Student Involvement in Assessment

 by Lin Rongchan

“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”

~ Benjamin Franklin

The primary purpose of assessment is to support learners in their learning and help them realize their potential. However, teachers are typically perceived to be the ones wielding power while students are at the mercy of an assessment system that judges them critically. As we shift towards a socio-cultural approach in the classroom, the role of learners in education is brought to the foreground (see James, 2008). Instead of being in a passive and vulnerable position, learners are empowered to participate actively in assessment.

In this issue, we focus on how to better serve learners by involving them in assessment practices. This topic is an extension of our discussion on assessment for learning (AfL) and students' feedback literacy in our last issue. In the Focus section, I discuss my views on enhancing students' assessment literacy and share my personal enactment of engaging learners in assessment practices. 

Subsequently, in the Featured section, we showcase colleagues’ efforts in involving students in different assessment contexts. We begin with a brochure on engaging students through feedback practices shared by Dr. Tay Hui Yong (Senior Lecturer, National Institute of Education) and Dr. Lam Wei Ling Karen (Master Specialist, Ministry of Education). This brochure is based on the findings of their research project led by Dr. Kelvin Tan (Associate Professor, National Institute of Education). Following this, Mr. Jerric Woo Wai Hoong (HOD/Science, Chua Chu Kang Primary School) shares a video on AfL in Science during Home-based Learning (HBL). Additionally, Dr. Chan Kwong Tung (Senior Specialist, Ministry of Education) and Dr. Kwek Siew Hoon (Principal Master Teacher, Academy of Singapore Teachers/ Singapore Centre for Chinese Language) share with us Chinese language teachers’ endeavors in implementing learning-oriented assessment (LOA) in the language classroom. Finally, Miss Nithiyah Sokumaran (Teacher, Grace Orchard School) discusses the effect of different types of feedback on self-regulated learning in a special educational needs (SEN) context. 

As part of our efforts to involve students and course participants in our professional endeavors, we also take this opportunity to showcase the work by one of our MLS participants, Ms. Lim Shi’en Shawna (HOD/Economics, St. Andrew’s Junior College). In her video, Shawna draws on her course learning to discuss potential enhancement on feedback practices and subsequently puts forth her proposed ideas on leading assessment change in her department.

Additionally, I would like to highlight two changes to our editorial board. First, Miss. Haslinda Binte Ismail has left our team and I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to her for the strong support that she has rendered to our bulletin. Second, we welcome Dr. Chue Kah Loong (Lecturer, National Institute of Education) to the AFAL executive committee. You will read about Kah Loong’s areas of expertise in our exclusive interview with him in this issue. Kah Loong’s involvement in our bulletin further strengthens our efforts in viewing assessment-related matters from diverse perspectives, thereby extending and enriching our conversations.

On this note, we are also interested in involving you, our valued readers, to join us in discussing matters raised in this issue. What are your thoughts on student involvement in assessment? Do you have any useful strategies to share with us? Or do you have any questions for our contributors? We would love to hear from you at our post-publication conversation on 27 August 2021 (Friday), 3pm-4pm. If you are interested in joining us, please register here.

With that, I leave you to enjoy this issue.  Thank you!

Cheers,

Rongchan

PS: It is unclear whether the quote cited at the beginning of the article should be attributed to Benjamin Franklin as some may trace it to a quote by Confucian philosopher, Xunzi. A rough translation of the related Chinese quote is: "Not hearing is not as good as hearing, hearing is not as good as seeing, seeing is not as good as knowing, knowing is not as good as acting; learning continues until it is translated to action." Regardless of the source of the quote, I believe you will agree with me that true learning cannot occur without students’ active participation.

References

James, M. (2008). Assessment and learning. In S. Swaffield (Ed.), Unlocking assessment: Understanding                  for reflection and application (pp. 20–35).Routledge.

Assessment Fit for Learner

by Kelvin Tan 

2020 has often been punned as the year of perfect vision. Yet, our 2020 annus horribilis gave us a world wide crisis that no one could have envisioned. All our planning and contingency plans could not work, initially, for a scenario no one had predicted. Perhaps it challenges our assumptions about how and whether we can design and ensure long term learning into the future.

How can we prepare for something that we cannot predict?

For a start, what we can do is examine how we have lulled and constrained our learners to unduly privilege and be dependent on certainty and predictability in schools. Assessment would be a logical place to begin examining this in education. Many assessment practices prioritise and reward certainty and replicability. For example, should marking schemes for exact anticipated answers be relooked? And should predictive validity matter so much?

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global phenomenon that has disrupted or even damaged lives and livelihoods. The ensuing changes have drastically altered the foundations and fundamentals of every country’s socio-economic-political systems, and Singapore is no exception. Much of the focus in many countries turned to providing alternatives for large scale and high stakes examinations. The use of algorithms to derive comparable student examination scores from previous school based assessments did not seem to inspire pubic trust and confidence in several countries. Instead, the consequent derived scores reflected vast disparities in student achievement according to socio-economic demographics.

