Self- Assessment
by Audrey Conant, MEMA Information Skills Chair
Why?

Evaluation is a skill in which many students get little practice or guidance. Yet it stands at the highest thinking level of Bloom's Taxonomy. When a task asks for a student's opinion or evaluation, she is seldom required to justify or elaborate with precision - see Taxonomy chart in Appendix C. The action terms for evaluation include "using standards, setting criteria, judging with a purpose, deciding, prioritizing, classifying, diagnosing, arbitrating, supporting data." When these forms of evaluation are regularly incorporated within information literacy activities, student thinking levels are upgraded. When they are included within self-assessment of these activities, they result in growing self-awareness. Students become aware of how their decisions affect inquiry results. That focuses students on their power to affect successful solutions, and the needs they have to improve that power.

Just as self-assessment can lead to self-awareness, self-awareness leads to a sense of ownership. A self-directed, self-monitored project is proof that the researcher has laid claim to a body of information and made it her own. Full ownership involves students valuing their abilities to solve information problems for their own needs.

Self-Direction and Maine Learning Results
"An educated person is...a self-directed, and lifelong learner..." The State of Maine Learning Results includes this in their introductory profile of an educated person. In their guiding principles, (the keystone of individual subject area standards), they further define such a learner as one who:

When this ideal description of a self-directed learner is applied to student researchers, you would regularly find the following behaviors, each prefaced by deliberated student decisions:

See STANDARDS chapter for example of information skills keyed by Maine Learning Results.

How?

Incorporating student choices and self-evaluation does not suggest chaos in the library or educators relinquishing their role. Not when assignments insure significant decisions that are worth evaluating, and when students are trained to inspect their own decision-making. On the flip side, patronizing, pro-forma treatment of these valued skills invites superficiality with its lack of honest scrutiny.

Prerequisites For Self-Appraisal

WARNING: younger students tend to set arduous demands and be harsh judges initially.

Values of Self-Assessment

Immediate feedback doesn't require recall or remembering context or details or backtracking concentration. It is clear and present. It provides direct pictures of students' abilities and invites planning for improvement. Involving students gives them an instant, active role in the learning process.

Orientation to self-assessment can begin with a class debriefing session. Record student comments on a blackboard or overhead to keep a focus and set a tone of frankness and importance. This orientation can be as important to the educator as to the students. It can ease an educator's anxiety about student control while involving students in appraising their research.

Individual orientation: have both student and yourself complete a short but meaty assessment form at some stage of a research activity. Have a short conference. Compare the two assessments, stressing commonalities and inspecting the differences. Use them as joint evaluation and planning tools.

Self-assessment prompts need to occur right after a research activity, when students are closely in touch with how they are working and how they are feeling. They need to be repeated to allow perspective over time, patterns to emerge, and growth to become visible.

A reflecting mind is meditative, pondering, contemplative, according to Webster's Third. It is indirect, eventual feedback, and helps students to understand how their thinking works. Structured introspection asks students to set something on the back burner and to let it simmer, stirring it occasionally and 'watching' what bubbles up out of the multitude of scenarios or associations. Then students deliberately move those thoughts to the front burner. They examine their subjective meanderings straight on, in the bright light of feasibility and suitability, looking for insight, relevance. The goal of reflection is to give students time for that insight to develop. When students are asked to record these reactions over time, they are making their thinking visible.

Planning

When students participate in the planning of a research project, that in itself is an incentive to fulfill the plan. Initial intent and determination, however, may flag or get sidetracked, resulting in a superficial or incomplete job. Self-monitoring and self-observation tools provide a visual record of progress to nudge and encourage that initial incentive.

Mike Eisenberg commented on the BIGSIX listserv (July 28, 1996) that educators can help keep students in control of their own planning by having them frequently ask, "Where am I in terms of completing this?" instead of "What am I expected to do?" or "What should my product look like?"

