JESSICA WIEDEMANN
Innovate | Resonate | Educate

Assessment Philosophy

Assessment Philosophy

What is Assessment? What is its Aim?

Assessment, in the theoretical sense, , is the evaluation of something or someone’s abilities. It can also be thought of as the degree in which someone or something fulfills its purpose. In the practical sense, assessment is what the teacher decides is a just presentation of evidence of learning. This can take any form the teacher wishes. Due to the decisions being made by the teachers, there is a lot of possibility for bias to cloud the judgement of the teacher. The theoretical must influence the practical in order for the assessment to be logical and a reliable determination of learning. The aim of assessment is to quantify abilities or work into a figure that is easier to see in relation to others’ work or abilities. There needs to be some sort of quantifier of the evidence of learning in order to know how close or far a student is from hitting the goal of the lesson or the outcome in the curriculum.

What is the Relationship between Assessment, Classroom Environment, and Instructional Practices?

Assessment, classroom environment, and instructional practices are closely related because they are all centred around the student-teacher relationship. Assessment is linked to classroom environment in that it plays into the social structure of the classroom and imposes a nearly invisible social order that can dictate the manner in which the classroom functions. The type of assessment affects the way students respond to class work which can create deviations between students will different strengths, depending on the type of assessment. Further, assessment is almost one with the instructional practices of a teacher because there is an interdependence of both on the other. This mutual impact that assessment has on instructional practices and vice versa gives the teacher the ability to manipulate the classroom environment and its social order. As well, the classroom environment affects the instructional practices and the assessment being used in the classroom. The students affect the environment of the classroom as much if not more than the teacher does. This goes outside the fact that the teacher is outnumbered by the students. The students participate in an isolated society within the classroom which in some ways excludes the teacher because of the authority difference as well as a the generational difference. The interpersonal relationships between students can affect the instructional practices depending on whether the social interactions between students are positive or negative. An example would be the use of group work or partner work. If there is a student who is excluded from the collective group of the classroom, because of other students or themselves, there is potential for further exclusion is there is group work imposed as an assignment. This situation affects assessment as well due to the social aspect of a group project or partner work.

What is Important to Keep in Mind When Designing Assessment in the Classroom?

As touched upon above, there are multiple aspects of the classroom that are linked to assessment and as such, the teacher needs to be aware of what is going on socially in the classroom when designing assessment. Mainly the things that need to be kept in the mind of the teacher when creating assessment are consistency, transparency, and redeem-ability of assessment. An assessment should be consistent in that it has the same level of expectations of the students in relation to the demands on the students, not that there should be the same type of assessment over and over. Transparency in this context translates into the teachers openness about what is expected by the assessment. Giving students the tools for success in their assignments and learning gives them more agency in their learning. Along with transparency, the need for redeem-ability in assessment in order to give students the option and opportunity to redeem failures. This quality shows students that there isn’t just one shot at assignments and there are options.

Assessment in the classroom needs to be evidence of learning that accurately documents what was attempted to be taught in that lesson or that unit. The teacher needs to be aware of their own biases, their own experiences and understandings of what assessment means and how it can be done in the classroom.

“Education is not to be viewed as something like filling a vessel with water but, rather, assisting a flower to grow in its own way”

Bertrand Russell
Jessica Wiedemann

Jessica is a student at University of Regina. Her passion for helping others and advocacy for the prevention of bullying in schools has lead her to a career in education. She is a dog lover, photographer, and a food lover.

Make sure to comment below and follow her on social media, she loves to reach out and connect with you!

Saskatchewan Teacher’s Federation

Saskatchewan Teacher’s Federation

Each province has a teachers association or federation that represents the teachers of the province in negotiations about things like health and dental plans, salary, or pension plans. In Saskatchewan, there is the Saskatchewan Teacher’s Federation (STF).

Coming from Alberta and had been in the education program at the University of Alberta for a year, I know about the Alberta Teachers Associaton (ATA) and some of what they do for teachers in Alberta. These two committees work in the same ways to support teachers as the STF. Something I had wondered coming from Alberta to get my Education Degree in Saskatchewan is if I could transfer it back to Alberta if I decide I want to teach there instead of in Saskatchewan. I thought it would be this very complicated process and I would have to jump through hoops in order to be able to teach in my home province, but it is easier than I thought. All that needs to be done is to submit my transcripts to the ATA or the teachers federation of the province I want to teach in and they decide if the classes I have taken are equivalent to the ones required to get a teachers certificate in that province. If there are more classes needed then it would take more time in order to take those classes. I was surprised at how simple it could turn out to be.

