Education Commons^™

Developing Rubrics Using The New Oru Outcomes, Kim Boyd, Trevor Ellis, Leighanne Locke, Terry Shannon, Rachael Valentz

Professional Development Resources

The development and examples of key program assessments (KPAs) are shared. Dr. Boyd opens the presentation. Dr. Shannon (B.S. Sports Management) begins by providing an overview of aligning program and ORU outcomes. Prof. Locke (B.S. Mathematics) walks through how current assignments were chosen to be used as key program assessments and then how the rubrics were revised to improve alignment. Dr. Valentz (B.S. Nursing) discusses how to improve the foundational alignment between program outcomes and the criterion (rubric row headings) used to measure them. She shares how criterion can be contextualized in different assignments and demonstrates in Brightspace, by D2L, …

Developing A K-12 School Leadership Plan, Marian E. Truehill

Journal of Research Initiatives

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to develop a K-12 School Leadership plan for public, private, and parochial educational institutions. The K-12 School Leadership plan will help principals, teachers, staff and students focus on how to accurately operate a successful school culture, climate, and improve academic performance at their educational institutions. I used a pseudonym JFK for the high school examined in this paper. Themes represented in this paper will include assessment of ineffective leadership style, assessment of school culture, climate and performance, school improvement areas, explanation of leadership style, most effective style to improve school performance, research-based leadership …

Book Review: Going Gradeless, Grades 6–12: Shifting The Focus To Student Learning, Ana De Jesús, Alesia Mickle Moldavan

Excelsior: Leadership in Teaching and Learning

This book review of Going Gradeless, Grades 6–12: Shifting the Focus to Student Learning by E. Burns and D. Frangiosa (2021) provides an alternative pedagogical method to assessment that uses a “gradeless” approach to learning for purposes of removing the stress and negative impacts of traditional grading practices while maintaining accountability with equity in mind. In this review, we describe the foundational underpinnings that frame the book and summarize some of the observed benefits as well as challenges faced by the authors who implemented this approach. We provide an overview of the chapters situated in four major takeaways guiding this …

It’S All About To Change: Implications Of Reforming Grading & Assessment Within A Public School District, Divonna M. Stebick, Megan L. Pilarcik, Daniel W. Hartman

Education Faculty Publications

Calls to reform grading systems and other assessment practices have been growing for several decades. There is consensus among many educators that grading and assessment practices that have been traditionally accepted as good practice are at best ineffective and at worst have a negative impact on raising achievement. Consequently, there is no single solution or methodology for grading that has emerged as the best practice. A variety of contemporary grading approaches have gained widespread popularity in recent years, typically being referred to as standards-based grading, standards-referenced grading, proficiency-based grading, or competency-based learning. A challenge, however, is that different school districts …

Lessons Learned: Curriculum Map As An Assessment Tool, Paul Antonellis

Academic Chairpersons Conference Proceedings

During this session, participants will learn about the steps taken to use curriculum mapping as an assessment tool, what worked well, challenges encountered, and recommendations going forward at the graduate and undergraduate level. The program will demonstrate how the program curriculum map can be linked to the general educational outcomes and aligned with intuition outcomes (Banta, 2014; Hundley & Kahn, 2019). Curriculum mapping will reveal program strengths and weaknesses before beginning the assessment process, avoiding costly mistakes in the assessment process. The mapping process will assist in determining which outcomes are assessed, when the outcome is assessed, and in which …

My First Time Ungrading: Approach Used And Reflections, Heather Leslie

Feminist Pedagogy

A few months ago, I began devouring information about ungrading with a fervent appetite. I started with the book Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What To Do Instead) edited by Susan Blum and listened to just about every podcast where she was interviewed about this topic. I then read other books she recommended like Wad-Ja-Get: The Grading Game in American Education by Howard Kirschenbaum and Punished By Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, and Praise by Alfie Kohn. Recently, I have become much more dialed into the ungrading movement by reading articles from Teachers Going …

A State University’S Assessment Of Acue: Feasible Model For Evaluating The Impact Of A Faculty Instruction Quality Program, Jeffrey Budziak, Daniel Super, Thomas Gross, Douglas Mcelroy

