In 2007, I remember our administration thought it would be fun to commemorate a year of teaching and learning through a major renovation by having us teachers wear custom hard hats in place of mortar boards. That year was brutal. Picture students trying to write as a jackhammer was hard at work outside our window. Somedays just holding class discussion was a challenge. I think we all knew it was a different year, but did that change how we viewed student work produced during construction? The teaching and learning conditions were much different than the year before, how was that reflected in our assessment system? How did that affect student self-esteem, grades and future opportunity for learners?
I've been thinking deeply about this for a couple of years now since reading The Past Before Us: MOʻOKŪʻAUHAU AS METHODOLOGY Edited by Nālani Wilson-Hokowhitu. I was introduced to the book through a conversation with Kau'i Sang and Puni Jackson, amazing educators engaged with the Assessment for Learning Project. Last spring, as part of the HĀ Unsummit, we read Mehana Blaich Vaughan's Kaiaulu: Gathering Tides, which had additional reminders for me personally about why it's so important to think about environment as we understand a student's learning journey. Assessment is a type of research, we’re collecting information, making sense of it as it relates to community expectations, and reporting out on what we discover. It is not enough to collect evidence from students without also noting the conditions under which that evidence was produced. Environment and state of mind can have such a profound effect on performance. Intellectually, I know most of us know this, but how often are we taking this into account in our assessment practice?
I'm not an expert on the brain, but after fourteen years as a high school teacher and a learner who lives with anxiety and depression, both which manifest more prominently around holidays and winter months, I know time of year, culture and mood affect student performance. We need to pay attention to the environment and student's state of mind when they are producing evidence of learning for assessment purposes, note them and take it into consideration in the assessment and reporting process. Learners who are very aware of how environment affects them can also use this information to help them plan, react, and manage when having to exercise essential skills at times that might not be optimal for them.
And different environmental factors have different effects on individual students. Winter months, for example, might be a time when some students thrive. Rainy days might be better for some students as they are not distracted by the good weather outside. For some, the anxiety of summer break might weigh heavily on them when they are submitting final projects or in more traditional systems, taking final exams. For others, anniversaries of deaths or divorces might trigger responses that affect what students produce. I am not saying avoid these times for collecting student work, but finding a way to note student mood and other environmental factors can tell a better picture of a students’ learning journey, especially over time.
The pandemic offers an additional lens on the connection between environment and assessment. A lens everyone is seeing through. How can we use this collective experience to change the conversation about assessment, and maybe shift to practices that can tell a more honest story about students' skills and abilities that includes under what conditions work was produced? Each learner is different. Some are thriving right now with remote learning as the social distractions are limited. Some are struggling on sunny days, and some produce higher quality evidence when they are at one parent's house as opposed to the other. If we collected this information, how could we use it to help each learner on the next leg of their journey? It takes little time to note one or two things formally about environment as students produce work; they can even do some of it themselves.
When it comes time to report, to look at all the evidence, assessors can note if there are any discrepancies in a student’s demonstration of skill and take into consideration how environment, outside a student’s control, could have impacted that performance. Let’s take a science competency for example that asks students to observe and make logical inferences based on their scientific knowledge. For one student, their performance is pretty steady, but in February and early March, all the evidence collected tells a different story, including evidence from a large performance task. Then, things start to turn around in April and the student finishes by consistently demonstrating they have met the competency. If you are still averaging to determine competency, hopefully, you see the problem here with averaging. And, even using mode or a point system to determine competency, without context of those two months, a different story emerges. This is not about changing expectations if a student is having a bad day, it’s about understanding the conditions under which student work was produced. A good story doesn’t just have characters and plot, they have setting, tone, mood and circumstance.
As we near the end of the calendar year, as winter sets in and the holidays leave their mark , for better or worse, it's time to make a resolution to think carefully about environment and students' state of mind as they produce evidence of their learning. Take note of the weather, the mood of the school building, even the temperature of the classroom. Ask students how they're feeling before submitting work, emojis work great. When it's time to report out, you'll have created a fuller picture of the learning journey.
Want to do some more thinking about this topic? Our January Reflection Circle is focused on this question “How does environment affect assessment?” Register here.