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Teaching and Teacher Education 21 (2005) 607–621

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Classroom-based assessment: Changing knowledge andpractice through preservice teacher education

Peg Graham�

Department of Language Education, University of Georgia, 125 Aderhold, Athens, GA 30602, USA

Abstract

In this paper, the author investigates how the working assessment theories and practices of preservice teachers change

in the enactment of those theories and practices in a mentored learning environment. Following 38 secondary English

teacher candidates across time, the author tracks preservice teacher growth in knowledge about classroom-based

assessment and assessment-driven planning. Teacher candidates reported they were strongly influenced by professional

dialogue about planning and assessment in both campus classes and mentored field experiences. Although most teacher

candidates grew to accept alternative assessments as valuable evidence sources indicating student learning, they

recorded concerns that fell into five overlapping categories: designing goals; rubrics, grading and fairness; grading and

motivation; validity of assessments; and time required to plan this way.

r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Classroom-based assessment; Teacher education; Assessment-driven planning

1. Statement of the problem

Research suggests that foundational changes inteachers’ working theories can only occur over timeand with collaboration, commitment, and support(Lieberman, 1995). I agree. I also believe thatteacher educators and mentor teachers have aresponsibility to support beginning teachersthrough the moral, political, and emotional un-certainties of teaching in an often-conflicting

e front matter r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserv

te.2005.05.001

542 5674; fax: +1 706 542 4509.

ss: [email protected].

postmodern and reform-driven era (Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2001; Hargreaves, 1995). Thesupport of professional learning communities(Lieberman, 2000) such as The University ofGeorgia Network of English Teachers and Stu-dents (UGA-NETS) can help all participants—professors, mentor teachers, and preservice teachercandidates—examine and change their own as-sumptions and practice. Shared inquiry intoassessment and planning practices, in particular,is necessary if together we are to prepare ourselvesand to mentor preservice teachers for new purposesof assessing and measuring student learning.

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P. Graham / Teaching and Teacher Education 21 (2005) 607–621608

Two major assumptions connected to preserviceteachers’ learning about assessment in a school/university collaborations undergird this study.First, if teacher candidates are to assess studentlearning in new, more reflective and powerful ways(Darling-Hammond, 1997), their university andschool-based mentors must be willing to assessdifferently themselves. Second, teachers are tornbetween external demands of high-stakes tests andtheir own intuitive pull to focus on their class-room-based assessments (Stiggins, 1999a). Newteachers, especially, are caught in the currentpolitical battles surrounding accountability forand evidence of student learning.In this article, I report on the growth of two

groups of teacher candidates as they sought tounderstand assessment theory and practice.Although UGA-NETS includes only secondaryEnglish teachers and teacher educators, theassessment work with teacher candidates and theirmentors has implications for other content areaprograms as well. My colleagues and I believegood classroom assessment practices have thepower to change student learning, regardless ofthe discipline.

2. Background

I am an education professor at The Universityof Georgia who has teamed for the past 10 yearswith another English education professor, Dr.Sally Hudson-Ross, and a network of publicschool teachers to re-design our secondary Englishteacher education program (Graham et al., 1999).The UGA-NETS membership has included over75 high school English teachers who work with mycolleague and me and have collaborated as aprofessional development faculty (Hudson-Ross,1998) across 12 area high schools in 10 schooldistricts. Together, we have prepared 15–25beginning teachers each year. In June of eachyear, school representatives use resumes and coverletters to place teacher candidates with mentorswho have volunteered for the upcoming year.In the last 5 years of our joint work, we have

shifted our emphasis from re-designing the pre-service program to working together on our own

professional development in order to becomebetter teachers, mentors, and teacher educators(Graham, 1997; Graham et al., 1999; Hudson-Ross, 2001; Hudson-Ross & Graham, 2000 ). Thatwork in recent years has emphasized assessmentissues.

2.1. Going first: Professors and mentors focus on

assessment

By 1999, UGA-NETS members began to feelseriously constrained by external pressures foraccountability of student learning. The increasingdemand for raising test scores both challengedtheir professional knowledge and threatened theircredibility as teachers capable of their ownassessment of student learning. The more thegroup talked about large-scale testing and class-room assessment practices, the more ready Net-work members were to admit that we were morenaı̈ve about assessment than we should be. Thegroup also worried about how their teachercandidates (the Network’s term for ‘‘studentteacher’’) would survive in a new era of account-ability unless they had new kinds of experienceswith assessment, in particular. As a result, in thefall of 1999 UGA-NETS members committedthemselves to the study of classroom-based assess-ment. By first focusing their own professionaldevelopment agenda on assessment and latersharing this work with teacher candidates, UGA-NETS teachers hoped to join public conversationson assessment, to bring teacher candidates into anew era, and to confidently assess student learningin their own public school and university class-rooms.

