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Stiggins. 1994. Student Centered Classroom Assesment. Maxmillan College Publishing Company: New
York

Teachers gather a great deal of valuable information about student achievement by talking with them.
We don't often think of this as assessment, but it is. At different times during the teaching and learning
process, we do the following:

- ask questions during instruction, listen to answers, and evaluate achievement

- conduct conferences with sudents that, in effect, serve as interviews yielding information about
achievement
- Listen carefully for student contributions during class discussions to evaluate student reasoning
- conduct oral examinations to assess mastery of required material
- converse with others (students, teachers and parents) to gather information about students
achievement

These five kinds of assessment, studied collectively and as individual assessment formats, are the focus
of this paper.

Those who teach understand that, while personal communication is a mode of assessment that virtually
never informs the momentous decisions and will never command the attention of our highly visible
standardized testing programs, it nevertheless always has been and will be a critical form of classroom
assessment.

PERSONAL COMMUNICATION AT WORK AS ASSESSMENT IN A COMMUNITY OF LEARNERS

The Potential Value

Our personal exchanges with students can be packed with useful information and thus can serve a
variety of important and often interwoven purposes in the classroom. For example, sometimes our
interactions with students simply provide information that corroborates or calls into questions
assessment result secured through other, structured means. That is, some teachers use this form of
assessment as a double check for another assessment. Sometimes, teachers use insights derived from
questions and answers during instruction to find out if the class as a whole or individual students are on
track or tuned in to monitor and adjust, if you will. In addition, we often use various forms of personal
communication to encourage and evaluate student reasoning and problem solving. Many teachers
reflect on student achievement demonstrated through participation in classroom discussion at report
card grading time. Clearly these represent uses of the personal communication assessment process that
are very important to student well-being in the classroom.

When we use this form of assessment with care, we can tap dimensions of achievement not easily
accessed through any means. For instance, an effective questioner can use properly sequenced to probe
deeply into student reasoning and put students in close touch with their own problem solving
proficiency at the same time.
Further, thoughtful questioners can link assessment to instruction with great efficiency and
effectiveness. For example, we can uncover students misconceptions very quickly through this mode of
assessment and correct them at once.

The Need for Caution

By the same token, if we are not careful in our use of personal communication as assessment, we can
mismeasure achievement every bit as easily with this mode as with any of the other modes. As you shall
see, the list of potential pitfalls is as long as with performance or paper and pencil assessment. In fact, in
some senses, the list of challenges to the effective use of personal communication assessment is even
longer than those of other modes because of this one often is carried out casually in an informal
context, where bias can creep in without even being noticed. But the good news is that we know how to
overcome these potential problems.

Nowhere is classroom assessment more of an art than in the use of personal communication to track
student growth and development. Typically, there is no table of test specifications to match against our
intended target. There are no test items to check for quality, no score results. We cant check for
agreement among observers to see if judgments are consistent. These are artifacts of preplanned,
structured classroom assessments. Often, personal communication is not like that. Its more
spontaneous, more personal.

Nevertheless, we must understand and appreciate the fact that even this more artistic mode of
assessment carries with it specific rules of evidence. Understand and adhere to those rules and you can
derive valuable information about the attainments of your students. Disregard those rules and just as
with other forms of assessment you can do great harm. With this form of assessment, just as with the
others, we must be vigilant in our pursuit of quality.

The Preparation to Assess

This phase begin with an analysis of an instructional/assessment strategy called scored discussions. Zola
(1992) said heres how it works when an outstanding teacher use it:

The teachers goal is to help students learn to make productive contributions to public discussions of
important, social issues. Thus, the focus of assessment is group interaction skills during calls discussion.
She begins by informing students that they will read a brief essay on a controversial social topic and
then discuss it, analyzing key elements of the controversy and evaluating different points of view. Then
from the perspective of personal interactions, what discussion skills are most likely to contribute to a
productive class discussion? What positive behaviors are really effective discussants likely to exhibit?
Here is the following characteristics of good contributors:

- making high-quality contributions that are on the topic

- listening attentively when others are contributing
- acting purposely to bring others into the discussion
- asking clarifying questions
- not being afraid to take a position and defend it
 - making their points clear and brief

Next, the personal interaction patterns that might be counterproductive in a discussion, this is list
includes the following:

- putting other discussants down for their ideas

- not participating
- not listening attentively
- interrupting others
- dominating the discussion
- making contributions that are off topic

From these lists, the students devise a scoring sheet that lists the important productive behaviors, each
of which earns two points when exhibited. Next, they list the less important productive behaviors, giving
these point value of one. Counterproductive behaviors are then listed, with point values of minus two
and minus two. Each discussants goal, they agree, is no attain the highest (positive!) score they can
during the ensuing discussion.

