Teach Me: Self-Assessment as a Competence
As we embark on a new year, teachers are being challenged to collect reflections and self-assessments from their students about their growth and progress in core (and possibly curricular) competencies: communication, thinking, and personal and social responsibility.
But what about their self-assessment competence?
If a student cannot self-assess with accuracy, doesn’t it render all subsequent assessments flawed? I’m reminded of the old adage, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
It begs the question: when it comes to self-assessment, are we merely feeding our students — through opportunities to self-assess — or are we teaching them to fish — by giving them the necessary guidance, training, and practice?
Spinndle doesn’t have a teacher assessment component. And we’re often asked, “What if the student doesn’t accurately assess themselves?” Well, as a teacher, that would be my starting point. My job is to train my students to evaluate themselves with accuracy so they feel empowered to guide their own learning. I can’t even count how many students have come up to me over the years asking, “Is this good?” — a question I often met with, “You tell me. What do you think?”
“There are many factors in the human condition that contribute to unrealistic self-assessments, including tendencies to a) be unrealistically optimistic about one’s own abilities, b) believe that one is above average, c) neglect crucial information, and d) have deficits in required information ”
We need to address these tendencies. So, how do we teach self-assessment? Dr. Gavin Brown and Dr. Lois Ruth Harris, from the University of Auckland and Australian Catholic University respectively have dedicated years of research to self-assessment theory and practices.
Research has shown (Brown & Harris, 2013; Ross, 2006) that realistic self-assessments are more likely when:
(1) students are involved in the process of establishing criteria for evaluating work outcomes;
(2) students are taught how to apply those criteria;
(3) students receive feedback from others (i.e., teachers and peers) to help move students toward more accurate evaluations;
(4) students are taught how to use other assessment data (e.g., test scores or graded work) to improve their work;
(5) there is psychological safety when self-evaluation is used;
(6) when rewards for accuracy are used; and
(7) when students are required to explicitly justify to their peers their self-evaluations.
It’s the cognitive process that I believe is so valuable: allowing students to determine their own goals on their terms.
By establishing a starting benchmark and the desired destination, they also lay the foundation of a plan. Then, my role as a teacher is to refine that plan if and when needed and give my students space and tools to execute their plan.
According to Brown and Harris (2014), “It should come as no surprise that both teachers and students will need training before they can engage with self-assessment as a taught and learned competence. New professional development materials and courses are needed that go beyond the exhortation to use student self-assessment.”
While I’ve added to the exhortations of student self-assessment, it is my hope that what we’ve built into Spinndle can help facilitate student and teacher engagement with self-assessment as a competence.
On Spinndle, students are responsible for keeping track of their authentic skill progression. They have a safe space to practice and hone increasingly critical soft skills when they are continually nudged to reflect on their strengths and challenges at every step of their projects.
SOURCES:
Dunning, D., Heath, C., & Suls, J. M. (2004). Flawed self-assessment: Implications for health, education, and the workplace. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 5(3), 69–106. doi: 10.1111/j.1529- 1006.2004.00018.x
Brown, G. T. L., & Harris, L. R. (2014). The future of self-assessment in classroom practice: Reframing self-assessment as a core competency. Frontiers of Learning Research. 3. 22–30. 10.14786/flr.v2i1.24. Available online.
Brown, G. T. L., & Harris, L. R. (2013). Student self-assessment. In J. H. McMillan (Ed.). The SAGE handbook of research on classroom assessment (pp. 367–393). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Ross, J. A. (2006). The reliability, validity, and utility of self-assessment. Practical Assessment Research & Evaluation, 11(10), Available online.
Shelley, C.A. (2013). The life tasks revisited. Adlerian Yearbook 2013. (pp. 70–90). London: Adlerian Society (UK) and Institute for Individual Psychology.