspects of content being assessed with the most essential skills ■ The task should be authentic ■ Structure the test to assess multiple learning targets ■ Structure the task so that you can help students succeed ■ Think through what students will do to be sure that the task is feasible ■ The task should allow for multiple solutions ■ The task should be clear ■ The task should be challenging and stimulating to students ■ Include explicit states scoring criteria as a part of the task ■ Include constraints for completing the task ● Checklist for writing performances tasks ○ Are multiple targets included? ○ Are multiple correct answers possible? ○ Is the task authentic? ○ Is the task rich? ○ Is the task clearly defined? ○ Is it challenging and engaging? ○ Are criteria for scoring shared with the task? ○ Are conditions for completing the task included? ○ Does the task involve interaction with other students? ○ Is the task biased for some students?

● Types of scoring ○ Checklists: a simple list of criteria or dimension ○ Rating scales: used to indicate the degree to which a particular dimension is present. It goes beyond a simple YES or NO answer. ○ Rubrics: holistic/analytic ● Rubrics ○ A combination of a rating scale and scoring guideline

○ Differentiates between levels of student proficiency ○ Organizes and clarifies the scoring criteria ○ Each level uses descriptors (inadequate, minimal, adequate, superior, novice, developing, developed) ● Developing rubrics ○ Best developed when combining several difference procedures ○ Begin by clarifying how the discipline defines different levels of performance ● Example of a holistic rubric to evaluate reading ○...