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Conceptual Framework
>> 2. Deciding on the Purposes of the Professional
Development
2.5. Assessing Student Performance/Achievement
National standards for mathematics and science education call for teaching
for understanding, suggesting that teachers address fewer topics in order to
give students an opportunity to learn more deeply. But how do they know students
are "getting it"? Clearly, tests that require students simply to plug
numbers into formulas or recall vocabulary will not provide evidence of in-depth
understanding.
Active
Assessment for Active Science (Hein and Price, 1994) describes
a variety of tools for evaluating hands-on science teaching and learning,
including the use of drawings, concept maps, notebooks, folders, portfolios,
work stations, and individual experiments to assess student understanding.
Assessing
Hands-on Science: A Teachers Guide to Performance Assessment
(Brown and Shavelson, 1996) provides definition and rationale for
using performance assessments, give guided practice in scoring a variety
of types of tasks, and discusses important consideration in choosing a
performance task. An
Assessment Sampler (Merck Institute for Science Education, 1999)
is a collection of assessment tasks for K-8 science curricula, and includes
examples of student work with teacher comments.
Measuring
Up: Protoypes for Mathematics Assessment (Mathematical Sciences
Education Board, 1993) illustrates elementary mathematics assessment tasks
that focus on thoughtful work, rather than recitation of procedures, and
provides opportunities for a variety of solution strategies. Learning
About Assessment, Learning Through Assessment (Driscoll and Bryant,
1998) discusses ways to assist K-12 mathematics teachers learn about assessment.
Using
Assessment to Reshape Mathematics Teaching: A Casebook for Teachers and
Teacher Educators, Curriculum and Staff Development Specialists
(Wilcox and Lanier, editors, 2000) includes seven cases on using assessment
to make instructional decisions, and a videotape that documents classroom
events in several of those cases.
A number of essays included in the TE-MAT database focus on assessing student
performance. An essay by Audrey Champagne et al.
discusses helping teachers understand and apply the science assessment standards,
while an essay by Vicky Kouba et.al. talks about the
influence of context in assessing student understanding.
Continue: 3.
Building on Current Knowledge about Professional Development
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