EDUCATIONAL
PSYCHOLOGY
REFLECTION FOR ACTION
Canadian Edition
O’Donnell, D’Amico, Schmid, Reeve, Smith
CHAPTER 13
Classroom Assessment
Chapter 13 Classroom Assessment
• Themes of the chapter
– Classroom assessments inform teachers about
student progress
– Assessments promote the notion that classroom
assessment is not just assessment of learning
– Classroom assessments should be assessments for
learning
– Standardized and standards-based tests are an
integral part of schools
– There are benefits gained from using such
assessments as well as problems associated with
them
– There are controversies associated with
standardized testing
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
Guiding Questions
• What is the role of assessment in the
instructional process?
• How can teachers devise assessments that
facilitate instruction and at the same time
provide information about students’ progress?
• Of the many options teachers have for
assessment, which are the best?
• How can a teacher develop a grading system
that is fair and that lets students take
responsibility for their own learning?
• How can assessment help students learn
about their own strengths and weaknesses?
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
Guiding Questions
• How can teachers continually improve
assessment and grading practices?
• How can teachers create and modify
assessments to include learners who face
special challenges?
• How do cultural differences among students
and their parents affect the process of
communicating progress?
• What are standardized assessments, and
where did they come from?
• How can a teacher make sense of the
statistics and scales that come with these
measures?
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
Guiding Questions
• What is the best way to interpret standardized
test scores?
• How concerned should teachers be about
issues of reliability and validity?
• How can teachers fairly assess students with
learning and physical challenges?
• How do teachers ensure that assessment is
equally fair for students from different cultural
backgrounds?
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
Assessment for Instruction:
Roles, Goals, and Audiences
• Assessment – the process of determining
what students know and can do
• Assessment identifies areas for growth
and improvement
• Assessment should address the needs of
students, parents, other educators, and
the teacher
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
Student, Parent, and Teacher
Concerns in Assessment
• Student concerns:
– Is test/quiz/activity going to be fun?
– Am I going to do well on it?
– How am I going to do in comparison to other
students?
– How will it affect my grade?
– How will it be graded?
– How will it affect what the teacher thinks of me?
– How much work is it going to be?
– If I work hard on it, will I succeed?
– Will being successful be worth the effort?
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
Student, Parent, and Teacher
Concerns in Assessment
• Parent concerns:
– How is my child doing?
– What can I do to help?
– What are my child’s strengths and
weaknesses?
– How is my child getting along socially?
– How is my child doing compared to the
other children (in the class, in the school, in
the nation)?
– Is my child working up to his/her potential?
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
Student, Parent, and Teacher
Concerns in Assessment
• Teacher concerns
– Which assessment option would work best in this
situation?
– When should assessment take place – before,
during, or after instruction?
– How can this assessment promote students’
ability to evaluate their own progress?
– How well does it match the statewide standards
or assessment?
– How will I communicate the results to students
and parents?
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Student, Parent, and Teacher
Concerns in Assessment
• Teacher concerns (continued)
– How much work will it take to construct or
select the assessment and to grade it?
– How is this assessment related to others in
the class?
– How can students learn that they need to
work more in this area without making them
feel like failures?
– What if the results are really poor?
– How can this information improve
instruction?
– Should this assessment count as part of
the students’ grades?