2.2. Contrasting content- and assessment-based

notions of planning

The UGA-NETS members’ working definitionof assessment is grounded in the work ofresearchers, theorists, and practitioners such asBrookhart (1999), Brookhart and Loadman(1992), Stiggins (1997), Smagorinsky (2002, inour field of English education), and Darling-Hammond (2000). We situate assessment in theclassroom and in the hands of teachers who are

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P. Graham / Teaching and Teacher Education 21 (2005) 607–621 609

regarded as professionals committed to life-longlearning. In particular, we have come to seeassessment as an integral part of planning. AsDarling-Hammond suggests, ‘‘teachers need to bediagnosticians and planners who can take vari-ables into account and teach in a reciprocalrelationship’’ with a diverse range of students(2000, p. 10). In the Network, teachers andprofessors have therefore focused on creating unitsof study based on

(a)
preassessing student learning needs, back-grounds, and talents, both formally andinformally,
(b)
constructing student-based and engaging over-arching questions to make planning andlearning more cohesive,
(c)
matching learning goals and assessments as astarting place in planning,
(d)
building clear rationales for all decisions andsharing these with students and families, and
(e)
using a variety of formative and summativeassessments to document student learning andperformance, to make planning decisions, andto change directions and strategies as needed.
Three major changes in traditional habits arerequired by this approach to planning. First, mostteachers have not consciously considered preas-sessment as part of planning. Instead, they‘‘cover’’ content requirements for all students,whether those students need them or not. Second,formative assessment—building on prior knowl-edge, observation, diagnosis, and support forstudents’ needs throughout the learning pro-cess—becomes a fundamental part of teaching.

Content-Based Approach

TOPIC / THEME /

RESOURCES (books available)

TEACHING / LEASTRATEGIE

Assessment-Based Approach

(planning is “recursive” and “provisional”)

GOALS AND EXPECTATIONS

(based on preassessment data

and overarching question)

ASSESSMENTEVALUATIO

(formative and sum

Fig. 1. How teachers think about planning: what comes fir

Research strongly supports the key role offormative assessment in motivation and learning(Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999; Black &Wiliam, 1998; Brookhart and Loadman, 1992), yetteachers typically rely only on summative assess-ments as the basis for grades. Third, most teachers,at least in English, traditionally plan aroundcontent or texts, then choose activities, andfinally—and later—invent assessments based onwhat they end up teaching (McMunn, 2000;Stiggins, 1997, 1999a). This approach emphasizes‘‘content’’ over any other consideration, includingstudent learning needs or expectations. As a resultof the UGA-NETS collaborations, teachers had tore-conceptualize how they plan by adopting a‘‘backward’’ planning process (see Fig. 1). Withthis approach to planning, teachers begin with aclear statement of goals and design assessments todetermine student progress toward those goals.The selection and organization of activities, texts,and materials into daily plans come last in theteacher’s thinking process. Through this lens,assessment provides opportunities for students todemonstrate their learning in productive ways,including, but not exclusive to, final performancesbased on complex learning goals.

3. Research context: The network

Dr. Sally Hudson-Ross and I, the two profes-sors who led the teacher education component ofUGA-NETS, worked with 38 new teachercandidates during the 2 years of the assessmentinitiative (see Graham and Hudson-Ross publica-tions for discussion of campus classes). Teacher

RNING S

ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION GOALS AND

EXPECTATIONS

AND N mative)

TEACHING / LEARNING

STRATEGIES (i.e., how to get from

expectations to success on evaluation)

TOPIC / THEME/ RESOURCES (wide, varied, meaningful,

directed toward overarching

question)

st? (adapted from Nancy McMunn, SERVE, 10/00).

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candidates—placed in their school settings for afull year—collaborated with their UGA-NETSmentors to collect data on students as learners,reflect on plans and assessment procedures, anddesign their own first 3-week units which weretaught in November. Based on November insightsand experiences, they then planned new units andstudent taught full time for 9 weeks in the springsemester. In these units of study, teacher candidatesused beginning data on students as learners and awide range of formative and summative assess-ments to measure student progress. Teacher candi-dates developed point-in-time, reflective portfoliosin December and again in May that focused onstudent learning as they argued their cases forhaving met National Board for Professional Teach-ing Standards (NBPTS) in English Language Arts,which Network participants adapted for beginningteachers. In this way, mentor teachers and teachercandidates have the shared language and visioncreated by the NBPTS standards at their disposal.Neither the mentor teachers nor their teacher

candidates in UGA-NETS had previously experi-enced assessment as a means for guiding theirinstructional plans or clarifying learning goals forstudents. Assessment is only one aspect of thecomplex relationship between mentors and teachercandidates (Graham, 1997), and only one part ofthe deep and life-changing experience of learningto teach that teacher candidates encounter in ayear-long immersion in schools. However, myuniversity colleague and I believe so strongly inthe centrality of assessment skill and knowledge tothe professional dialogue between preservice tea-cher candidates and their mentors, that bysummer, 2001, we required all mentors who werechosen to take teacher candidates for the2001–2002 school year to create a unit of studythat used an assessment-based approach. In thisway, mentors were able to model the ‘‘backward’’planning process and show teacher candidates howto use formative assessment data to inform theirinstructional decision-making.

3.1. Research design

School and university faculty in UGA-NETScommitted themselves and the teacher candidate

classes of 2001 and 2002 to documenting change inthe classroom assessment practices of teachercandidates. This article focuses primarily onteacher candidates’ learning within that context.Through observation and discussions of planningand assessment texts, campus instructors investi-gated teacher candidates’ working definitions of‘‘assessment’’ and beliefs about the role of assess-ment practices to promote student learning. At thebeginning of the program, teacher candidatesdemonstrated a marked lack of insight aboutteaching plans and assessment issues. Campusinstructors had interviewed teacher candidatesduring the weeks of preplanning in their schoolsand then asked students to transcribe those inter-views (see Appendix A: Preassessment interviews).Teacher candidates completed in-depth writtenresponses to five assessment issues and providedartifacts from their teaching plans to explain andprovide evidence of their learning about assess-ment practices.

