Is Ongoing Assessment Fully Learner-Centered?

Linda A. Gosselin
Quinsigamond Community College, Worcester, MA
Clinton Adult Learning Center, Clinton, MA

During 1997/1998, I was a member of the group that developed the
Framework for Adult ESOL in Massachusetts. One of the cross-cutting themes in that document is assessment. I had volunteered to examine and write something up on assessment for the draft.

Working alone and with few guidelines to follow, I decided that a useful resource to aid me in my task would be the Adventures in Assessment series. Since the articles had been written by practitioners from around the state, I thought I would get a good sampling of what is being done in ESOL assessment in a variety of programs. I could use that information, along with my own experiences with assessment in 20 years of teaching ESOL, to write a piece on assessment.

Since there are standardized and program-designed tests for initial and exit testing, I chose ongoing assessment as the main focus of my piece. At that time I chose to outline the various forms of ongoing assessment, give some examples, and stress the efforts of practitioners to make ongoing assessment student-centered.

In this journal, I further explore ongoing assessment and what I learned from reading all the ESOL articles in prior volumes of Adventures in Assessment.

My Previous Understanding of Ongoing Assessment
Before reading all of the articles in Adventures in Assessment, I had defined ongoing assessment as examining and documenting learner progress at certain intervals in the learning process. In the program I teach in at Quinsigamond Community College, we had designed two assessment forms for ongoing assessment (see ‘Bringing Learners into Goal-Setting,’ Burke, Gosselin, and Shea, Vol. 8). One form is for students to reflect and comment on their own progress. The other form is for the teacher to comment on each learner’s progress. We have also used portfolios — usually folders of samples of a learner’s work and copies of the above mentioned assessment forms — which were to document the learner’s progress. This documentation has been used to assist us in judging when a learner is ready to move on to the next level class and to provide the teacher of the next level with a record of the learner’s work.

A New Understanding of Ongoing Assessment
Many articles in the assessment journals defined ongoing assessment in a way similar to my definition above. But there were also articles that defined ongoing assessment as evaluation of the class and activities taking place in class. The assessment tools mentioned in these articles ask students to assess class activities as to whether the students enjoyed them and whether the activities were of value to the students in helping them to make progress.

Like any good instructor, I want to be responsive to the needs of my learners. So I often ask for feedback from my students about activities we are doing, especially if the activities are new ones for the class. Also, I have always tried to encourage my students to speak up if they feel something is not helpful or if they want the class to change in some way. But I never thought of having a more formal assessment tool of class activities for students to complete as described in some of the articles I had read.

Some practitioners talked about using ‘oral feedback’ to ask students how they feel about the class. Caroline Gear (Vol . 8, p. 46) states:

“Asking learners about their progress and satisfaction with the program enables learners to begin thinking about how they learn and what works best for them.”

Some instructors, including Gear, record a learner-generated list of activities on the board or on a form and the students are asked to rank them numerically or with a happy, neutral, or unhappy face, according to their enjoyment of each activity. Other articles talked about having learners keep a weekly log and write how they felt about class activities done in the week. By doing this type of assessment, learners can identify which activities they like and which ones they find helpful to their learning. It provides an instructor with some documentation of learner preferences.

Both types of ongoing assessment above are vital to an effective ESOL classroom. They inform instructors which activities their learners find most helpful and allow instructors to plan lessons accordingly. It also provides a record of progress.

Reflections on Learner-Centered Assessment
A common theme throughout this journal series has been learner-centered assessment. Looking at the two types of ongoing assessment I mentioned above, I wondered how much they include learners in the process and at what point in the process.

I reviewed everything that had been written in past issues on student involvement in ongoing assessment. In Volume 1, learner-centered assessment was defined as “a collaborative relationship among learners and program staff in determining the goals, texts, and contexts of assessment, as well as judging its outcomes” (p. ii).

If I interpret this quote correctly, it means that learners should be involved in the entire planning process of the purpose and form of ongoing assessment. Learners should be full partners in deciding the goals of ongoing assessment. They should be involved in deciding how and when progress will be measured. They should take part in deciding which class activities will be most helpful to their progress.

In examining my own ongoing assessment practices, I can see changes that I can make so that my students have greater ownership of the process. For example, at the beginning of a school year, I can generate a list of common class activities in collaboration with my students. My students can tell me which ones they prefer. Such a list might include such things as dictation, being read aloud to, doing small group work, watching a video, and taking field trips. Using the input I receive from my students, I can plan my lessons to include the preferred activities.

At regular intervals, the students could assess the activities as to whether they have been helpful to the students’ progress. Changes in activities could be made where desired or deemed necessary.

I could also conduct a learning-style inventory with my students to help them understand which types of activities would be better for them, based on their predominant learning style. Such an activity would help them understand why they seem to prefer certain class activities over others.

Also, the students and I could discuss their goals for a certain period of class time and collaboratively decide how and how often we will document ongoing learner progress (keeping in mind any program requirements).

Rather than have the students simply fill out a self-assessment tool and call it learner-centered, students could choose the ongoing assessment tools we will use to document progress. At the end of a cycle, they could evaluate whether the tools we used really reflected the progress they thought they made. If the students do not feel comfortable thinking up ways to document progress, I could show them commonly used samples of ongoing assessment tools and they could choose the ones they think will be most effective.

Conclusion
The sub-title of this journal is “Learner-Centered Approaches to Assessment and Evaluation in Adult Literacy.” That is what we as teachers have been striving for in using and contributing to this journal. We must continue to examine our own ongoing assessment practices and ask ourselves some pertinent questions. How much do we really involve our learners in the assessment process? At what point in the process do we include our learners? Is the degree of learner involvement in ongoing assessment in our programs enough? Are there ways we can provide our learners with greater ownership in the process of choosing and designing ongoing assessment tools?

In Volume 2, p. iv, Loren McGrail stated,

“If all we do is substitute new multiple measures for old standardized measurements and monitor student progress for diagnostic purposes in terms of identifying strengths and weaknesses…, we will not have created a new paradigm. If, on the other hand, we include learners as active participants at the center of the process of measurement, as ‘co-investigators’ in determining their own literacy practices, strengths and strategies (Lytle, 1998), then we have truly engaged in alternative assessment.”

In reading through all the volumes of Adventures in Assessment, I can see our process of growth and change in assessment and clearly see that we have come a long way in improving ongoing assessment so that it is more meaningful to learners and teachers and provides for greater learner participation. We have learned a lot from our fellow practitioners who have experimented in their classrooms and who have been generous enough to share their successes and failures so that we could learn from them and grow in the process too.

We need to continue to examine how we can include our students as full partners in ongoing assessment at all stages in the process. Then we can fulfill the goal that Loren McGrail set for assessment in adult education in Massachusetts: learner-centered ongoing assessment.

In the introduction to Volume 10, p. 4, Alison Simmons wrote, “There is not a clear, bright light at the end of the assessment tunnel that will resolve all the many dimensions of assessment that are inherent in our classrooms and programs.”

What she says is very true, but in sharing with each other in this unique journal, we can help light the way as we navigate through this ongoing assessment tunnel. In doing so, we can guide each other in improving our ongoing assessment practices and make ongoing assessment more learner-centered.

Originally published in Adventures in Assessment, Volume 11 (Winter 1998),
SABES/World Education, Boston, MA, Copyright 1998.

Funding support for the publication of this document on the Web provided in part by the Ohio State Literacy Resource Center as part of the LINCS Assessment Special Collection.