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Student, Parent, and Teacher
Concerns in Assessment
• Other Audiences and Areas of Concern
– Teachers must also consider other
audiences who receive and use
assessment information, e.g. universities
use high school transcripts to make
admission decisions
• Diversity among students and their parents
– Students and their parents come from
diverse backgrounds, which can influence
students’ performance
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Formative and Summative
Assessment
• Formative – an assessment designed to
inform teachers and students about
student learning and to help improve
instruction Given prior to or during
instruction
• Information the teacher can use to form
forthcoming instruction
• Information used to summarize students’
strengths and weaknesses
• Not graded
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
Formative and Summative
Assessment
• Summative – assessment designed to
summarize student achievement
• Given after the conclusion of
instruction/lesson
• Information the teacher can use to
evaluate what students accomplished
• Information used to diagnose what
students have accomplished
• Graded
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Principles of Assessment and
Grading
Communication
• Make assessment and grading explicit
• Communicate it to the students
• Use the communication from students not
only to tailor instruction, but also to let
students know that they are listening
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
Principles of Assessment and
Grading
Fairness: assessment or grade is just
• Validity – appropriateness of judgments
about students based on assessment
information
• Reliability – consistency over an aspect of
assessment, such as over time and
multiple raters
• Bias – systematic unfair treatment of a
particular group of individuals
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
Principles of Assessment and
Grading
Student Growth
• Are based on instructional goals and the
instruction that follows those goals (valid)
• Provide students ample opportunity and
variety of assessment formats to show
what they can do (reliable)
• Allow all students to demonstrate their
achievement equally (free from bias)
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Student Growth Principle
• Assessment and grading should
enhance the instructional process and
lead to student growth
• Assessments should be engaging and
rewarding to students
• Rapid feedback should be focused on
improvement
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Options for Assessment
Recognition format
• Multiple choice – item format consisting of
a stem (questions), a right answer, and a
set of wrong answers (distractions)
• Matching – item format that involves
generating two sets of objects that are to
be linked together
• True/False
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Options for Assessment
Generative format
• Constructed response – format in which
the student has to provide the answer to
the question (also called short answer
format)
• Essay tests
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Options for Assessment
Alternative formats
• Authentic assessment – tightly related to
the instruction that the students have
received or to tasks that are relevant in
real life
• Alternative assessment – assessments
that are different from traditional
approaches such as recognition formats
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Alternative Formats
• Performance assessments – students generate
a product or an actual performance that reflects
what they have learned
– Objectivity in scoring: not having a direct interest
or bias
– Products: student creations that reflect their
skills and abilities as well a their ability to create
something new
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Alternative Formats
• Portfolios – collection of students’ work
over time that allows for assessment of the
development of their skills
• Journals – running set of thoughts,
responses to prompts, and reflections that
students have concerning their learning in
a particular area
• Informal assessments – activities used to
get a quick and rough idea of student
progress
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Your Turn
• Imagine that you have just graded an
assessment for your class
• The students did much worse than
expected; only the two best students in the
class did well— very well
• What might have gone wrong? How can
you find out what happened, and how to
avoid repeating this situation?
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Developing and Using Assessments
•
•
•
•
•
Determining what to assess
Rubrics
Determining the best assessment format
Assessing students with special needs
Administering, scoring, and
communicating assessment results
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
Determining What to Assess
• Achievement target – well-specified
statements of what teachers want to
accomplish in a particular lesson or set of
lessons
• Test blueprint – statement of what a test will
comprise, often in outline form
• Content/behaviour matrix – method for
specifying what is to be assessed by making
a matrix with expected student behaviours
on one axis and the content on which that
behaviour will be observed on the other axis
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
Rubrics
• Rubrics – explications of the criteria for a
performance assessment or an essay that
include specifications for how various
levels of performance are to be graded
– Criteria: specifications of what is expected
of a student on an assessment
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Determining the Best Assessment
Format
• Assessment should be closely linked to
instruction
– Consider the appropriateness of alternatives
to a specific goal
– Consider the time and effort needed to build,
administer, grade, and communicate the
results to students
– Provincially-based curricula influence
instruction but do not dictate day-to-day goals
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
Assessing Students with
Special Needs
• Individualized education program (IEP) –
educational and behavioural intervention
plan for a student with special needs
• IEP guide teachers regarding
accommodations, i.e., changes made in an
assessment for students with disabilities
within an established curriculum
• Modifications – changes made in an
assessment for students with disabilities
reflecting a different grade level
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Administering, Scoring, and
Communicating Assessment Results
• Administering assessments
– When appropriate, specify and follow time
limits
– Students should be quiet, and distractions
minimized
– For projects/presentations, specify due dates
– Consider possible exceptions
• Giving feedback
– Feedback must accurately reflect how well the
student has done
– Be specific; students need to know exactly
what they have done
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
Administering, Scoring, and
Communicating Assessment Results
• Student Conferences
– Involve communication in both directions
– Allows for finding common ground
– Allows for misunderstandings to be cleared
up
– Allows for elaboration of issues
• Prepare for conferences by reviewing
student work
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Interpreting Classrooms
Assessments
• Comparing performance with expectations
– Look at assessment results for the class
– Data-based determinations of next steps
• Reflecting on assessments to improve
them
– How do the results look?
– What did I expect? Were there surprises?
– How did students respond to the
assessment? Did they find it useful?
– How can I improve this assessment?