Teacher-Scholar: The Journal of the State Comprehensive University

State comprehensive universities often stress the development of teaching quality to improve the outcomes and retention of students, especially for recently matriculated students. These universities invest in teaching quality programs, but often lack a feasible method to examine the longitudinal impacts of these programs. The purpose of this paper is to provide a model for universities to evaluate outcomes related teaching quality programs. ACUE, a teaching quality program, was implemented across 30 instructors, which equated to 463 course sections. ACUE instructors were matched to non-ACUE instructors using propensity score matching (PSM) and compared on the rate of end-of-the-semester students with …

Assessing Teacher Candidates’ Pedagogical Judgement: An Analysis Of Clinically-Based Instructional Assignments, Sonia Janis, Mardi Schmeichel, Joseph Mcanulty, Chantelle Grace, Kaitlin Wegrzyn

Journal of Educational Supervision

Research on clinically-based teacher education indicates that facilitating clinical experiences for teacher candidates improves their preparation for the profession. While we have answered the call to implement rich clinical experiences in our teacher education program, we have found that we also needed to design new, robust strategies to assess what the candidates are taking away from their clinical experiences. This paper describes our use of Horn and Campbell’s (2015) notion of “pedagogical judgment” to analyze the work of social studies teacher candidates in clinical placements. We describe a rubric developed to evaluate candidates’ pedagogical judgment and offer insights into the …

Engaging First Year Students In Assessment Rubrics: Three Personal Experiences, Katherine Ashman, Kristina Turner, Dona Martin

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

In a direct effort to build a greater understanding of higher education teaching and learning opportunities, this study shares the journey of three university lecturers working to ensure best practice outcomes from criterion-referenced assessment [CRA]. The work was built on a belief that our respective higher education undergraduate students did not fully value the design structure or feedback outcomes inherent in CRA. Using a collaborative autoethnographic lens we pooled experiences, outcomes, challenges, assumptions, and accounts of unconscious biases from across our different tertiary education schools and subjects. Our examination enriched our understanding, our teaching, and our student outcomes. In sharing …

How Do Higher Education Teaching And Learning Centers Contribute To An Institutional Culture Of Assessment?, Tracey Jean Beckley

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Teaching and learning centers in higher education are often charged with providing faculty development programming in support of overarching institutional goals related to effective teaching and assessment of student learning. Using the theoretical frameworks of Maki and Weiner as a launch pad, this exploratory case study examines how two teaching and learning centers have provided services, implemented programming, and strategically affected cultural change among faculty and other stakeholders in support of an institutional culture of assessment. The study revealed four thematic strands to consider when developing practical ways for teaching and learning centers to contribute to a culture-building endeavor in …

Analysis Of Middle School Performance From Pre-Covid To Post Covid, Erik A. Lowry

South Carolina Association for Middle Level Education Journal

According to a January 11, 2021, SC Education Oversight Committee news release, Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) testing data from approximately 220,000 South Carolina students showed a projected decrease in the percentage of students meeting grade level expectations. The news release defines this as the “COVID Slide” (SCEOC, 2021). The purpose of this review is to see if those projections were accurate by conducting a state-wide review of middle school performance on the South Carolina College-and Career-Ready Assessments (SC READY). Comparisons are made by subject, grade level, gender, ethnicity, and poverty status from 2019 to 2021.

The Value Of The Useless: Erin Manning, Impact, Higher Education Research, Progress, Laura Elizabeth Smithers

Educational Foundations & Leadership Faculty Publications

This article brings the work of Erin Manning to bear on common sense practices and conversations of the value of a college education. Manning’s work provides a productive alternative to the neoliberal discourse of college impact that has dominated higher education research for the past half century. Neoliberalism produces the common sense of the value of education as privatized, datafied (or dividuated), and measurable outcomes. This common sense reduces American higher education to the sum of its parts. To produce worlds to which campus marketing departments on occasion gesture, worlds where college produces spaces of community transformation, we must come …

Using Formative Assessment To Build Coherence Between Educational Policy And Classroom Practice: A Case Study Using Inquiry In Science, Connie Cirkony, John Daniel Kenny

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

In this paper we argue that the complexity of education systems can lead to a lack of coherence in the implementation of policy. More effective educational change requires policy-makers and researchers to pay more attention to supporting teachers in classrooms. As an example, we consider decades of research attempts in STEM education to implement learning through inquiry and note there has been little change in teaching practices in classrooms. Using formative assessment in science education as a case study, we developed a rubric for teachers that embeds key aspects of the desired pedagogy. We argue this builds teachers’ confidence to …