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

The move to program accountability in education has shifted from a focus on standards (what students should know and be able to do) to a focus on the challenges of implementing performance activities that can be assessed to show student program in meeting standards. In professional training programs, these assessment challenges are significant. In order to understand why, let’s examine the challenges of assessment more closely.

The challenge of assessment: assessing performance

In professional fields in higher education, where practitioner training is the focus, the emphasis (quite appropriately) is more on the able to do than on the to know . Knowledge is important, but for someone training for a specific professional role, applying that knowledge is particularly important.

Educators have a long history of assessing knowledge, but a relatively short history of assessing the application of knowledge. Knowledge assessment has traditionally been done through paper and pencil tests, preferably through standardized multiple choice tests if the results of these tests will be used for high stakes decisions, such as accountability decisions (Stiggins, 1994). The field of psychometrics has constructed an impressive and sophisticated array of theories and tools to develop valid and reliable assessments of knowledge, including the so-called higher-order thinking skills (Linn et al., 1991).

Assessing application of knowledge has been far murkier. This area is known as performance assessment. Performance assessment gets its name from the belief that, if a faculty member wants to measure how well a student applies core knowledge, the student needs to actually apply that knowledge in a performance activity, and the faculty member needs to capture that performance and evaluate it.

Learning to drive can serve as an example. The goal of a good driver’s education class is to produce competent drivers. This involves helping student drivers master a body of knowledge (how to operate a car, rules of the road, etc.) as well as actually applying that knowledge to successfully drive a car. If the instructor wants to assess a student driver’s competence, she would give two types of assessment: a knowledge assessment (How well does the student driver understand the rules of the road?) and a performance assessment (How well can the student driver actually drive a car?). These two types of assessment complement each other because a traditional knowledge test can adequately sample across a broad domain of issues (which is impossible to address in an actual driving test), whereas a driving test can clearly indicate whether the student can actually drive.

The challenge is that any high-stakes assessment, including performance assessment, must meet certain quality characteristics. These characteristics are often called the APPLE criteria: Administratively feasible, Professionally credible, Publicly acceptable, Legally defensible, and Economically affordable (Nyirenda, 1994). These criteria are typically applied to large scale high stakes assessments, but there are equivalent quality characteristics for classroom level assessments: 1) Purpose and Impact (How will the assessment be used and how will it impact instruction and the selection of curriculum?); 2) Validity/Authenticity (Does it measure what it intends to measure? Does it allow students to demonstrate both what they know and are able to do?); 3) Fairness (Is the assessment biased towards any group of students?); 4) Reliability (Does the assessment measure skills consistently regardless of situation and/or assessor?); 5) Significance (Does the assessment address content and skills that are valued by and reflect current thinking in the field?); and 6) Efficiency (Is the assessment reasonably easy and cost effective to complete and score?).