Spotlight Three: Assessments & Mapping Thinkspace | Faculty of Arts | Seneca POLYTECHNIC

ASSESSMENT PURPOSE

Traditionally, assessment plans are considered in light of form and function. Thinking about assessment function can still support our efforts towards Reconciliation, EDI, and Sustainability.

Cronbach (2000) synthesizes three main functions that assessments can have:

1. Course improvement: deciding what instructional materials and methods are satisfactory and where change is needed.
2. Decisions about individuals: identifying the needs of the pupil for the sake of planning instruction, judging pupil merit for purposes of selection and grouping, acquainting a pupil with their own progress and deficiencies.
3. Administrative regulation: judging how good the school system is, how good individual teachers are, etc. (p. 236)

Reflection:

• What do you see as the assessment purpose in your course?
• Are items 1 and 3 within the scope of your classroom assessment purpose?
• Does your assessment purpose align with your values, beliefs, educational philosophy, and assessment approach?

ACTION STEP #1: Make deeper connections between our epistemologies, our pedagogies, and our assessments.

Teacher beliefs play an important role in the classroom as they create the measurement culture of the classroom (Brookhart, 2003). Without a doubt, our individual values and beliefs inform our approach to teaching (Baird et al, 2017; Brookhart, 2003; Gerritsen-van Leeuwenkamp et al, 2017).

Reflect:

• How do you believe humans learn?
• What values and beliefs do you hold about teaching, learning, our students, and our learning context that support your efforts towards Reconciliation, EDI and Sustainability?
• How are your values reflected in your teaching pedagogy or teaching philosophy?
• In turn, how are these values reflected in your assessment plan?

ACTION STEP #3: Consider Cultural Validity

In recent years, there have been growing conversations about the centrality of cultural validity to assessment (Preston & Claypool, 2021).

There is a possible gap in reflecting student self-efficacy, cultural validity/social identity, and socio-emotional aspects to learning in classroom assessment.

Some of Ontario's postsecondary standards identify cultural validity as a necessity, in addition to characteristics that hold EDI in high esteem.

CQAAP Standard 4 requires all Ontario colleges to provide evidence of assessment quality, learning outcome to assessment mapping, authentic assessments, collaboration with faculty on authentic, consistent, valid and reliable assessment of students, approaches to assessment that consider Indigenous ways of knowing, “fair and equitable evaluation of student achievement through valid assessment methods” (Ontario College Quality Assurance Service, 2020, p. 8), formative feedback, and clear assessment guidelines for students (Ontario College Quality Assurance Service, 2020).

Reconciliation Canada is one of many supports to faculty who are trying to weave in Indigenous ways of knowing into their classroom:

How to imagine our position: A Middle Ground of Knowing

Encouraging non-Western knowledges in your classroom or assessments does not then require you to be an expert in all things. Canadian scholar and settler Celia Haig-Brown thinks about creating a "third space" for learning when different knowledge systems are welcomed into post-secondary institutions.

She was inspired by learning about the two-row wampum belt, Guswentha, from Anishnaabe professor John Burrows. Guswentha includes two bands of purple beads "representing two nations involved in the treaty, like two vessels traveling on a flowing river, will continue to exist in lasting peace and friendship as they maintain their separateness and in­tegrity following parallel trajectories" (Haig-Brown, 2008, p. 260).

She proposes educators think of themselves in a space between the two parallel bands of knowledges, "the one that engages competing knowledges ... [so that] there is a chance for people in them to see what happens across the differences, across the space between" (ibid).

REFLECT:

• How can your assessments begin to incorporate cultural validity?

ACTION STEP #5: Consider assessment 'approach'

Historically, western approaches to assessment focus on cognitive knowing. In this section, we contrast cognitive, socio-cultural, and Indigenous approaches to assessment.

A cognitive theoretical approach has been and continues to be common since the 1960s (Baird et al., 2017). In this paradigm, content, memorization, and product-oriented learning goals are the focus.

Currently, many classroom assessment researchers take a sociocultural or socio-cognitive approach (Bonner, 2013) to classroom assessment, where learning is constructed by the learner in interaction with the environment and with other agents, such as teachers and peers (Baird et al., 2017; Brookhart & McMillan, 2020). In sociocultural theory, “learning is perceived through changing relationships among the learner, other human participants, and the tools (materials and symbolic) available in a given context” (Moss, 2003, p. 14) … “thus learning involves not only acquiring new knowledge and skills but taking on a new identity and social position within a particular discourse … or community of practice” (Moss, 2003, p. 14). The socio-constructivist approach acknowledges the construction of knowledge through agent, student, and context (Bonner, 2013).

More and more, assessment in the colonized, Western world, is returning to Indigenous ways of knowing. For example, the move to a socio-cognitive approach to assessment reflects the four areas of the medicine wheel (Native Voices, n.d.): cognitive, emotional, physical, and spiritual. Thus, positioning assessment through a sociocultural learning theory lens, may support the connection to cultural assessment validity (Preston & Claypool, 2021) and may also provide some consideration to reconciliation and equity.

Identifying the significance of noncognitive skills in any review of student achievement, Bonner (2013) notes that, “aggregated over multiple courses, the combination of academic achievement with so-called extraneous variables such as effort turns out to relate well to success at the postsecondary level” (p. 96).

Place-based Assessments

Decolonized education is rooted in connections to place. The Centre for Youth & Society clarifies that place-based assessments "restore cultural knowledge" and "re-establish links to the community ... [which are] essential for contextualizing knowledge, deepening understanding, encouraging community involvement, and reconnecting students with a vital support system."

REFLECT:

• When you look at your course syllabus, can you identify the assessment approach? Memorization? Cognitive skills? Socio-cultural skills? Socio-cognitive skills? Indigenous? Cultural competency?