3.2. Research question

One overarching research question guided thisstudy: How do the working assessment theoriesand practices of preservice teachers change in theenactment of those theories and practices inmentored learning environments? Our researchgrew from the assumption that teachers mustconfront their tacit belief systems in order tounderstand the influences under which they operatein the classroom. We also assumed that becauseteacher candidates are profoundly influenced bytheir ‘‘apprenticeship of observation’’ (Lortie, 1975)as long-time and often successful students, theytend not to question assessment practices butinstead implement plans that look like their ownexperience as students. To interrogate assumptionsand investigate ways that teacher candidateschanged or reconstructed their theories as theystudied assessment within the context of UGA-NETS, we sought to investigate five areas:

�
teacher candidates’ prior beliefs about class-room-based assessment,
�
their conscious changes or adaptations in beliefsand practices surrounding assessment,

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�
perceived influences on their changes/adapta-tions,
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their abilities to plan and assess specific units orlessons, and
�
their unresolved concerns and questions aboutgoals and assessment for student learning.
3.3. Data collection and analysis

For this study, my colleague and I collected datafrom two classes of teacher candidates. In April2001, a class of 15 responded in writing to a set offive questions about their assessment of studentlearning; at that time, Group 1 (G1) had com-pleted the entire year of preservice teacher educa-tion. The following summer, every mentor teacherwho accepted a teacher candidate for Fall 2001developed or revised their own units of study tomodel to the incoming group of teacher candidates‘‘backward planning,’’ based on alignment ofgoals and assessments. The same issues were thenposed in December 2001 to the 23 members ofGroup 2 (G2). They had just completed their firstsemester in our program and their 3-week No-vember units when we asked them to assess theirlearning about goals and assessment. Teachercandidates were asked to write one full page inresponse to each item below:

�
From earlier data (preplanning transcripts,think pieces, dialogue journals, etc.), rememberand describe what you believed in August abouthow you would establish goals and assessstudent learning.
�
Describe how you have consciously changed oradapted your beliefs and practices in assessingstudent learning during this year. How did youset goals and assess student learning during theNovember unit/student teaching? How did itdiffer from your earlier expectations?
�
Describe the most persuasive influences thathave led to your changes/adaptations (e.g.,specific readings, experiences, discussions, ac-tivities, people, etc.). List, but also explainHOW each influence had an impact on you;what did you DO as a result?
�
As an example, list one major goal/target/standard you set for students and describehow you assessed students’ progress on thatgoal formatively and/or summatively. Attachcopies of assessments if you can.
�
What new concerns and questions about goalsand assessment of student learning would youlike to explore now and/or in your first year ofteaching? If you will not be teaching next year,what questions and concerns do you think weshould emphasize in teaching next year’steacher candidates about assessment of studentlearning?
Teacher candidates’ written responses to thequestions were not graded. As their campusinstructors, my colleague and I emphasized thatthe questions would provide useful evidence fortheir semester portfolios, particularly as theyaddressed the Assessment Standard we hadestablished at the beginning of the year. Teachercandidates were also convinced that extendedwriting about their assessment practices was atool for reflective thought, a habit they had cometo value and were motivated to pursue as part oftheir on-going learning.My colleague and I arranged the data into five

sets, based on the responses from all 38 teachercandidates to the five questions posed. I coded thedata sets separately for patterns and themes asthey emerged, discussed those codes with mycolleague, and then repeatedly read across allthose patterns to locate overlaps and connectionsacross the data sets. A recursive relationship existsbetween teaching actions and language to describethose actions; as a result, I elected to identifyfindings in the participants’ own language as thosefindings emerged for the concepts of planning andassessing for student learning.

4. Findings and discussion

The discussion of findings is organized aroundthe five separate ideas posed to teacher candidates.The intention is to present the data in a way thatreflects the teacher candidates’ growing awarenessand understanding of how to implement assess-

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ment practices that support student learning andthoughtful teacher decision-making. These sec-tions are followed by a discussion of (1) how theassumptions we operated under as we entered intothe study were supported or disconfirmed, and (2)how this study may contribute to other teachernetworks and teacher education programs seekingto address the accountability issues facing teachersacross the nation.

4.1. Initial teacher candidate beliefs

From earlier data (preplanning transcripts, think

pieces, dialogue journals, etc.), remember and

describe what you believed in August about how

you would establish goals and assess student

learning.Teacher candidates registered a great deal of

agreement concerning their earlier beliefs aboutgoals and assessment, data which directly sup-ported the preassessment data campus instructorshad collected in the Fall of 2000 and 2001. In anutshell, teacher candidates were ‘‘clueless’’ bothabout how to establish meaningful learning goalsand how to assess whether students were reachingthose goals. As Janet (G2) said,

I thought goals would be the easy part. Ithought I would just come up with a few goodones with ease and then implement them. Ihonestly do not think I understood what goalswere until November. Maybe I did understandwhat they were, just not how in depth andessential they are to teaching effectively. I neverreally thought about goals as holding meaccountable for my teaching.