Along with supporting teachers, there are requirements of the teachers that belong to these federations to be respectful and uphold a code of conduct and professionalism. These codes are extremely important for teachers to uphold due to the seriousness of the action against a teacher who does not follow the codes. Teachers can be tried in front of their peers or worse depending on the severity of the situation. Keeping the professionalism in this profession is extremely important because teachers work directly with children and the public. Teachers are public figures no matter the size of town or city they teach in or how popular they may be in the teaching community. Being a teacher is a responsibility to be in good standing with the public, the teaching federations, and conducting oneself professionally in the classroom and in public.

These federations and associations also give teachers opportunities to progress in their teaching development, support them with access to resources to help them teach their classes as well as to give them opportunities to expand their horizons by teaching in other countries. The STF showcases the Stewart Resources Centre as a library for teachers. There are links on their website for overseas opportunities like professional development in other countries.

Teachers need a higher governing body to help them get them with keeping working conditions, salaries, and benefits they need to be the best teachers they can be. There is a need for balance between what the teaching federations do for teachers and how the teachers represent the federations and their provinces.

Featured Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash.

Jessica Wiedemann

Jessica is a student at University of Regina. Her passion for helping others and advocacy for the prevention of bullying in schools has lead her to a career in education. She is a dog lover, photographer, and a food lover.

Make sure to comment below and follow her on social media, she loves to reach out and connect with you!

Altering Perspectives and Assumptions of Education

Altering Perspectives and Assumptions of Education

Being a teacher has a lot to do with the way that we orientate ourselves to teaching itself and to the world around us. In lecture, we talked about the impact our orientations have on our teachings as well as how we interact with others. This lead into the topics of grand narratives, the concept of learning spirit and assumptions of educational discourse.

The Grand Narrative

The grand narrative is defined by Jean-François Lyotard as “a totalizing, comprehensive account of various historical events, experiences, and social, cultural phenomena” and with this definition, there are biases and predigests that are intertwined with the teachings ins schools about where a country has come from and the events that have gone on in history. Much of the grand narrative I know was taught to me as the history of the country I live in. Coming to university has opened my eyes to the variety of different narratives that are in history. I grew up in a primarily white community and didn’t have much exposure to other cultures so for myself, the grand narrative seemed to make sense and there wasn’t much to question because there weren’t many people of different cultures present in my classrooms. Learning more about these other narratives will make me a better teacher because I will know how to integrate these other perspectives into my lessons. I will know how to change my orientation and my perspective on these narratives and what the grand narrative that I learned taught me about these other narratives.

Learning Spirit

Learning spirit is a concept introduced by Battiste (2017) which is the journey of learning. The idea is that there aren’t stages of learning or that there is a point where people are done learning, “learning is our purpose in life.” This idea supports the lifelong learner that the curriculum and teachers in past schooling have talked about. The holistic component of this idea increases the spirituality involved in learning and education. I mean not the spirituality of something like a religion, rather I mean the sense of self and the essence of someone’s being, their soul. One’s spirit of learning has more to do with their view of learning and how much they value it, what it means to someone.

5 Assumptions about Education

There were 5 assumptions about educational discourse presented in lecture:

  1. A belief in the existence of notions of change, thinking, learning, and mind
  2. Focus on the necessity of education
  3. A movement towards logic and advancement
  4. Particular knowledge as more important, more sophisticated, more legitimate
  5. The inferiority of particular people within education

Some of these assumptions have begun to change over the course of my education like the focus of the necessity of education, the particular knowledge is more important and the hierarchy of people in education. From seeing my other siblings graduate from high school it seems there are more young people choosing to pursue other types of careers rather than the traditional post-secondary educations like going to university. Another path they are taking is they simply take a year or more to find what they want from life and what kind of career they want to move towards. The assumption that there is a focus on the necessity of education is challenged and changing as more students choose to take alternate paths in their lives than the path directly to post-secondary education after high school. With the wider spread of knowledge from educations other than the traditional modes of education, there are more types of knowledge like personal experience that is still valid and in ways more reliable than traditional instruction. As new teachers are being educated there is more emphasis on the subjects other than science, math, and logic there is more emphasis in the real world on the arts and their value in education. With more teachers becoming educated about the incorrect, unjust, and prejudicial judgments these assumptions make there is a shift in these assumptions, and these assumptions are changing for the better.

Changing our perspectives on what types of education and historical information are valued is the beginning of further changes in education and prejudices that are in the world, but with the changing of these assumptions, are new assumptions made about education, if so what are they and are they negative or positive?

Featured Photo by Ross Findon on Unsplash.