A needful and urgent response is to prepare and provide alternatives to large scale examinations that is reliant on physically proximal invigilation. But addressing examination security is perhaps symptomatic of a deeper chronic issue. Why is society so reliant on examinations despite its obvious limitations? And by identifying (only) large scale national assessments to be ‘high stakes assessment’, do we imply that little or nothing is at stake in all other assessments?

What is at stake in assessment beyond examinations, and what is at stake in Assessment for Learning for our learners? There is no better time to ponder how and how well assessment, especially Assessment for Learning, has been supporting and serving our learners. It should not be enough for assessment to generally (or worse vaguely) support learning. Nor should it be good enough for enacting practices ‘in the spirit of formative assessment’ without ensuring that learners have been helped to achieve desired learning outcomes. And because assessment serves different and sometimes conflicting purposes, it would not suffice for discrete instances of assessment to serve a single purpose.

In this issue, we are pleased to feature research and educators who have sought to understand and use assessment to serve all learners. For Assessment to be fit for all learners, we would have to understand the diversity of our learners, be strategic and selective in our choice of practices, be patient in our implementation and approaches, and be encouraged by the great many educators in Singapore who have worked tirelessly for all their learners.

We begin with a current research on assessment feedback in secondary schools that reveals how students engage with written feedback. We learn that feedback should engage our learners cognitively, behaviourally and affectively in order to optimise their reception and responses to feedback. Following that, Rachel Goh outlines, with feedback artifacts, three big ideas for assessment to support and develop all learners in their learning gaps, and beyond.

Of course, teachers’ assessment literacy is important as well, and recognizing teachers as learners goes a long way towards equipping educators with the means and the community to learn about assessment. Riverside Secondary School’s journey in 2020 describes a bespoke and strategic approach that focused on using AfL to pursue and ensure evidence of students’ learning outcomes.

However well intended our efforts to teach all our charges, we will inevitably come across students with rather different, perhaps even special, learning needs. Siti Asjamiah’s observations of dyslexic students’ reception and responses to home based learning and feedback is instructive and insightful. It challenges us to broaden our skill set and deepen our pedagogical patience and compassion for students who learn in very different ways.

Likewise, Michelle Yap explains in her video how AfL in Music should be tailored for students, whilst Karima Syahirah and Adeline Wang argues for AfL and student feedback literacy in secondary and primary schools respectively. How do we know if our assessment is fit for learners? One way is to hear what our learners have to say about our efforts in their own voice.

In that context, it is our pleasure to kick off our special issue of AFAL on “Assessment fit for Learners” by featuring a video on two special learners, Heather, now a Primary 3 student from Chua Chu Kang Primary School, and her teacher Mrs Karyn Hon.

We want to recognize you, our readers, as fellow learners in AfL too. That means we are interested in engaging with you beyond the content of our bulletin, and hearing your thoughts and questions. A good way would be for you to zoom with the contributors of this issue on 1 April 2021, from 3-4pm. Please register your interest here, and let us know if you would like to meet any of our contributors in particular.

Finally, let me share something to encourage all of us in this exciting and challenging year ahead: “If you do not make time for your wellness, you will be forced to make time for your illness”. Please do everything you can to ensure your well being as a learner, so that you can discharge your complete capacity as a teacher. Don’t continue on a depleting tank until you find yourselves running on empty. May you find within this bulletin stories, ideas, and encouragement that is fit for you in your capacity as a learner.

Contents in the latest issue

From the Editor

Our bulletin has evolved through the many years it has been around – first as an email attachment with just text to a pdf with photos and most recently, a change in name. In this issue, we venture to make this bulletin more interactive and involve multi-media to make it a richer experience for our readers. More importantly, the editorial board now includes both NIE faculty and practitioners like yourself (see below). Apart from giving valuable input to shape the direction of this bulletin, they also contribute articles. In this issue, we are delighted to have Shynn Lim and Michelle Foo (a teacher at Chua Chu Kang Pri) share their experiences on catering to the different needs in their classes during the 4 weeks of Home-Based Learning (HBL).

We welcome new members to our editorial board
(from left to right)
Mrs Sheree Chong, Principal, Chua Chu Kang Primary
Mdm Linda Yeo, Vice-Principal, Riverside Secondary
Ms Shynn Lim, HOD Character & Citizenship Education,
Juying Secondary
Mdm Siti Asjamiah Binte Asmuri, Senior Educational Therapist, Dyslexia Association of Singapore

This issue features Differentiated Instruction (DI). Along with Assessment Literacy, it is an area prioritised for professional development in the next few years. As such, the topic is timely and we hope that the discussion here will help shed some light on the practical issues faced by teachers. More importantly, DI is an important area that has implications beyond just competency but our beliefs on educating all learners. We hope to prompt reflections not just on the “How” but the “Why” through the articles we have lined up:
   -An exposition on DI (how it is linked to assessment)
   -Sharing by teachers on their DI practices

This is in addition to our usual features (news of events, noteworthy assignments, recommended readings and coming conferences) that have been the staple of previous bulletins.

We hope this issue will be helpful and a provocative start to thinking about differentiation to serve all learners.

Tay Hui Yong