This week’s readings were regarding the specific assessment tool of rubrics through the articles “What are Rubrics? And Why are They Important?” by S. M. Brookhart, “Teaching With Rubrics: The Good the Bad and the Ugly” by Heidi Goodrich Andrade, and “Speaking my Mind: The Trouble With Rubrics” by Alfie Kohn. From these articles, keeping my understanding of transference in mind as well as my experiences with assessment and evaluation in my own schooling I began to consider the ways in which different assessment methods benefit different students, and how I will assess students in my own classroom.
Some assessment tools in my experiences with schooling resulted in resistance, rubrics were often a part of this reaction. For the most part, my teachers in high school would provide us assignments without showing us the assessment tool. The first time that we would have any contact with the tool that would be used to assess us would be upon receiving our grade and marked comments. This often resulted in resistance from all of my classmates, and rightly so. Especially this year I have begun to think more regarding the pairing of assessments and assessment tools, and the ways in which students benefit from understanding all of the requirements and the criteria for success. As a teacher, I will ensure to hand out the assessment and assessment tool together at all times, as a result of the resistance my past teachers have faced from the lack of sincere and authentic assessment methods and lack of clear instruction.
In my experience as a student teacher and pre-service teacher, I have struggled immensely with being asked to engage with less traditional forms of assessment, due to my past in schooling that tended to use those same traditional forms that I am now intending to step away from. People often tend towards what they are comfortable with, so I need to practice in being comfortable with the uncomfortable in my teaching methods and forms of assessment to create more authentic practices. The principles that underlie assessment that are at play here would likely be the Positivist Epistemology of Learning, and the Behaviourist Theories of Learning because I am tending towards that traditional method for the comfort of knowing what is expected in that style. I think that the experiences I have had with practicing in creating a variety of forms of assessments was uncomfortable and frustrating because of my lack of understanding of what a “proper assessment method” actually looks like. I find that as a learner, which I still describe myself as even as a pre-service teacher and still will be as a working teacher, I work best by seeing what is expected of me clearly laid out and explained, while also being represented in examples. Without having that “thing” to base my assessment tool off of, I struggle in the creativity needed to come up with that modern, effective assessment method. In my future practice as an educator, I will work well and push past my struggles in assessment through collaboration, and relying on my available resources and colleagues. Teaching is not an isolated profession, and I intend to work closely with my colleagues and fellow teacher friends in order to strengthen the areas that I am currently lacking.
Alex MacPherson 