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Developing a Grading System
Options for grading systems
– Grading options at the primary level
• Exceeds expectations
• Meets requirements
• Needs improvement
– Grading options at the upper elementary
and middle school levels
• Letter grades
– Grading options at the secondary level
• Five point scale corresponding to A – F
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Developing a Grading System
Record keeping for grading
– Record keeping with technology
– Help students develop a sense of
responsibility for their grades
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Communicating with Parents
• Parent/teacher conferences – primary form
of teacher-to-parent communication
• Maintaining communication
– Course grades
(assessments, quizzes, reports)
– Unexcused absences
– Missed assignments
– Disciplinary concerns
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Standardized Assessment
• A measure of student ability in which all
students take the same measure under the
same conditions
• Can be useful to inform educational process
• Policy decisions can also be informed by
standardized tests
• Teachers need to be concerned with
provincial achievement at set grade levels
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Categories of Assessments
Three widely used categorization:
• Norm and Criterion Referencing
– Criterion-referenced: method for
understanding what assessment scores
mean by referring them to some arbitrary
standard
– Norm-referenced: scores that are given
meaning by referring them to other
individuals or sets of individuals)
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
Categories of Assessments
• Achievement, Aptitude, and Affective Tests
– Is test assessing past achievement or
predicting future achievement?
– Assessment also includes how people
learn, how they feel about themselves, how
motivated they are, and what they do and
do not like to do
• Affective assessments – assessment
related to feelings, motivation, attitudes, and
opinions
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
Categories of Assessments
• Classify assessments using the following:
–
–
–
–
Normative vs. summative
Formative vs. summative
Achievement vs. aptitude vs. affective
Traditional vs. alternative
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
Technical Issues in Assessment
• Statistics used in assessment
– Central tendency: Mean, median, mode
– Variability: Variance and standard
deviations
– Z-scores
– Normal distribution
– Use statistics to look at groups of scores
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Scales
• Raw scores – simple sums of the points
obtained on an assessment
• Scaled scores – scores transformed into an
arbitrary numbering system in order to
facilitate interpretation
• Percentiles – indicates what percentage of
the national norming sample performed less
well than the score in question
• Grade-equivalent scores – scores that are
reported in terms of how well children did in
the norming study at various grade levels
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
Your Turn
• Your school has received the results of a
standardized test
• You are scheduled to present the
information to parents
• Describe how you will present the results
to them
• What scores would you tell them about?
How would you explain what the scores
mean?
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Norms and Equating
• Norms – a set of tables based on a
representative administration of an
assessment that makes it possible to
show how well particular students did
compared to other samples of students
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Setting Passing and Other
Proficiency Scores
• Passing scores – scores that one
needs to obtain or exceed in order to
pass the assessment, also known as
cut scores or mastery scores
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Validity and Reliability in Context
• Validity – the degree to which conclusions
about students based on their assessment
scores are justified and fair; correspondence
between what an assessment measures and
what was taught
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Validity and Reliability in Context
• Establish validity by:
– Having experts review assessment to ensure
what is measured is what is intended (content
validity evidence)
– Statistically relating scores from the measure with
other indicators of the same ability (criterionrelated validity evidence)
– Conducting research studies where assessments
are hypothesized to demonstrate results based on
theories of what the assessments measure
(construct validity evidence)
• Consequential validity – concern for how the
assessment will affect the person taking it
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Validity and Reliability in Context
• Reliability – consistency over an aspect
of assessment, such as over time or over
multiple raters; having enough
information about students on which to
base judgments
• Not the assessment’s reliability that must
be proven but the reliability of the
application of the assessment
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
Validity and Reliability in Context
Reliability (continued)
• Split-half reliability – form of reliability
coefficient, similar to coefficient alpha, that
takes half of the items on an assessment,
sums them into a score, then correlates that
score with a score based on the other half of
the items
• Reliability coefficient – index, ranging from
.00 up to 1.00, of how reliable an
assessment is
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
Interpreting Standardized
Assessments
• Find the child in the data
• Demystify the assessment report
• Combine standardized results with other
information
– Work from the top down
– Make and test hypotheses about the child
• Bring the child into the classroom, i.e., fit
the child’s strengths, weaknesses, and
goals into classroom environment
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
Interpreting Standardized
Assessments
• Think about the classroom, school, and
school board levels
• Look at scores for second language
learners
• Look at scores for students with special
needs
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Controversies in Assessment
• Bias in testing
– Test bias: the degree to which the
scores from an assessment take on
different meanings when obtained by
individuals from different groups
– The language the test is in may not be
the first language of those being
assessed; understanding of what is
required during assessment may be
affected
Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition
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