Selected Responses: Over the years, teachers have used traditional test formats as a primary way of measuring student learning. Typically, this approach offers the student test taker a choice of four or five responses to each test question. The student must select the correct response to complete the question successfully. This test taking process has become known as the selected response format. Examples of selected response formats include teacher-made multiple choice or true/false tests and major components of standardized norm-referenced tests such as the CTBS Terra Nova, CAT 5, SAT 8, MAT 7, and ITBS. Because selected response formats have been sanctioned over the years by their widespread use in education and because they are relatively easy to administer and score — a machine can do both — they have evolved into what might be called the traditional, customary, or conventional approach to testing or assessing student learning.
Constructed Responses: Many school reform initiatives that are currently underway throughout the United States are emphasizing higher order learning, rigorous content, and real world problem solving. Moreover, the school reform initiatives call for testing or assessment strategies that cause students to demonstrate what they have learned as a result of instruction. This means a student test taker must "do, perform, or construct" something in the testing setting that reflects learning expectations rather than to select a response prepared by someone else and offered in a multiple choice format. This test taking process is known as the constructed response format — and represents what has become known as alternative assessment.
The pioneers of alternative assessment are concerned that what is measured through a constructed response format should match the result that was expected to be learned. Furthermore, the learning standards should be demonstrated in a "real life" or "authentic" context. Because of these factors, alternative assessment "test questions" are typically called "prompts, tasks, or activities" to convey that assessment formats mirror the classroom learning activities that are used to teach the learning standards. In the purest sense, this means that an observer of classrooms should not be able to tell the difference between teaching and assessing during classroom activities. In effect, instruction and feedback are truly blended and support a continuous improvement process in the classroom. Beyond the classroom, however, this blend is less pure because of psychometric properties required of large scale assessments to ensure reliability and validity.
The TaskBuilder Figure 8 Strategy helps teachers to refine and improve their current tests and to develop constructed response measures of standards expected of their students. |
