Techniques September 2012 - 31

CareerTech VISION 2012— Assessment

By Bart Washer and Lori Cochran
f we told you Eddie Haskell from the TV show “Leave it to Beaver,” high school driver’s ed courses, and educational theory from 1956 would drive this article, would you stay with us? After all, many of us may have never heard of Eddie Haskell, taken driver’s ed, nor were around in 1956. But if you’ll give us 20 minutes (plus reflection time), we believe you’ll gain a greater appreciation of assessing and documenting CTE students’ performances in the cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains.

Background Terminology and Context
Throughout this article we will be referring to curriculum alignment, direct/ indirect/process/product assessments (Erickson & Wentling, 1988), authentic assessments (Custer, Schell, McAlister, Scott, & Hoepfl, 2000), Assessment FOR Learning (Stiggins, 2004), and student performance in the three learning domains as identified by Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, and Krathwohl, (1956). Rather than formally defining these terms, we’ll present examples in a brief vignette from a course many of us took in high school: driver’s education.

Driver’s Education with Mr. Brady
Let’s call our driver’s ed (DE) instructor Mr. Brady. One of the activities in DE was to change an automobile tire according to the manufacturer’s recommendation (learner objective). Mr. Brady communicated the objective to the class, used the appropriate instructional resources (the DE car, tools, parking lot), taught us to change a tire (instructional strategy), and then planned on assessing us using the
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manufacturer’s instructions for changing the tire. Mr. Brady planned to assess and document our processes (procedural steps) along the way rather than only assessing the final work product. Up to this point, this activity had curriculum alignment. The objectives, resources, instructional strategies and planned assessments were connected. But then Mr. Brady realized the dynamic of our class during this activity and how much instructional time we could waste if we really applied ourselves. Short on time, he was forced to modify his assessment. Rather than each of us actually changing a tire (psychomotor assessment) for our summative exam (which would have been a direct assessment of the objective), Mr. Brady revised the assessment where we explained how to change a tire on a written test (cognitive assessment of the psychomotor objective). So while Mr. Brady was not directly assessing the psychomotor objective, he was indirectly assessing our knowledge of the psychomotor process. While indirect assessment may jeopardize curriculum alignment, Mr. Brady realized that indirectly assessing the psychomotor objective trumped no assessment. Furthermore, he required us to perform on the cognitive assessment by synthesizing our knowledge and practicing correct grammar (using short answer and essay questions) rather than using lower-level matching, true/false (T/F), and multiple choice (M/C) items. Finally, by observing us throughout the instructional process using Assessment FOR Learning-type practices (Stiggins, 2004), he was providing formative feedback throughout instruction while documenting our performance. Even if we didn’t have our psychomotor

test on actually changing the tire, he had documentation (formative assessment data) on what every student knew, could do and valued.

Investigating the Three Domains of Learning
Using the above tire-changing vignette, it is proposed that we (Mr. Brady’s students) were performing in all three learning domains: cognitive (knowledge), psychomotor (fine/gross motor skills), and affective (appreciations, values) (Bloom et al, 1956; Krathwohl, Bloom & Masia, 1964). We also propose performance is not tied only to the psychomotor domain. Upon reflection, don’t our students perform in all domains almost daily? Perhaps they do not perform in the psychomotor domain every day, but we believe students perform cognitive and affective tasks daily. We must seize the opportunity in documenting student performance in all three learning domains as evidence of their learning. For example in the cognitive domain, students perform daily by using correct English and grammar when they create memos, resumes, technical documents, charts and solutions to problems, etc. In the psychomotor domain, they perform fine and gross motor skills by completing physical tasks like welding, constructing a structure, and manipulating a mouse/ pointing device. In the affective domain, they perform employability skills daily as evidenced by being on time, getting along with others, and spending time on task. But back to Mr. Brady’s tire-changing activity: While we performed in all three domains, were Mr. Brady’s assessments authentic (Custer et al., 2000)? Did his
September 2012

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Techniques September 2012

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