The Discussion and Assessment Process

Students are paired randomly. One member of each team is labeled an innie, the other an outie. The
students sit in two circles, outies sitting right behind their innie partners, scoring sheet in hand. Innies
read a brief piece on a controversial topic (perhaps a newspaper editorial on a volatile political issue)
and discuss it among themselves. Every time their partner exhibits one of the behaviors listed on the
scoring sheet, the outie tallies it. Later, tallies are counted to find the frequency of occurrence of the
various targets. These are multiplied by points to yield a score.

Innies and outies then reverse roles. Outies read an essay on a controversial topic and discuss. Their
partners observe, evaluate, and summarize in exactly the same way, arriving at a profile of performance
for later discussion.

The Feedback - via Personal Communication

When discussions are done, partners meet to share and discuss the result. Their assignment is to talk
with each other about the quality and impact of their contribution to the group interaction. They
identify positive, productive patterns, as well as specific way to improve. Partners are asked to provide
specific examples of things that seemed to work well and those that did not. If any misinterpretation
occurs, discussants have a chance to explain what they were trying to do. In short, partners provide
feedback on result, not just as scores, but as personal communication about the assessment and its
results.

Later, the class as a whole discusses the implications of this activity for attaining goals of civic
responsibility. As they debrief this activity, of course, they strive to adhere to good discussion
techniques.
As a variation on this idea you may wish to use the scored discussions strategy as a group learning
activity by videotaping group discussions before and after students brainstorm, devise the scoring sheet,
observe each other, and provide focused feedback. Have students as a class view the resulting videos,
and compare and contrast group performance. The discussion conducted at the end of the lesson more
civil and productive than the prelesson discussion was analyze why-always bring the lesson to a close
with a thoughtful analysis.

ENSURING QUALITY ASSESSMENT USING PERSONAL COMMUNICATION

Assessment via personal communication is yet another assessment method that is subjective by its very
nature. In this part, we explore the role of subjectivity in this form of assessment. We then deal with
other practical quality control matters, including issues of match between personal communication and
the five kinds of outcomes weve been exploring, classroom realities to take into account with this
method and more sampling considerations.

Subjectivity in personal communication

Professional judgment and therefore subjectivity, permeates all aspects of assessments that rely on
personal communication. Professional judgment guides all of the following:

- the achievement targets we set for students

- the questions we pose (and sometimes generate very quickly on the spot)
- the criteria we apply in evaluating answers (often without a great deal of time to reflect)
- the performance records we store (often in memory)
- the manner in which we retrieve results for later use
- interpretations we make of those results
- the various ways in which we use those results

For this reason, it is imperative that, as when using other assessment methods, you know and
understand the achievement target and know how to translate it into clear and specific questions and
other probes to generated focused information.

Table 1. Defining Issues of Quality for personal communication as classroom assessments

Attribute of Quality Defining Question

Arise from a clear and specific achievement
Serve clear purposes
Assure a sound representation of that target
Do my questions reflect the achievement target I
want my students to hit?
Why are we using personal communication to
assess? How will results be used?
Can the target of interest to me be accurately
reflected through direct personal communication
with the students?
 Sample performance appropriately Do I have enough evidence?
Control for unwanted interference Am I in touch with potential sources of bias, and
have I minimized the effects of personal and
professional filters?

We can avoid problems due to the fallibility of the human mind and bias only by attending to those five
ever-present, important, basic attributes of sound assessment as they apply in the context of personal
communication. Whether we plan or are spontaneous in our personal communication with students, we
must bear these quality standards in mind. When these standards of quality are met, personal
communication holds the promise of providing rich and useful