Generative Unit Assessment: Authenticity in Mathematics Classroom Assessment Practices

P Janelle Mcfeetors,Richelle Marynowski,Alexandra Candler

doi:10.3390/educsci11070366

P Janelle Mcfeetors, Richelle Marynowski + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11070366

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Abstract

In our pursuit to broaden and deepen understandings of what it means to engage in an assessment activity, we explored the designing and implementing of a geometry performance task as an instantiation of authentic assessment to assess elementary school students’ mathematics learning. Using participatory action research, we incorporated a performance task as an end-of-unit assessment with grade 4/5 students. We found that the authenticity within what we are calling a generative unit assessment, is understood as a process that is dynamic in contrast to conventional unit tests. We established an innovative assessment practice that emerged from the student and teacher data and is illustrated through four features applicable to any content area. Through collaborative discussions and the ensuing creation of a generative unit assessment, we found spaces to authentically understand ontological growth and continual learning through assessment.

Highlights

For over 20 years, calls to shift classroom assessment practices have been made by researchers and practitioners
It enabled a process-oriented task where students were actively demonstrating their mathematical thinking and was multifaceted, so Alexandra could gain multiple perspectives into students’ mathematical thinking. Alexandra explained in her interview that her students “learned a lot from [the performance assessment] as opposed to something you’re performing,” leading us to question the metaphor of performance that invokes a highly polished product to many students who participate in extracurricular activities such as dance or music, where the pinnacle accomplishment is a perfected display of competency
Through our ongoing collaborative discussions about the particular performance assessment and our ensuing creation of generative unit assessment as a novel approach, we marvel at the spaces that can be found to authentically understand students’ mathematical thinking and encourage continual learning within a constrained system

Summary

Introduction

For over 20 years, calls to shift classroom assessment practices have been made by researchers and practitioners. Andrade [3] recognized that classroom assessment practices have long been influenced by traditions, such as program evaluation and psychometrics, and that a change to a focus on learning needs to occur. Assessment has been viewed as transactional, where students give while teachers take and teachers “pay” through giving marks while students take on the labels the marks dictate. This conception of assessment perpetuates an “authoritative relationship between the assessor (the knower) and the assessee (the learner)” [2] This conception of assessment perpetuates an “authoritative relationship between the assessor (the knower) and the assessee (the learner)” [2] (p. 1479), where the assessor is considered an expert and the assessee is a novice

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