Every educator faces adverse conditions within their professions. These challenges can cripple a teacher, which is why most teachers that leave the field do so in the first couple of years of their career. Programs across the country have been put into place to combat these issues in education, but ultimately the responsibility lies on the individual teacher. They must ultimately decide in which direction they want to go while dealing with their challenges that affect them day in and day out in the classroom.
Assessments have always been an issue with my own instruction. I never was taught a truly efficient way to assess students. I have been in many seminars and workshops that use the popular words of summative and formative, peer and self reflections, and many other terms to get the attention of paying administrators. Through all of this no one has truly affected the way that I deal with assessments. Most of what they teach is for the perfect student, and as we often see, those are far and few between.
Looking at a couple of articles has expanded my thought on assessments, and I would like to focus on one in particular. Thomas Guskey explains how corrective teaching, along with reassessments can ultimately lend themselves to a greater chance for success (Guskey, 2003). The first assessment can be as basic as a test, but corrective teaching is the key to the lesson. By taking the information and the feedback from the assessments and relaying the weaknesses to the students a teacher can then focus on what is truly the issue at hand, whether it is comprehension, articulation, or a general lack of understanding by the student.
The one issue of a reassessment is the replication of an old assessment. I have seen teachers use reassessment as a tool but they do not modify the second assessment. This does nothing for the student and skews the feedback to the teacher. If we are truly trying to discern application of knowledge, it must be in multiple situations. After the corrective teaching, the second assessment must go one step, even if it a baby step, farther that the first assessment. It cannot just be a regurgitation of the first assessment.
Allowing the students to show improvement in a specific subject can also lend themselves to more confidence with the next level of material they are exposed to. As most concepts are pyramid steps of the previous content, students must have the lower levels of knowledge to refer to in order to fully comprehend the new material. The previous content must have reached an application level of cognition in order to easily move forward.
All in all I discovered that is was not the assessments that I had trouble with, but rather the use of that assessment. Corrective teaching and reassessments will definitely help myself to build a more concrete foundation for my students and will help them build upon the critical thinking skills that we are ultimately trying to teach them. I feel that this process, implemented over the course of an entire unit, will aid the student in a fully comprehensive base of knowledge that they can apply to all of the following units of study.
