Structures for Student Self-Assessment
Critical thinking is
thinking that assesses itself. To the extent that our students need us to tell
them how well they are doing, they are not thinking critically. Didactic
instruction makes students overly dependent on the teacher.
In such instruction,
students rarely develop any perceptible intellectual independence and typically
have no intellectual standards to assess their thinking with. Instruction that
fosters a disciplined, thinking mind, on the other hand, is 180 degrees in the
opposite direction.
Each step in the
process of thinking critically is tied to a self-reflexive step of
self-assessment. As a critical thinker, I do not simply state the problem; I
state it and assess it for its clarity. I do not simply gather information; I
gather it and check it for its relevance and significance. I do not simply form
an interpretation; I check my interpretation to see what it is based on and
whether that basis is adequate.
Because of the
importance of self-assessment to critical thinking, it is important to bring it
into the structural design of the course and not just leave it to episodic
tactics. Virtually every day, for example, students should be giving (to other
students) and receiving (from other students) feedback on the quality of their
work. They should be regularly using intellectual standards in an explicit way.
This should be designed into instruction as a regular feature of it.
There are two kinds
of criteria that students need to assess their learning of content. They need
universal criteria that apply to all of their thinking, irrespective of the
particular task. For example, they should always be striving for clarity,
accuracy, and significance. Of course, they also need to adjust their thinking
to the precise demands of the question or task before them. If there are three
parts of the task, they need to attend to all three parts. If the question
requires that they find specialized information, then they need to do just
that.
One simple structure
to use in attending to this dual need is to provide students a set of
performance criteria that apply to all of their work, criteria that they will
be using over and over. Then, make specific provision for encouraging students
to think in a focused way about the particular demands of any given task or
question before them.
There are a variety of additional
structures that can be used:
Assessing Writing
1. students in groups of
four, choose the best paper, then join with a second group and choose the best
of the two. This last paper is read to the class as a whole and a class-wide
discussion is held about the strengths and weaknesses of the papers chosen, leading
to the class voting on the best paper of the day.
2. students in groups
of three or four write out their recommendations for improvement on three or
four papers (from students not in the group). The written recommendations go
back to the original writer who does a revised draft for next time.
3. students in groups of three or four take turns reading their papers
and discuss the extent to which they have or have not fulfilled the performance
criteria relevant to the paper.
4. one student's paper is read aloud slowly to the class while the
instructor leads a class-wide discussion on how the paper might be improved.
Then the students work in groups of two or three to try to come up with
recommendations for improvement for the students in their group (based on the
model established by the instructor).
Assessing Listening
Since students spend
a good deal of their time listening, it is imperative that they learn critical
listening.
1. We need to call on
them regularly and unpredictably, holding them responsible either to ask
questions of clarification or to be prepared to give a summary, elaboration,
and examples of what others have said.
2. We ask every student
to write down the most basic question they need to have answered in order to
understand what is being discussed. You then collect the questions (to see
where they are at) or you call on some of them to read their questions aloud or
you put them in groups of two with each person trying to answer the question of
the other.
Through activities such as these students should learn to monitor their
listening, determining when they are and when they are not following what is
being said. This should lead to their asking pointed questions.
Assessing Speaking
In a well-designed
class, students engage in oral performances often. They articulate what they
are learning: explaining, giving examples, posing problems, interpreting
information, tracing assumptions, etc... They need to learn to assess what they
are saying, becoming aware of when they are being vague, when they need an
example, what their explanations are inadequate, etc. Here are three general
strategies that have a number of tactical forms.
1. Students teaching
students. One of the best ways to learn is to try to teach someone else. If one
has trouble explaining something, it is often because one is not as clear as
one needs to be about what one is explaining.
2. Group Problem Solving. By putting students in a group and giving them
a problem or issue to work on together, their mutual articulation and exchanges
will often help them to think better. They will often help correct each other,
and so learn to ³correct² themselves.
3. Oral test on basic vocabulary. One complex tactic that aids student
learning is the oral test. Students are given a vocabulary list. They are put
into groups of twos or threes and are asked to take turns explaining what the
words mean. They are encouraged to assess each other's explanations. When some
seem prepared, they are assessed by the teacher. The students who pass then
become "certifiers" or "tutors" and are assigned to assess
other students (or tutor them). Everyone gets multiple experiences explaining,
and hearing explanations of, the basic vocabulary.
Assessing Reading
In a well-designed
class, students typically engage in a great deal of reading. Hence, it is
important that they learn to "figure out" the logic of the what they
are reading (the logically interconnected meanings). Good reading is a dialogue
between the reader and the writer. The writer has chosen words in which to
convey the meaning of his/her thoughts and experiences.
The reader must
translate from those words back into his/her own thoughts and experiences, and
capture the meaning of the author thereby. This is a complex process requiring
good reasoning. We can teach the students the process best by modeling it in
the following way:
Structure for
teaching critical reading.
You put the students into groups of threes, each with a letter assigned (A, B,
or C). You then read a paragraph or two out of the text aloud slowly,
commenting on what you are reading as you are reading, explaining what is
making immediate sense to you and what you need to figure out by further
reading.
After modeling in
this manner for a couple of paragraphs, you ask A to take over and read aloud
to B and C, explaining to them, sentence by sentence, what he/she is able to
figure out and what he/she is not. After A is finished with two paragraphs,
then B and C comment on what they do and do not understand (in the paragraphs
that A read).
Then you read aloud
to the whole class the two paragraphs that A read, commenting as you go. Then B
takes over and reads the next two paragraphs to A and C. Then A and C add their
thoughts. Then you read aloud what B read. Then you go on to C who reads the
next two paragraphs to A and B. And so on. And so forth. As the students are
reading in their groups of three, you are circulating around the room listening
in and getting an idea of the level of proficiency of their critical reading.
The more you use this process, the better students get.
Doing A Global Self-Assessment
One of the most
powerful complex structures is that of requiring students to do a global
analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of their performance in a class
overall. In order for this tactic to work, the following have to be true:
· students must be given, early on, performance profiles (correlated with grades)
· students must be given multiple opportunities to assess their own work and that of their peers using the performance profiles
· students must be given a thorough orientation on what is and is not expected in the global self-assessment
· students should be required to support all claims that they make with relevant and representative evidence and reasoning
· students should understand that if they argue for a higher grade than they deserve, their grade will be lowered.
* This article is
adapted from the resource:
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