Читать книгу The New Art and Science of Classroom Assessment - Robert J Marzano - Страница 6

Preface

This book is part of a series of books that focus on the The New Art and Science of Teaching framework (Marzano, 2017). That framework presents current research, theory, and practice regarding classroom pedagogy across various subject areas such as writing, reading, mathematics, and science within three general categories: content, context, and feedback.

A major aspect of effective classroom pedagogy is assessment. More specifically, within The New Art and Science of Teaching framework, classroom assessment falls within the general category of feedback. By its very nature, assessment is a form of feedback to students, teachers, and parents. As such, effective classroom assessment must go well beyond traditional uses which simply assign scores to students on specific tests and then average all those scores to compute a grade for an individual student. Rather, classroom assessment must be viewed from a new paradigm that allows it to be used to its full potential as a tool for feedback. That is precisely what this book, The New Art and Science of Classroom Assessment, is designed to do.

Starting in the first chapter, the book challenges many assumptions on which traditional classroom assessment practices are based. These challenges are designed to expose the sometimes illogical assumptions and lack of utility of many current assessment practices based on the traditional paradigm of assessment, such as averaging scores from all assessments to come up with an overall grade. However, the central purpose of the book is not to cause havoc with current classroom assessment practices, but rather to improve and augment those practices with techniques that result in more precise information about students’ status and growth on specific topics.

One major theme in the book is that effective assessment begins with clarity regarding the content that will be the focus of instruction and assessment. To this end, we strongly recommend the use of proficiency scales to define specific learning goals (also known as learning targets) and various levels of proficiency relative to those goals. Another theme in the book is that classroom teachers should never rely on a single assessment to determine a student’s status at any point in time. Rather, teachers should consider the pattern of scores on specific topics for individual students across multiple assessments. A third theme is that teachers should expand what they consider to be viable forms of assessments. Indeed, we make the case that anything a teacher does that provides information about a particular student’s status relative to a particular topic should be considered an assessment. The traditional test, then, is one form of assessment among many other forms including observations, conversations with students, short written responses, and student-generated assessments. In effect, teachers should test less (use pencil-and-paper tests less) but assess more (use a variety of ways to collect assessment information). Still another theme is that the process of assessment should be intimately tied to the process of instruction. Finally, assessment should be experienced by students as one of the most useful tools they have to increase their learning.

This book is not your ordinary classroom assessment textbook. We recommend that teams of teachers use it to systematically examine and change their assessment practices. We firmly believe that adherence to the suggestions and principles articulated in this book will create a paradigm shift in classroom assessment whose time has definitely come.