Assessing Students' Affect Related to Assessment for Learning

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$04 Math-Algebra 4.A.1.1 - Form B$

Assessing Student’s Affect Related to Assessment for LearningW. James Popham and Rick Stigginsremain high or will increase over time. That’s because AFLtaughtstudents will be experiencing a series of successfullearning experiences. Most human beings enjoy doing whatthey are good at doing. This is also true with students inschool. When students are good at learning things, most ofthem will be inclined to want to learn more things.As was the case with academic efficacy, if students arenot becoming more eager to learn, then the teacher needs toconsider suggestions aimed at increasing students’eagerness to learn such as those presented on pages 4 and 5.Although there are surely other affective consequencesthat might emerge from the effective implementation of anAFL class, we believe the most significant are the twoaffective dimensions just described, namely, students’academic efficacy and their eagerness to learn. There shouldbe a definite strengthening of both of these affectivevariables during an extended period of AFL instruction.Affective AssessmentAssessment of students’ affective variables such asthese two presents unique challenges. For example, toassess affect productively, teachers must elicit honestresponses from students. Teachers want to know howstudents really feel. But in an environment in whichstudents have learned to give teachers the “right” answers(that is, the answers students believe the teacher wants tohear) there is a danger that students will tend to supplysocially desirable responses. Obviously, such responses canbe misleading. To prevent this, affective inventories such asthose offered in the appendix must be administered underconditions of absolute anonymity. Not only do studentsmake all responses to an affective inventory anonymously,but those students must really believe their anonymousresponses are untraceable. Only then can teachers hope forhonest expressions of students’ sentiments.This requirement for anonymity carries with itimportant implications for how the inventories can be used.Unlike the assessment of students’ cognitive achievement,in which teachers arrive at an assessment-based inferenceabout each student’s level of achievement, affectiveassessment permits teachers to make only group-basedinferences about students’ affect. Yet, by calculating anaverage per-student response from an entire class ofstudents, a sufficiently accurate group-focused inference canbe made to guide the teacher of that class. Some students, ofcourse, even though providing only anonymous responses,will still supply excessively positive responses because theybelieve their teacher will want them to answer in that way.Yet, there are also some students who will supplyexcessively negative responses because—shrouded by acloak of anonymity—they believe this is an opportunity to“get even” with the teacher. Thus, the average of allstudents’ responses to an anonymous self-report inventorytypically supplies a sufficiently accurate estimate (for ateacher’s decision-making) regarding the affective status ofan entire class.The InventoriesEach of the grade-range inventories contains eightstatements with which students are asked to agree ordisagree. Two of the statements in each inventory focus on astudent’s academic efficacy. The two statements below(taken from the grade 7-9 inventory) are intended to elicitstudents’ perceptions of their own academic efficacy:o When I’m asked to learn something new in thisclass, even if it’s difficult, I know I can learn it.(Item 2)o Even with help and plenty of time, I’m going tohave difficulty learning new things in this class.(Item 7)Two more statements from the grade 7-9 inventory dealwith a student’s eagerness to learn:o I’m really excited about learning new things in thisclass. (Item 4)o Most of the time I don’t look forward to learningnew things in this class. (Item 6)In each of these two pairs of statements, one statementis phrased positively and one statement is phrasednegatively. Thus, for example, students who are eager tolearn would tend to agree with the positively phrasedstatement, but disagree with the negatively phrasedstatement. (Considerable experience in the construction ofthese sorts of self-report inventories suggests that this sortof positive-and-negative phrasing yields the most accurateindication of students’ true sentiments.)In addition, each of the inventories includes two itemsdealing with a key feature of an AFL classroom: clarity oflearning targets:o I usually have a pretty good idea about what I amexpected to learn in this class. (Item 1)o In this class I often don’t have a clear idea aboutwhat I am supposed to be learning. (Item 5)Another pair if items focus on a second importantattribute of an AFL classroom, namely, the degree to whichteachers provide their students with progress-monitoringinformation:o Typically, I don’t have a very good idea if I ammaking enough progress in this class. (Item 3)o In this class, I get enough information to keepaccurate track of my own achievement. (Item 8)These four statements do not focus directly on students’affect per se. Rather, they center on the students’perceptions about practices carried out by their teacher.These two pairs of statements are included because mostteachers who are attempting to implement an AFL class willwish to know the degree to which their students believethese two focal aspects of AFL are, from the students’perspective, taking place.This version released through The Council of Chief State School Officers2The FAST SCASS • Formative Assessment for Students and Teachers
