0.2 2. staging the performance: the challenge of authenticity in  (Page 8/8)

The best approach is to create a programmatic portfolio with course-embedded assessments. This requires horizontal and vertical articulation (scope and sequence) across the courses in the entire program. Portfolios are most valuable when the course embedded assessments can reveal a student’s progress (or lack thereof) over time. To achieve this, the assessments can be created in a way that reflects skill building over time (Koretz et al, 1993; Calfee et. al., 1996; Cummings et al., 2008).

Yet, this is difficult in the field of educational leadership, since most programs cannot afford to use a cohort model where courses are taken in a particular sequence. Practitioners need the flexibility to take courses in any order, given the need to balance both personal and professional roles. However, well-designed performance assessments demand thick description and rich analysis from students. These in-depth student work samples can still reflect student growth if assessors add written comments that pinpoint individual student needs, and subsequent assessors check on these needs.

The future: learning from the 12th step—the feedback loop of assessments to standards

In all assessment processes, there is a strong feedback loop between the standards and the assessments, as captured in the 12 ^th step of this framework. Standards are written to capture a vision of what students should be able to do. But assessment is where the “rubber really hits the road”—the faculty do not really understand and appreciate how a standard is phrased and framed until it is operationally defined by its corresponding assessment. And in assessing it, they more concretely see the skills in action and can re-evaluate the programmatic vision.

Although this example focuses on a very specific area, this process of revision should be happening more broadly in the field of educational leadership. The ELCC standards are thoughtfully developed and comprehensive, but what do they look like in practice, given the profession’s experience with performance assessment to date? What are individual programs learning in this regard?

Overall, the field of educational leadership is just beginning its journey towards a standards-driven performance assessment-based curriculum. This will be a process of trial-and-error, but it may well lead to stronger programs with significantly higher credibility with the public and the rest of academia.

Since assessment must be aligned with instruction, the use of performance assessments tends to orient instruction towards constructivist activities, where students are highly engaged in constructing their own knowledge.

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