Other teacher candidates explained that theirideas about setting and communicating goals tostudents grew from their own experiences as highschool and college students. Carol (G1) stated,‘‘Goals were something that I thought the teacherestablished for the students, and the goals them-selves were classified information.’’ The wide-spread belief that goals were known only toteachers and were withheld from students, posi-tioned teacher candidates to assume, as Barb (G1)did, that

a teacher’s goal was for his or her students tolisten closely, write down everything the teachersays, and be able to explain this information ona testy. In fact, my teachers never reallyexplained the purpose or goals for a unit, so Iwent through school assuming the only goal fora unit was to make an A on the test.

Similarly, teacher candidates were almost unan-imous in their misunderstanding of and lack offamiliarity with the concept of assessment. Thevast majority equated ‘‘assessment’’ with a‘‘test’’—again, based on their experiences asstudents. Thus, they tended to associate assess-ment with multiple choice and short answer testsbased on student memorization of discrete detailsand facts. As Nissa (G2) reported, ‘‘I had beenable to play the school game and ‘demonstrate myunderstanding’ through these modes of assess-ment; why couldn’t my own students?’’ Manyteacher candidates acknowledged that they knewthere was more to a summative assessment than atest, but they didn’t know what those assessmentsmight look like. Carol (G1) echoed the sentimentsof almost all candidates: ‘‘I did believe that therewas more to measuring student learning than just atest, but as far as how or why I was clueless.’’Moreover, there was a widespread belief thatanything considered an assessment would have toreceive some sort of grade. The purpose ofassessment was to assign grades in order to sortand rank students. Misty (G1) summed up the pastexperience of many teacher candidates when shesaid, ‘‘I mean who ever heard of formativeassessment prior to this class?’’

4.2. Changes in views of assessment

Describe how you have consciously changed or

adapted your beliefs and practices in assessing

student learning during this year. How did you set

goals and assess student learning during the

November unit/student teaching? How did it differ

from your earlier expectations?

Teacher candidates were able to describe howthey had changed their ideas about assessmentacross one or two semesters. To capture thecomplexity of those changes, it is useful to hear

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how Alecia (G2) viewed the connections betweengoals and assessments, particularly as they affectedher planning and teacher decision-making. [Note:Alecia had taught elementary school for threeyears before seeking secondary certification in theUGA-NETS program.]

For the first time, I was aware of how closelymy goals and assessments needed to line up. Ihad never planned the way I did for theNovember unit; previously, I had started withthe content I wanted to cover and worked fromthere. For this unit, I started with my assess-ments and goals and adjusted my content to fitthose.

This semester, I have become more aware of thechoices I make about assessment. I understandmore clearly the role of pre-assessment and therole of formative assessment. If our goal is toensure that all students are learning, having onesummative assessment at the end of a unit iscounter-productive. Assessment shouldn’t beabout punishing and rewarding learning. Itshould be about gauging student progress on adaily basis and determining how to move themtowards the goal.

I see assessment more as a process at this point.Rather than one assignment or one test, I viewassessment as something that occurs every dayat every moment in the classroom. Someassessment is formal (ex. tests) and someassessment is very informal (ex. teacher ob-servations). I have come to rely more and moreon informal assessments.

Alecia’s remarks reflect what many otherteacher candidates reported in their responses.First, candidates felt they had gained a clearer,working definition of what assessment is. Theyappreciated the usefulness of aligning goals andassessments, as well as the role formative assess-ment played in their planning efforts. Chris (G1)explained the complex interplay of these concernsin her plans:

My goals essentially broke down into short-term (formative) and long-term (summative)assessments for students: What should theyunderstand at the end of this particular activity?

How does that feed into their preparation forthe next activity? How do all of their short-term/formative goals and assessments build upto the final assessment? Does my final assess-ment reflect the emphasis from previous for-mative assessments?

The concept that formative assessment guidedinstruction by ‘‘layering’’ student learning experi-ences in response to student needs was one of themost significant for our teacher candidates. Work-ing within the guidelines provided by their units’goals and the summative assessment(s) alignedwith those goals, teacher candidates gained insightinto the necessity of adjusting their daily plans,based on the data provided by formative assess-ments. In some cases, they were forced to entirelyreconsider the goals they had established forstudent learning. Other times they reconsideredwhether the assessments they planned offered realevidence of learning. Rather than stick slavishly toplans they had designed earlier, though, they sawthe wisdom of addressing student learning needsby adjusting goals and re-teaching or scaffoldingfor understanding in another way before movingon.These realizations led to other realizations,

which elaborated on or altered some teachercandidates’ prior beliefs. For example, mostteacher candidates now believed assessmentsshould occur daily. And extremely informativeassessments could be informal; likewise, thoseassessments did not always have to be graded.Teacher candidates believed some goals could beestablished before they knew their students well,but knowing students well was key to designingmeaningful and worthwhile goals and assessments.Another major insight they reported was therealization that there were multiple forms thatassessment could take.

4.3. Influences on teacher candidate change

Describe the most persuasive influences that have

led to your changes/adaptations (e.g., specific

readings, experiences, discussions, activities, people,

etc.). List, but also explain HOW each influence

had an impact on you; what did you DO as a result?