The Action Plan tool for Lincoln Academy's Child Labor Study was in the form of a simplified journal (see STANDARDS chapter). It went one step further than Mike's suggestion. After a student entered where they were, they needed to plan and take the next step. The student crafted a written objective and the means to reach that objective. Each step taken toward that objective was recorded on one-half of a line with reactions or next step plans and date on the other half. That set of records not only helped students move along the process, but formed the basis for a written self-evaluation. It also provided a wealth of details for the final presentation to the class, which included a critiqued 'story of the process' as well as presentation or description of the 'product'.

The simplest first step in student planning would be to have students examine an assessment tool that has just been explained to them. Ask them to highlight at least one item. It could be a level they will try to achieve. It could be one or more elements they chose to improve during the activity to be assessed. This constitutes a goal, an intent, a plan. They may be asked to write how they can achieve their intent. They may be asked midpoint of their researching to examine the tool again and think about how they are doing in general, and especially regarding what they highlighted. This might be a good time to have them write their thoughts. This could be in preparation for a group conference or a teacher conference, or just for their own review.

Estimated target dates for segments of a research plan can be marked on a timeline in one color, the completion dates entered in another color. Estimation ability, problems and successes along the way can then be evaluated. Continued use should imrove prediction and planning capabilities.

Individualized plans to achieve or improve specific information skills can adapt a method pioneered by the Reading Recovery program. The "I Can" tool at the end of this chapter was derived from the K-2 developmental sequence of the Information Skills guide for Maine Educators by Gail Garthwait of Asa Adams School. Skills are selected from this list jointly during a librarian/student conference and highlighted. The standards for these skills, realistic and specific, are set jointly. They often take the form of a number of times the skill should be successfully demonstrated to indicate a habit. When the student meets the preset standards, the librarian blacks out the item on the objective side and dates and highlights the same item on the achievement side. Result - a growing visual of accomplishments, and hopefully an owner's sense of permanent responsibility for those accomplishments. Such checklists need to be kept in-your-face noticeable, stapled on the inside of a notebook cover, perhaps.

Debriefing

All activities benefit from a sense of closure. Beyond content goals of comprehension, review and insight, this is an ideal time for students to consider their research process skills.

Get students used to looking back on their behavior. "Spend five minutes at the end of a period recording what you did, not what you found." Sometimes add one sentence of how to start the next period. Building a bridge between search sessions helps continuity and tracking; longer, fewer search sessions helps as well.

An exit interview can be an interim measure toward self-directed self-critiquing. Fourth-grade researchers of the red fox, having become experts in one or another inquiry format, shared their findings with other experts. They had learned note-taking skills, citation, key words, scanning and skimming. Before beginning the next segment of the project, they were asked to prepare for an interview by identifying the following: "Write one or two things you think a good researcher always does." "Write one or two things you think a good researcher should not do." "How are you as a researcher?" The interviews consisted of asking students to amplify their comments, and to state preferences within the next activity. The preferences ranged from wishing to remain at the same level and work at improving, to selecting one new challenge, tempered with enough time to do a good job, to expressing a sense of restriction and a desire to acquire total command of research formats, reasoned in the context of a career in biology or computer repair. Most students described themselves as good researchers and gave evidence. Others, calling themselves O.K. researchers, stated a skill they needed to improve. The students seemed to feel honored and positive. I thought it was a good beginning. One change I might make would be to substitute able or skillful for good, or just leave out the adjective before researcher. (A few students seemed to interpret "good" in a moral context, dwelling on respectful behavior such as asking permission before interviewing, or as being disobedient, such as not verifying "what I know" facts, not plagiarizing. Other exit interview topics could cover a student's research concerns, or how his skills have changed, or "Look back on your research project. What have you learned that could help you with a different research project?"

An end-of-the-year debriefing project; ask a class to prepare a video or written introduction for next year's class as to what they might look forward to in research projects. After general class discussions to provide an overview and specific components, one fifth grade divided into groups and portrayed their favorite projects, together with the evaluation and information skills they needed and learned: Debriefing as a form of self-assessment needs to confirm that researching is a significant undertaking that will benefit a student now and always.

Part II of Self-Assessment Chapter