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Assessment and Evaluation in Social Studies Classrooms a Question of Balance John Myers

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Assessment and Evaluation in Social Studies Classrooms a Question of Balance John Myers 290 Challenges & Prospects for Canadian Social Studies CHAPTER 21 Assessment and Evaluation in Social Studies Classrooms A Question of Balance John Myers studies education is reflected across the curriculum What Is the State of and requires a much more sophisticated approach Assessment and Evaluation to assessment and evaluation.2 Assessment reform has also been driven by increased knowledge about in Social Studies Today? learning. After decades of viewing learning as a Since public education began in Canada 150 years relatively passive accumulation of facts and discrete ago, assessment has identified and ranked students skills, we now recognize learning as a more active using tests, essays, and quizzes. This limited role for process in which learners construct knowledge assessment has broadened over the past twenty years and make connections among facts and concepts. for a number of reasons: First, the goals of educa- Innovations in recent decades, such as curriculum tion in general, and social studies in particular, have integration, authentic assessment, and cooperative greatly expanded as we attempt to help our children learning, reflect these current theories.3 acquire the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behav- A third factor driving assessment and evaluation iours required for living in the twenty-first century. reform comes from the widespread view that traditional As social studies educator Joseph Kirman argues, so- ways of reporting student achievement—the evaluation cial studies is not about the accumulation of selected side of things—are not telling us what we really need facts for later recall but should aim to: to know. It is not enough to want students to learn Produce a responsible person able to cope and to express our best intentions by setting course, with change, capable of making reasonable unit, and lesson objectives. These objectives need to decisions, who is an intelligent consumer be achieved. We need results: clear evidence students and controller of science and technology, have met the outcomes set for them. Many provincial able to live with and appreciate human ministries/departments of education are responding diversity, and support and defend human to this concern by trying to determine standards of dignity. Such a person should be able to achievement in various subject areas, including social settle differences honorably, avoid the use of studies, to help make grading more accurate. violence, be cognizant of, and active in, the Concurrent with these trends to broaden the stewardship of our planet, and have the skills scope of what and how to assess student progress has necessary to maintain a functional economic been a rise in large-scale, standardized assessments system and democratic government.1 of various types including provincial, national, and international achievement tests. The term “standard- This expanded view of the purposes of social ized” refers to the fact that the results of such tests, if 290 A ssessment and Evaluation in Social Studies Classrooms 291 administered according to their instructions, can be and identify current trends and issues in the field for interpreted the same way in different circumstances. further investigation and research so that we can be The standardization occurs as a result of field-testing more proactive and better able to hold our own in with thousands of students. They are administered debates about assessment, evaluation, standards, and system-wide or province-wide. The instructions to accountability. As assessment expert Ruth Childs put students, the test conditions, the timing, and scor- it in the title of a recent address to a group of student ing are the same in all places. They are generally teachers, “Critical Consumers Needed.”5 norm-referenced and provide comparative data on students. They usually test for what the test authors determine to be basic skills and knowledge, and What Is the Vocabulary are considered to be objective; i.e., free of teacher of Assessment and bias in scoring. Commercial standardized tests are supposed to be content-free; that is, they are not Evaluation? designed to fit any particular district or provincial One of the confusing factors in the field of assessment curriculum. In Canada, students are usually given is that professionals often use the same terms to mean standardized tests in language and math. Alberta is different things. It might be helpful then to the only province that currently gives standardized define some important terms and see how they relate tests in social studies at a number of grade levels. to each other.6 Provincial examinations in all subjects including The terms “assessment” and “evaluation” are social studies contain many if not most elements of often used interchangeably but they do not always standardized tests.4 mean the same thing. For many, assessment is the Whatever benefits such tests have in determining process of collecting data on student performance student acquisition of basic facts and simple skills, that is then used to evaluate (make judgements they do not set a standard as to what students should about) the attainment of certain expectations, objec- be able to do. They do not define clear expectations, tives, or outcomes. Because we speak of judgements, other than to get the highest score possible. They evaluation is never neutral. It can only be objective seldom assess complex thinking and behaviours. in that assessments provide us with a quantity and Even the advocates of standardized tests express quality of information sufficient to make judgements concerns for their overuse. Most importantly for the that are fair to the strengths and needs of all learners; purposes of this chapter, standardized tests are inca- precise in that students and others gain clear insights pable of providing teachers with the day-to-day, mo- into how they are learning and what they can do to ment-to-moment information they need for making improve performance; and true in that our verdicts instructional decisions. What follows will therefore are valid, consistent, and accurate. It is important to focus on classroom-based forms of assessment and remember that all assessments and evaluations are evaluation. limited in that they do not tell us everything there is Even at the school and classroom levels there to know about the learning of particular individuals are competing trends in assessment and evaluation. or groups. This chapter tries to make sense of these as they Assessment and evaluation are continuous ac- influence the assessment and evaluation of student tivities in the classroom and they can be both infor- achievement in social studies. The key focus is to mal and formal. Informal assessment occurs when a promote “assessment literacy”; i.e., the capacity to teacher collects information to use for the purposes better match assessment methods and the informa- of shaping ongoing instruction. At the end of a seg- tion desired about student achievement, make sense ment of a lesson, for example, the teacher might of the student achievement data we collect, com- orally ask a random sample of students around the municate assessment results effectively, use assess- room to respond to questions about what was just ment to maximize student motivation and learning, taught. The responses to these questions will give 292 Challenges & Prospects for Canadian Social Studies the teacher a sense of how well the class has learned in developing the skill. Most of the assessment and the information, concept, or skill in question and evaluation we do will be formative, and the feedback whether they are ready to move on. Teachers might loop that results (see Figure 1) is very important in also carry out informal assessment of individual stu- the teaching and learning process. dents by observing the way they are completing tasks Central to formative assessment is the provision assigned in class. This can tell them which students of quality feedback. Feedback consists of information might need corrective feedback or more instruction that tells us how we are doing and what we need in a particular area. to do next, in the light of our intentions and goals. While informal assessment is a continuous and Feedback is not the same as praise and blame, rather sometimes almost unconscious process, formal as- it is precise information about where someone is in sessment is normally more overt and systematically relation to the goals they are trying to attain and planned. We are all familiar with typical manifesta- what they might do in the future to make progress tions of formal assessment: quizzes, tests, essays, towards those goals. and projects. But formal assessment may take a A research synthesis by Marzano, Pickering, and wide range of forms, including teacher observa- Pollock noted the following principles of quality feed- tion of student performance. For example, a typical back:7 First, feedback should be timely (the longer outcome for social studies is that students become we wait the less effect it has on achievement). Feed- more open- minded. One could imagine assessing back should be specific (criterion-referenced) and progress towards that goal by having students write “corrective” in order to show what went well, what position papers on issues from various points of needs improvement, and how to improve (all three view, but observing students interacting in class components needed for maximum achievement). with people expressing views different from theirs Feedback can be verbal and written and can come might also accomplish this. What makes this kind of from teachers, peers, or the student him/herself. It observation different from an informal assessment is should ask students to interpret data and self-as- the structured nature of the data collection, perhaps sess in the light of their goals and intentions, rather using a checklist or taking notes, and sharing the than ask them to react to our interpretation. Finally, information gathered with the students involved and feedback should allow students to make decisions as perhaps others to provide feedback.
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