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As might be expected, teacher candidatesreported many different influences on their emer-ging ideas about goals, assessment and planning.They cited influential texts, pivotal class discus-sions, mentor teachers, department colleagues,professors, students, and cohort members as thesources of their ‘‘ah-ha’’ moments. These influ-ences tended to vary considerably for individualteacher candidates since their receptiveness tothose influences was situated within their personalhistories, belief systems, learning styles, andrelationships with mentor teachers. Mollie (G2)provides a clear example of how multiple influ-ences worked in concert to shape her emergingideas about assessment.

[One] thing that really impacted me was readingWilhelm’s You Gotta Be the Book. I am so

verbal that I was fine with everything in myEnglish courses being centered around readingand writing. I really have had to become used tothe fact that some of my students needassessments that tap into their multiple intelli-gencesy.When constructing assessments formy unit, I made a conscious effort to includeassessments that would be fun and engaging formy artistically and spatially intelligent students.I [also] must include the ‘‘Goals/Scaffolding/Summative’’ chart [devised by campus instruc-tors]. Even though I don’t normally needvisuals like this, I really relied on this chart tomake sure that I was matching goals andassessments. The thing that I remember wasthe constant reminder that I couldn’t have anactivity if it didn’t go along with the goalsyIfeel like I am a better teacher because of thereflection on how each activity fits with thegoals. I want to, though, make that match morevisible for students when I [student] teach [full-time] next semester.

Although teacher candidates identified manydifferent influences on their thinking about assess-ment, in many cases they reported their mentorteachers as the single most powerful influence. Inthe classroom setting, teacher candidates were ableto see how the theories we discussed on campuswere implemented and modified by practice. Theyalso could see for themselves how their mentors

struggled to create an assessment design that trulyanswered the question ‘‘Are students learning?’’ AsCarie (G2) reports, the modeling provided by hermentor, Leigh,

ymade a big difference! She had done it. WhenI was going to her asking questions, when I wastrying to do my goals and rationales, she couldunderstand. She had done it. She knew whatkind of goals I was looking for; she knew whereI was headed. She didn’t have to tell me what todo; she could direct me and guide me. She hadhad somebody guide her, so she knew how toguide me.

My colleague and I did note that across the G1and G2 groups, the second group cited theirmentors as being highly influential on theirlearning about assessment practices, while the firstgroup of teacher candidates did not. We attributethis directly to the fact that mentor teachers whowere assigned teacher candidates in 2001–2002were required to model for their teacher candidatesthe preparation and teaching of a unit of studyusing ‘‘backward’’ planning and elaborated assess-ment designs that informed their instructionaldecision-making.

4.4. Examples

As an example, list one major goal/target/

standard you set for students and describe how you

assessed students’ progress on that goal formatively

and/or summatively? Attach copies of assessments if

you can.Teacher candidates’ goals and assessment plans

varied dramatically, depending on constraintscreated by school context, mentors’ ideas aboutassessment, student needs and prior learningexperiences, school and community culture, andteacher candidate openness and confidence. Ann-ette (G1) provides a good example of a teachercandidate who took her students’ writing needsinto consideration as she devised formative andsummative assessments. At the time she wrote this,she had just completed full-time student teachingat a school with one of the most diverse studentpopulations in our Network. Her school tracked

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students, and Annette taught the ‘‘lowest’’ level of9th grade students.

One major goal that I had for my freshmen isthat they would work on developing good ideasin their writingy. One thing I discovered aboutmy freshmen from observations before I evenstarted student teaching was that they aregenerally very resistant to writing even a pageyMy goals for them in terms of writing focusedon increasing fluency, simply getting them towrite more and think more deeply, to get moreideas down. It made sense for them to focus onthe ideas portion of the Creating Writers

(Spandel, 2001) scoring guide, and I hadlearned from my fall experiences with theseniors that it only made sense to tackle onearea of that scoring guide at a timeyBut I also believed that my students needed tobe given much more specific information abouthow to successfully complete a writing assign-ment than to be simply told what good ideaslook likey So I tried to provide somescaffolding for them by incorporating a sortof checklist of topics they should addresssomehow, somewhere in the paper, with differ-ent point values assigned to each portion of thechecklist. This seemed to work very effectivelyin getting students to write longer, think moredeeply, and organize their papers so that theywere relatively clearyWhile most of my students responded well tothe sort of checklist rubric I created here andwrote more deeply and with better organiza-tion, some students wound up writing papersthat were very stilted as they jumped from onechecklist item to the next. I think the bestwriting rubrics don’t include checklists that canbecome structures or formulas for weak writerslooking for a simple way to organize theirpapers. But it felt like the best place to startwith my freshman, given where they were. I’dlike to find better answers for how to structurerubrics for low-level writers though.

Annette was aware of the compromises she wasmaking with the goals she set for student writersand the rubric she used for student self-assessmentand teacher assessment. However, because she

used an array of pre- and formative assessments togauge where her students were as writers, she had arationale for every decision she made—as well asgoals for changes she would strive to make nexttime.Tina (G1) offers another scenario with an 11th

grade mixed ability group. For a number of years,Tina’s mentor teacher had enacted many of theassessment ideas we advocated in campus readingand discussions. As a result, her students werefamiliar with rubrics, self-assessment, and inquiry-based learning activities. Tina describes her ownplans for a unit focused on issues of race, gender,culture and class, addressing the overarchingquestion ‘‘Do the needs of the many outweighthe needs of the few, or the one?’’

