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Course Description
Student Assessment in any historical period, at any level of education, and in any type of school or institution of learning is difficult, challenging, and fraught with subjectivities. Present-day educational consciousness is broadening to embrace diversity in all its forms, seeking the varied expressions that students use to communicate their ways of knowing and learning to their teachers. This provides teachers with a challenge the breadth and depth of which we have not experienced before. It calls to us to rise to the challenge.
This one credit module will guide you through an examination of the many facets of this challenge. You will examine the specific as well as the overall importance assessment plays in a student's search for knowledge and direction in their educational and work lives. Facilitating this examination will be access to multi-media resources which will aid you in your reflection and your learning experience. You will have the opportunity to integrate this information into your own knowledge base, and make application to your practicum. A Capstone project utilizing what you have learned, as well as usage of mastery application skills for your practicum serve as the culmination of this learning experience.
Course Content
- Determining the current performance level of one's students with respect to learning goals for a unit of instruction.
- Determining content, skills, and processes that will assist students in accomplishing desired unit outcomes, and design learning activities that lead to their mastery.
- Communicating learning outcomes to be achieved and focus student interest on tasks to be accomplished.
- Monitoring the engagement of students in learning activities, and the progress they are making, to determine if the pace or content of instruction needs to be modified to assure that all students accomplish lesson and unit objectives.
- Selecting and/or developing tests, performance measures, observation schedules, student interviews, or other formal or informal assessment procedures that are valid and reliable to determine the progress of all students including those from diverse cultural or ethnic backgrounds.
- Documenting student progress in accomplishing State and district standards, prepare data summaries that show this progress to others, and inform students, supervisors, and parents about progress in learning.
- Evaluating student progress in learning and refine plans for instruction -- or establish alternative goals or environments, or make appropriate referrals - when a student's progress in learning is less than desired.
Capstone Activity
Reflect on the hierarchy of assessment which you are engaged in as a part of your involvement with the teacher licensure program; the state, this program, the mentor-supervisor, you as a teacher-student, and your students. From the bottom level of this hierarchy, we have no way of knowing what "assessment" is applied to our students within their own peer-groups, families, or communities. Reflect on the fact that assessment is a "valuation" of performance, content, progress, and knowledge at all levels. If the student performs poorly, the teacher appears to perform poorly.
Think about those doing the assessment and those being assessed up and down the hierarchy. All students know they are subjected to constant evaluation. All teachers know they are as well. Develop an assessment strategy, aligning the assessment with the activity. Ask yourself: what the relationship should there be between an integrated curriculum and assessment?. What is the relationship between tasks, assessment, and standards, and from this try to determine what constitutes authentic assessment for this/these tasks, processes, and applications.
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Professional Technical Education