Assessing Student’s Affect Related to Assessment for LearningW. James Popham and Rick StigginsSuggested Uses of the InventoriesThese affective inventories are intended exclusively forteachers to use as instructionally relevant evidence-elicitingtools in their classrooms, and only if a teacher individuallydecides to do so. The inventories are not designed forevaluative purposes at either the teacher-level or schoollevel.Indeed, as will be suggested later, the inventories arespecifically constructed so they can be modified to meshbetter with a particular instructional context and a giventeacher’s interests in students’ affect.If a teacher wishes to collect information regardingshifts in students’ affect during the course of a school year,and want to submit such affective data for personnelevaluationpurposes, this would clearly be the teacher’schoice. The purpose of the three affective inventoriesprovided in the Appendix is to assist teachers in determiningwhether classroom implementation of AFL is having thedesired impact on students’ affect.One relatively simple and straightforward use of anaffective inventory in an AFL class is for the teacher toadminister it on a pre-instruction and post-instruction basis,for instance, at the beginning and end of an instructionalunit, a grading period, semester, or school year, dependingon the context. A contrast between such pre-instruction andpost-instruction results will allow a teacher to determine ifany meaningful improvements have taken place in, forexample, students’ academic efficacy.However, because AFL teachers are typically attentiveto the ongoing nature of instruction in their classes, thissuggests that a more fruitful use of these affectiveinventories would involve their administration several timesduring instruction. By so doing, of course, teachers wouldthen have time to make adjustments in what they weredoing based on class-focused inferences about students’affect and students’ reactions to what is taking place in class(with respect to the two statements about clarity ofexpectations and the two statements about progressmonitoringinformation). Care should be taken not toadminister these inventories so frequently over a shortperiod of time that students become jaded about excessiveuse of the inventories.Still another approach might be to use the inventoriesstrategically. That is, if a teacher senses that things aren’tgoing well and students’ reactions to instructional activitiesare not sufficiently positive, responses to an inventory mightprovide some insight into why this is the case. Results mightpoint to AFL actions teachers might take to get studentsback on track.Modifying the InventoriesThese public-domain inventories are provided forteachers to use without restriction. There is nothingsacrosanct about the nature of the items in the inventories inthe Appendix, so teachers should feel free not only tomodify the current items, but also to add or delete items. Forexample, if an elementary teacher happened to beparticularly interested in students’ interests in reading or,perhaps, in social studies, then statements such as thefollowing might be added to the items: “Lots of the time Iwould rather read than watch TV.” or “I really like it whenour class deals with social studies.” (Ideally, items shouldbe added in pairs so that one statement is phrased positivelyand another statement is phrased negatively.) Because theseinventories are intended to help an individual teacher do agood instructional job, teachers should modify theinstruments as they wish.Directions for AdministrationDuring our pilot-testing of early versions of theseinventories during their development, both teachers andstudents suggested that the Directions (to students) on theinventories themselves should be extremely brief, and thatthe teacher should give the bulk of the directions orally.Therefore, as you will note on the inventories, the directionsto the student are quite abbreviated. It is suggested that ateacher read (aloud) something along these lines to studentsprior to each administration of one of these affectiveinventories:Today I want you to complete a brief inventorydealing with this class—and only this class. Youwill complete the inventory’s items anonymously,so just enter your responses—don’t put your nameon the inventory or write anything else. There willbe no way to tell how you responded, so pleaseanswer as honestly as you can. I will be using theaverage responses of the entire class to help me doa good job of teaching. That is the only reason Iam asking you to fill out this inventory.There is a sample of how you are to respond givenat the top of the inventory. As you can see, you areto circle the response-letters for the itemsdepending on how you personally feel about eachstatement.When you are finished, please place yourcompleted inventory in the collection envelopethat has been provided. Thank you for helping mewith this.If the teacher is administering an inventory on morethan one occasion, there would be slight variations in thisset of oral directions such as, “Today I need you to oncemore complete the brief, anonymous inventory that youtook several months ago, etc.”If there is a more appropriate way for students to returntheir inventories, such as by depositing the completedinventories in a collection box provided for that purpose,this too would need to be noted. The idea of having theteacher supply oral directions for these inventories is thatthose directions can be suitably tailored to the teacher’sinstructional situation.This version released through The Council of Chief State School Officers3The FAST SCASS • Formative Assessment for Students and Teachers
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