Throughout my unit, I referred back to mygoals chart to make sure that all of my lessonsmirrored what I wanted my kids to learnyThesummative assessment took the form of indivi-dual projects—self-directed and constructed.The project assignment was given on the firstday of the unit to allow students to be thinkingabout their ideas and what works they mightuse. To ensure that students were thinkingabout and working on their projects, I requiredthat each student turn into me a proposal,rubric, and timeline a week before the due date.I allowed them to create their own gradingsystems because each project was so unique.The students seemed to get very excited abouttaking a leadership role in developing their ownassignment.

Tina was able to differentiate learning for herstudents because they had the necessary back-ground and experience to assume responsibility(with assistance from their teacher) for designingtheir own assessment instruments and timelines forcompletion of their projects. Tina acknowledgesthat with a different group of students, she wouldhave to build up to an assessment plan such as shedescribes here, making sure that students hadexperience and understanding with the processesand products required by this summative assess-ment approach.Like others in their cohort groups, Annette and

Tina realized that goal setting depended on

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student needs first, but even very different groupsof students could work toward the same highexpectations. For some students and classes, thepath towards achieving those goals would takemore time and require additional ‘‘layers’’ ofscaffolding activities. With clear goals in mind,though, most teacher candidates were able to seehow the path could be altered for differentlearners.Because some teacher candidates were more

adept at talking about goal setting and assessmentpractices than they were enacting those ideas intheir actual teaching, the 3-week November unitwas a key formative assessment for UGA-NETSinstructors. The campus teaching team and mentorteachers had time to work with individual teachercandidates before they embarked on full-timestudent teaching in the spring semester. With allof winter break stretching before them and feed-back from students as well as teaching colleagues,the preservice teachers had time and distance toreflect upon and further refine their planningpractices. Because they were required to keepdialogue journals with their mentor teachers andcampus supervisor, teacher candidates had docu-mented specific tensions and problems as thoseproblems unfolded during the November unit.Teacher candidates were then able to refinerubrics, reconsider small group activities, rewriteinstructions for assignments, question the align-ment of unit goals and assessments, examinestudent products—all in a mentored context thatsupported their inquiries and encouraged reflec-tion on their initial teaching experience.

4.5. Unresolved concerns

What new concerns and questions about goals and

assessment of student learning would you like to

explore now and/or in your first year of teaching? If

you will not be teaching next year, what questions

and concerns do you think we should emphasize in

teaching next year’s teacher candidates about

assessment of student learning?

Teacher candidates’ questions and concernsprovide a useful platform for their future inquiriesabout goals and assessments as well as for ourcampus teaching. They recorded concerns that fell

into five overlapping categories: designing goals;rubrics, grading and fairness; grading and motiva-tion; validity of assessments; and time required toplan this way.

4.5.1. Goals

Teacher candidates were aware that setting highand worthwhile goals for student learning iscentral to planning, but they questioned theirability to design ‘‘good’’ goals. Their questionsrevolved around how to differentiate goals for‘‘tracked’’ classes and mixed ability groups. Andthey worried that even if they were able toestablish meaningful goals, they still needed toorchestrate lessons that focused on those goals andtruly prepared students for success on summativeassessments. Also, they were concerned about howto explain those goals to students and show themhow the goals aligned with summative assess-ments. Teacher candidates speculated that if theycould articulate their intentions more clearly, theywould also be able to address more adequately theperpetual student question, ‘‘Why are we doingthis?’’

4.5.2. Rubrics, grading and fairness

The realities of schooling require that teachersassign grades. We introduced teacher candidatesto rubrics as one way to target their expectationsfor student performances, to share those expecta-tions with learners, and to assess those perfor-mances. We used rubrics in campus classes andmodeled negotiating rubric design with students.Using these same rubrics, we demonstrated howthey can be used as tools for peer and self-assessment. In spite of the modeling in campusclasses, most teacher candidates reported difficultydesigning good rubrics. Alice (G2) explained thatcreating rubrics ‘‘to me was the hardest part and Ifound a lot of mistakes in my rubric while I wasgrading.’’According to teacher candidates in both groups,

some activities seemed too complicated to assess,such as group work. Teacher candidates wereunsure how to assess individual student contribu-tions to group efforts, fearing they might be ‘‘toosubjective’’—that is, too generous in some casesand too strict in others. Many teacher candidates

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taught in tracked classes or inclusion classes wherespecial education students and ESOL studentswere placed. They wondered how to accommodatelearners with particular learning needs as theydesigned rubrics and assigned letter grades.As future English teachers, candidates reported

a pattern of high anxiety about assessing studentwriting, in particular. Marti (G2) wondered

How can I make better use of the rubrics [six-trait scoring guide] from Creating Writers

(Spandel, 2001) to help students assess theirown writing, or how can we develop our ownrubrics together in class? Having students createtheir own rubrics is something I would like totry, but I do not know how to organize it.

But Kamie (G2) captured the pervading concernabout rubrics, grading student writing, and fair-ness:

When grading the students’ final papers of theunit, I was able [with my rubric] to grade thehigher tracked class papers with ease. I knowexactly what they should know and when theirmistakes were just careless onesy With thelower tracked classy I want to be able to givethem positive feedback on the progress theymade without harping too much on the errorsthey made.

