Assessment Focus and Practise: The Progression

By Katherine Percival
As a result of my lack of formal teaching experience and experience using different
assessment strategies I do not know what has changed with assessment in focus and practise in
Media Arts in the past few years. I am unable to speak to this from a teacher perspective,
however as many of these articles where written during my high school experience and was
being taught this type of assessment in Teachers College; I can speak to it from a student
perspective and through the lens of a beginning educator.
As a recent graduate from the Ontario education system and a beginning educator in
the same system I would argue that the focus and practise of assessment in secondary schools
has changed dramatically in the last 7 years. From the perspective as a former student, I
remember assessment being largely focused on assessment for learning and never assessment
as or of learning. My grades in high school no matter what the subject, were always determined
by my progress in a unit. Very few subjects promoted self or peer assessment, with the
exception to the subjects of Visual Arts and English Language and Literature. As a student, I
never worked as a class to develop a success criteria or knew what I was learning through the
aid of learning goals and I never had a teacher evaluate the classes understanding of a subject
through the use of exit cards or any other tools. To stress the drastic change in assessment I
graduated from my high school in 2010 and in the 2002 article Assessment for Learning: 10
principles Research-based principles to guide classroom practice states one of the principles of
assessment should focus on how students learn and that [l]earners should become as aware
of the how of their learning as they are of the what (pg2). I can honestly say that I did not
understand how I learned until several years of university work when I was being taught
different learning styles during my coursework for my Bachelors of Education.
Through the perspective of a beginning educator, I have been instructed and
encouraged to evaluate students using the integration of assessment and instruction from the
very beginning. Assessment of, for and as learning was a topic in a majority of my education
courses and evaluating students progress in a variety of ways has been drilled into new
teachers so much so that assessment feels foreign in any other format. As a result of these two
experiences the changes I have witnessed in assessment in its practise and focus has been
demonstrated as a much more student influenced approach. Assessment in education now is
less about evaluating a students end product and basing their entire knowledge of a subject on
a few assignments and is instead focusing on having students and teachers work together to
create and assess assignments. The focus of assessment is beginning to practise more student
involvement with their learning, which suggested by Merrill, will improve students engagement
and achievement. This student influenced approach to assessment will allow students to
become a resource in their own learning through the use of self-assessment and feedback
throughout learning instead at the end. By students becoming a resource to their own learning
it aids teachers in becoming better educators as education begins to be less about what works
for most and more about what works for the individual.
Assessment focus and practise that I want to change in my own teaching would be
better developing my use of learning goals and success criteria. I find that when I am back in a
traditional setting of teaching I forget to include learning goals. My biggest weakness is that I
have them in my notes for lessons but forget to include them in my presentation of the lesson.
Not to create excuses, but a challenge I find in achieving a better practise in using learning
goals, is when I was last teaching at the gallery I wasnt in a set room or studio and my
classroom space was constantly shifted on me. Due to this constant shift in environment I never
had a set place to present information and often had to troubleshoot how I presented lesson
materials. Ways to improve my use of learning goals in this situation is to always carry chart
paper with me and write it on the very first chart paper for the lesson. Additionally, I can also
trying making the learning goal a handout that is given out at every lesson. A handout could
also work well as learning goals for individuals with IEPs could be made in consultation with the
student and addressed privately instead of posting it on a chart paper. If I can successfully add
learning goals to my lessons I will ensure that students have a better understanding of what
they are trying to learn and why it is important.
My second weakness in traditional teaching is success criteria, my experience with this
assessment tool as of this past year is minimal. My last teaching endeavor with the partnership
between the gallery and a downtown high school allowed me to test the waters of what
success criteria could look like. For this particular partnership I generally made the rubric and
assessment before giving students their assignment and would model what different levels
looked like and what I was asking students to produce to meet the expectations. However, for
my last assignment, I set students up with a substantial amount of ongoing feedback during
their experimenting and planning phases. Before students completed their final work for the
semester I asked them to help me build their success criteria and what they think they need to
do well on to meet the expectations. I chose to build the success criteria last to allow students
to get a feel for what where the expectations and what was considered valued to our class. I
found this process thought-provoking because a lot of students felt that handing something on
time should be a part of the criteria but I did not think I emphasised or stressed the importance
of deadlines during my course.
My goals for success criteria in this course situation is to make it an ongoing journey for
every assignment. I realized when I attempted this strategy the first time that students were
regurgitating expectations that they were marked on previously and werent able to break
down the lesson past those already built in bullet points. If I had a chance to do this course
again, I would start the semester off with building success criteria. I think asking students what
is important enough about this lesson that you get graded on it helps them also break down the
why they are learning something. With the success criteria and the learning goals becoming
better ingrained in my teaching I hope that students are able to take ownership, interest and
responsibility for their own learning and want to engage with it. My overall hope is to help
students be better learners, whether that is in media arts or in any other subject that I am
assigned to teach.