Jessica Wiedemann

Jessica is a student at University of Regina. Her passion for helping others and advocacy for the prevention of bullying in schools has lead her to a career in education. She is a dog lover, photographer, and a food lover.

Make sure to comment below and follow her on social media, she loves to reach out and connect with you!

Excitement

Excitement

It is the beginning of my third week of winter semester 2018. This is my 5th semester of university and I have been to 3 different universities. Every new semester I wonder if I am ever going to start a new semester and not feel the same insane level of excitement for my new classes and the new knowledge I am going to learn. I know assignments, midterms and finals are going to be hard as usual, but I am always so happy to be back at school. It doesn’t matter what classes I am taking or how hard I know they are going to be I am always super excited to be learning new things and opening up my mind.

This is my desk in my dorm room at school (right after I cleaned and organized it, it doesn’t look like this on a normal day).

What are you most excited about for the new school semester?

Featured Photo by Kimson Doan on Unsplash.

Jessica Wiedemann

Jessica is a student at University of Regina. Her passion for helping others and advocacy for the prevention of bullying in schools has lead her to a career in education. She is a dog lover, photographer, and a food lover.

Make sure to comment below and follow her on social media, she loves to reach out and connect with you!

The Tyler Rationale: Is tradition holding education back?

The Tyler Rationale: Is tradition holding education back?

In the reading for this week, The Social Efficiency Ideology by Michael Schiro, the Tyler Rationale on the development of curriculum was discussed. The Tyler rationale is probably very familiar, but you may not realize it is. Learning objectives, evaluations, separation into grades, and standardized tests. These are a few developments that have come out of the Tyler Rationale. In the lecture, we learned that Ralph Tyler was a behavioural psychologist. He was also considered the “father of assessment and evaluation.”

 

The Tyler Rationale was a very influential part of my elementary education and it continued into my secondary school time as well. Provincial Achievement Tests (PAT’s) were a part of my education in grades 3, 6, and 9. PAT’s were taken by students every three years starting in grade 3. These tests were to see where the province was in terms of academic achievement. This concept most likely came indirectly from the ideas that Tyler had on what education should lead to. An example from my past education was when there were attempts at changing the grading of students. Instead of using percentages or letter grades like A, B, C where new letter grades that were used like E for excellent and P for proficient and L for lacking. The school was attempting to be less like the classic way of education and evaluating. They wanted to be more inclusive of all students and their academic levels. Coming back to common sense, many parents (mine included) were resistant to this change because it was different than the way it had always been done. “We had normal grading systems when I was in school,” “this is so weird,” “what does that even mean,” my parents would say to me when I should them my E on my math homework. Commonsense is going to be a hard wall to break through when trying to change the ways of educating and evaluating future students.

 

There are some major limitations in the Tyler Rationale. For example, the idea that all students are to be cut into uniform cookie cutter people is limiting on the potential for diversity. There is no room for creativity to grow and diversity to be explored. With this rationale young people are to be just like every other adult. This leads to students feeling as though they don’t belong or that they are not “what they are supposed to be.” People of minorities such as race, gender and sexuality could be impacted greatly by this concept. Tyler is trying to fit everyone into a box, but what if someone doesn’t if nicely and neatly into that box? They are likely to feel as though they are excluded and they are othered by society. Making the “perfect adult” is not the goal of educators. The goal, is rather, to give young people tools to help them through their adult lives which are specialized to each different individual. Some tools may apply to wide ranges of aspects of adult life while others are very much individual for the type of job, family structure, or life a student wants to live.

 

Tyler’s Rationale isn’t completely ineffective. His four questions for creating a curriculum are extremely helpful in the creation process. For example, his first question, which is noted in the reading, “What educational purposes should the school seek to attain” is a valid process in finding experiences and knowledge that students would benefit from knowing. In order to know what knowledge should be taught there needs to be somewhere to start or a baseline. In general, the four questions are very useful in finding the type of education and knowledge young people should be practising before coming into society. The idea that all young people should become the same type of adult is the ineffective aspect of this rationale.

 

Tyler’s thoughts and ideas about curriculum have been around for a long time, but does the sense of tradition make his ideas still valid and effective in this time period? Are there other ways to achieve what he set out to achieve? Would there be a need to completely recreate the system of curriculum or could there be a hybrid created of Tyler’s Rationale and a new system?

Featured Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash.

Jessica Wiedemann

Jessica is a student at University of Regina. Her passion for helping others and advocacy for the prevention of bullying in schools has lead her to a career in education. She is a dog lover, photographer, and a food lover.

Make sure to comment below and follow her on social media, she loves to reach out and connect with you!