Amelia (G2) echoed this concern:

I want to know how to assess poorer writers ina manner that will help them grow, not makethem feel like failures. I need to know how toassess for one thing and not another. The six-trait scale was a good start, but how do I knowwhich trait I need to start with? Do I begin withthe one that seems to need the most work? Is itokay to never move past content and organiza-tion?

The concerns the teacher candidates registeredmirror those of more experienced teachers. Incampus classes and in discussions with mentors,they wrestled with thoughtful questions aboutassessment in general and writing assessment inparticular. In most cases, we were not able to offerthem ‘‘right answers’’ to their queries, but wereable to encourage them to become action research-

ers in their classrooms in order to resist prematureclosure on issues central to student learning.

4.5.3. Grading and motivation

Concerns about grading student writing alsotouched on a pervasive concern among teachercandidates about student motivation. As learnersthemselves, they had always sought good grades,and it was difficult for them to conceptualizestudent motivation without using grades as lever-age. Marti (G2) captured the concern of manywhen she wrote:

My last concern comes from the article we justread named ‘‘Hooked on Learning: The Rootsof Motivation in the Classroom’’ (Kohn, 1993).The article directly addresses one of my biggestconcerns about teaching in the public schools:How can we de-emphasize grades so thatstudents will care more about learning thangrades? Since I began my education in a schoolthat did not give grades and instead encouragedstudents to be self-motivated, this has alwaysbeen one of my biggest concerns about teach-ing, yet I still find myself saying to students,‘This is important, because it will be on the test.’I want to learn other ways to engage students inlearning so that the reward will be theirknowledge, not their grade. I have also noticedthat, though many of our students are toomotivated by grades, many of our students arenot motivated by grades at all, so I need to findother ways to reach these students.

Teacher candidates articulated the tensionscreated by grading practices and student motiva-tion, but few knew what to do about the dilemma.Even without any solutions for the problem, theyrealized the need to interrogate this tension furtherand make it a site for their classroom inquiries.

4.5.4. Validity of assessments

Teacher candidates also questioned whethertheir assessments truly measure what they intendto measure. Janet (G2) related an anecdote fromher November teaching by concluding ‘‘It was avaluable lesson for me that what I had intended toassess might not always end up being what reallygets assessed.’’ She realized that if she had not

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followed up her formative assessment by asking

her students for more input, she might have beenlulled into complacency that her original assess-ment offered her accurate and complete informa-tion about student understanding. Similarly,Hannah (G2) imagined she was measuringwhether students had completed their readingassignments by using in-role writing responses,taking on a character’s perspective.

They were able to read only those particularchapters and still successfully complete theassessment. I was not able to successfully assesswhether or not they had read the entire assign-ment. I am hoping that I can learn some moremethods of assessing student reading. While Ibelieve that my method was fairly effective, Ithink that there must be better ways of doing it.

Mollie (G2) summed up the concern for manywhen she questioned, ‘‘How do I know that mymeasurements are valid? I think that no matterhow much I try, I will never fully know that mymeasurements are truly reliable and valid.’’This tension is particularly problematic for

teacher candidates who realize they must, in thisclimate of accountability for student achievement,make a case for student learning that offers aresponse to the ‘‘certainty’’ the general publicattributes to standardized test results. Teachercandidates were concerned about how theirassessment would look to stakeholders, howassessments would be valued by students, andwhat administrators would think about theseassessments as indicators of student learning.

4.5.5. Time

One large area of difference in the responses ofG1 and G2 candidates was their concern about theamount of time required to plan and assess thisway. G1 worried that they might set aside this typeof goal setting, assessing, and planning under thetime constraints imposed on a first year teacher.But G2 made no mention of this approach toplanning and goal setting as being more time-consuming than any other. My colleague and Ispeculate the reaction of the first group may stemfrom the fact that they observed their mentorsplanning and assessing very differently from the

ways we were asking the teacher candidates to do.But mentor teachers for G2 participants were eachrequired to create a unit designed to model thesegoal setting and assessment practices to teachercandidates. Thus, G2 teacher candidates saw theirmentors implementing these practices, which wespeculate reassured them that it was, indeed,possible to find the time to plan and assess thisway. They also came away believing that it was amore effective way to plan and assess—perhapsbecause it is the only way they had experienced butperhaps also because they had heard their experi-enced mentors talk about it as a more logical anduseful way to approach student learning, usefulenough to make the time and effort to implementworthwhile.

5. Implications

In the study, my colleague and I were able toconfirm several assumptions we held going into theresearch. First, teacher candidates had, throughtheir apprenticeship of observation as highlysuccessful English students in high school andcollege, almost no incentive for questioning theirformer teachers’ assessment practices. Even whenthey admitted that they remembered little fromEnglish classes requiring memorization and regur-gitation of facts and discrete details on tests, theywere stuck with the assumption that if they hadsurvived those assessment practices, their studentswould too. However, once those tacit beliefs aboutplanning and assessment were made visible tothem through the interview data we collected atthe beginning of the fall semester, they could beginto interrogate those unexamined beliefs. Second,we assumed that teacher candidates needed a newset of experiences with assessment to fill the voidcreated by abandoned assumptions. By modelingthe kinds of assessment practices we advocated toteacher candidates, we allowed them to experiencea new set of assessment practices from thestudent’s viewpoint. But more importantly, thementor teachers, particularly in Year 2 of thestudy, provided concrete examples of how theassessment theory and practices we explored incampus classes actually played out in the second-

