5.5 Critical Reflection Journal Blog - Important Learnings Journal
What is new to my thinking or learning this past week? How has this new information challenged me? How has this stretched my professional growth and development? What are the implications of this week’s learning on my professional practice? How can these new learnings be used to impact my personal faith journey and my impact for the Kingdom?
Once again, this week’s workshop has challenged and enlightened my knowledge. This week we looked at Summative vs. Formative assessments and the difference between the two. While these were new terms for me, the reality is that as a student I have had both types of assessments throughout my academic career. If I were completely honest, I am not a big fan of assessments. I think this is because as a student I have never done well on tests. I don’t believe that one can get a true sense of a student’s true knowledge of the material being taught solely from an assessment.
Zook says, “In a nutshell, formative assessments are quizzes and tests that evaluate how someone is learning material throughout a course. While summative assessments are quizzes and tests that evaluate how much someone has learned throughout a course.” In my first Master’s class I learned about adult learning from authors Jack Mezirow and Jane Vella. Vella asked the question “How do you know they know?” The answer was simple, they just did it. In other words, they were able to replicate what they were taught. As a child this was called monkey see monkey do.
Are assessments as simple as Mezirow and Vella conclude they are? In my experience, I believe so. If you give a student information on how to do something and they can replicate it, it seems pretty simple to me that they understood the information that was being taught or at least they understood it well enough to demonstrate it at least once. I think that it simply comes down to repetition. For example, I work in the area of financial aid. Much of what we do is repetitive in that we do the same tasks over and over again for students throughout the academic year and then again, the next academic year and the one after that and after that and so on. Someone taught me how to do it initially, but I learned to master it by doing it over and over again.
Zook says, “Formative assessments let students show that they’re learning, and summative assessments let them show what they’ve learned.” While this statement does a good job of summarizing the definition of the two, in my personal view both show that the student learned. After all isn’t that the purpose of teaching and education? I believe that learning comes easy for some and harder for others and the reality is that we all learn differently. So, with that in mind wouldn’t it make the most sense to assess students in the way that they learn best?
I thought Zook’s thoughts that, “As a teacher, you’ll likely need to employ both summative and formative assessments in your curriculum. An effective balance of these assessments will help you understand your students’ needs while meeting your standards” was an excellent way to summarize formative versus summative assessments. The knowledge that I have gained this past week has given me a new perspective and put the proper term to the two types of assessment.
Moving forward as I am in positions where I will decide the best type of assessment for my students, I have a better understanding of the two and in what situations to best use them. Similarly, to the learning that takes place in the classroom, I wonder if God uses formative and summative assessments to test our knowledge of scripture and of Him? So, when we are going through trials and tribulations in life, is that God assessing our faith in Him? If so, would this be a formative assessment? Ultimately, when we have breathed our last breath and we face Him on judgement day will we pass the summative assessment?
