A playbill: Rethinking assessment in teacher education

Abstract

In this article, we use a theatre metaphor, reflected in a prologue, three acts, and an epilogue, to retell and reflect on our journey of inquiring about, designing, enacting, and studying our enactment of non-traditional assessment practices in higher education. We are striving to better align our assessment practices with our beliefs and values about teaching and learning. We discuss how reforming our assessment practices affected issues of equity for our pre-service teachers, such as their participation, identity, power, and agency in our classes. We hope to inspire readers to reflect on how their assessment practices affect students’ learning and sense of agency.

Using assessment data to advance equity: Five things that get in the way

“…Consistent with these calls, our review of the literature confirmed that there are relatively few recent studies of assessment practices per se, and even fewer that examine their implications for equity specifically. These studies have focused on varying contexts, from P-12 schools (Chikwe, 2013;Marsh et al, 2016 ), to higher education institutions (HEIs) (Borgioli et al, 2015;Tsai et al, 2020), to policy USING ASSESSMENT DATA TO ADVANCE EQUITY: FIVE THINGS THAT GET IN THE WAY _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ and accreditation organizations (AAC&U, 2015;Arnold et al, 2019;Meehan et al, 2020). Although they are few in number, these studies nevertheless provide invaluable insight into how assessment practices and their implications for equity actually unfold in the hands of faculty and practitioners.…”

“…Although they are few in number, these studies nevertheless provide invaluable insight into how assessment practices and their implications for equity actually unfold in the hands of faculty and practitioners. Findings center primarily on leadership (Borgioli et al, 2015;Chikwe, 2013), the structure and availability of data (AAC&U, 2015;Chikwe, 2013), and the equity-minded and nonequity-minded frameworks applied by stakeholders (AAC&U, 2015;Arnold et al, 2019;Meehan et al, 2020;Tsai et al, 2020).…”