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ary English classroom. As a result, teachercandidates became engaged in highly contextua-lized professional dialogues about classroom-based assessment, something my colleague and Ihad assumed was central to continued teachergrowth and change in an educational worldincreasingly accountability conscious. That as-sumption also proved true.The issue of developing teachers’ skills and

knowledge about assessment points to a majorproblem in education today: if teachers cannotprovide evidence of student learning, stakeholdersin education will turn to someone or somethingthey think can provide evidence. There is a longhistory of the American public valorizing the wayhigh stakes, external tests rank and measurestudent ability (Lemann, 2000). What we neglectto do as teachers and teacher educators inAmerica, however, is speak with authority andknowledge about what such tests cannot assess.Classroom-based assessments that provide power-ful evidence of student learning are possible ifteachers and schools identify the achievement datathey need and take the time to make that evidencevisible to students, parents, and administrators.But before they can do that, they must makeassessment a centerpiece of their own professionaldevelopment and reflect upon their unexaminedassumptions about what makes an assessmentuseful. No dialogue is possible if teachers are notsystematic and conscientious about accountabilityfor student learning in their classrooms.Clearly, the UGA-NETS teachers gained con-

fidence in their collective ability to target studentlearning by carefully setting learning goals andthen selecting assessment methods that wouldprovide them with evidence of that learning. Theyshowed teacher candidates that implementingclassroom-based assessments is time-consumingfor the teacher, often complicated, but almostalways worthwhile. Preservice teachers who couldsee planning and assessment theories like this inpractice were able to envision how it would bepossible to enact that kind of practice on a dailybasis. Such experiences provided them with partialanswers to their questions about grading, evaluat-ing, and assessing students, based on multiplecases of student learners they shared with a more

experienced teacher. That kind of shared profes-sional dialogue requires novice teachers to articu-late to themselves and others what they areteaching, why they are teaching it, and how theywill know when kids are ‘‘getting it.’’ This is at theheart of career-long learning and reflection abouthow to ‘‘prove’’ to stakeholders what studentsknow and are able to do.At this point it is important to acknowledge that

although teacher candidates in this study demon-strated greater facility in talking about the theore-tical knowledge they had acquired, they also haddifficulty enacting those theories skillfully. How-ever, without this theoretical grounding in assess-ment and the models of assessment practicesprovided by their mentors, their prior beliefs aboutplanning, grading and assessment would have beenunchallenged in any deep or meaningful way. Andthey would have likely succumbed to more content-based approaches to planning and assessment inmany of the normalizing school cultures theyencountered early in their teaching careers.Our recommendation to other teacher networks

and teacher education programs would be to makeclassroom-based assessment a centerpiece issueand topic of discussion both on-campus and in thefield. We need to initiate a professional dialoguethat addresses the long-standing teacher question:How do I plan for learning to occur? Thatdialogue sets up a career-long inquiry for teacherswho are serious about studying their own practiceand serious about seeking student data to supporttheir tentative, point-in-time answers to verycomplicated questions about how learning occurs.Teacher education programs that operate with-

out the cooperation and collaboration of UGA-NETS-like mentor teachers who are willing towork with preservice teachers seem doomed tosend out novice teachers who replicate moretraditional, unexamined assessment practices;without real classrooms in which to try out thesenewer assessment designs and engage in profes-sional dialogue with teachers who are ‘‘in thetrenches,’’ preservice teachers are more likely tosuccumb to their apprenticeships of observation,which often equate assessment with ‘‘tests.’’Teacher candidates must have the opportunity towork with experienced teachers who model an

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inquiry stance towards their own practice and whomake learning theories come alive with reallearners. Mere theoretical knowledge is insuffi-cient. And so, this study is not just aboutdeveloping assessment knowledge or planningskills. It’s also about how teachers think andabout how questions are a way of modeling therelationship between thought and action. It’sabout a mentoring context that supports a mean-ingful process of learning to teach, a process thatwill sustain a novice teacher across her career.

Acknowledgements

Funding for this project was provided by theState Board of Regents P-16 Initiative and a TitleII Teacher Quality State Grant for ImpactingStudent Learning. Special thanks to Dr. SallyHudson-Ross and Dr. Jim Marshall for readingearly drafts of this article.

Appendix A. Preassessment interview questions for

teacher candidates

Teacher candidateinterviewee__________________________
Interviewer____________ D ate____________ Preplanning Interview Questions for Teacher
Candidates

Please transcribe your answers to these questionsand bring the transcript to class on FRIDAY,AUGUST 25. (You may leave out the interviewer’stalk and our chitchat. Focus on your answers, buteven within your own answers, be selective andprovisional. What do you say that’s importantabout your views on teaching and learning?Capture those ideas verbatim and paraphrase therest of your interview talk. Your transcript shouldrun about 3–4 pages.) We will use this transcriptand your autobiographies to gain perspective onyour growth as a teacher across this year.

�
Describe your image of a successful, effectiveclassroom. What is the teacher doing? What arethe students doing? What materials and re-sources do they use? (Probe for specifics.)
�
What do you perceive are the constraints underwhich teachers work? What might keep youfrom creating your ideal classroom?
�
What strengths do you bring to a teaching life? � What kinds of classes and students do youanticipate teaching? Why?
�
How will you determine if students are learning
what you are teaching? What questions and

concerns do you have about assessing and

evaluating student learning?

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