I Don't Like Writing. It Makes My Fingers Hurt': Students talk about their classroom assessments

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'I Don't Like Writing. It Makes MyFingers Hurt': Students talk about theirclassroom assessmentsSusan M. Brookhart a & Diane L. Bronowicz aa School of Education , Duquesne University , Pittsburgh, PA, 15282,USAPublished online: 09 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Susan M. Brookhart & Diane L. Bronowicz (2003) 'I Don't Like Writing. It Makes MyFingers Hurt': Students talk about their classroom assessments, Assessment in Education: Principles,Policy & Practice, 10:2, 221-242, DOI: 10.1080/0969594032000121298

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Assessment in Education, Vol. 10, No. 2, July 2003

‘I Don’t Like Writing. It Makes MyFingers Hurt’: students talk about theirclassroom assessmentsSUSAN M. BROOKHART & DIANE L. BRONOWICZSchool of Education, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA 15282, USA

ABSTRACT Students’ own voices describe their perceptions of classroom assessments: theassignment’s interest and importance, students’ self-efficacy for accomplishing the tasks,and the goal orientations behind their efforts at learning. A multiple case study designlooked at seven classroom assessment environments—seven teachers’ classrooms—in fourdifferent schools, with interviews from 161 students. Student perceptions of assessmentsrevolved around their personal connection with the assessments or their consequences. Therewere more similarities than differences in students’ descriptions across classrooms andassessments.

‘I don’t like writing. It makes my fingers hurt.’ Thus said a third grader when askedabout his ‘meaningful sentence test’, a vocabulary test in which the students had towrite sentences with their vocabulary words. It was called a ‘meaningful’ sentencetest because sentences like ‘I have a ’, where the meaning of the word couldbe anything, were not allowed. But another boy in the same class thought themeaningful sentences were ‘fun’, and they were important ‘because if you didn’tknow how to write meaningful sentences, you wouldn’t know how to write’. Thatone got the point! Assessment is an important aspect of classroom practice and iscrucial to informing the work teachers do. Much of the classroom assessmentliterature is about what teachers do, or what they should do—what kinds ofinformation they should gather and to what uses they should put the information.But what do students think about their classroom assessments? Students’ viewsabout their schoolwork are an important component of motivation (Brophy, 1999),especially for attempting the tasks, tests, or assignments that teachers use forclassroom assessment. For a particular classroom assessment, how do students viewthe task and its importance, their abilities to do it, their reasons for doing it, and theeffort they expend? This study undertook to answer these questions in the students’own voices with interviews of elementary, middle and high school students from fourdifferent schools.

Two sections follow. The first will document the selection of the particularstudent perceptions that formed the basis for the interview questions. Most of the

ISSN 0969-594X print; ISSN 1465-329X online/03/020221-22 2003 Taylor & Francis LtdDOI: 10.1080/0969594032000121298

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222 S. M. Brookhart & D. L. Bronowicz

relevant literature is from educational psychology, where the focus is individualdifferences. This literature is one piece of the framework for this study, since theperceptions of individual students were investigated. The second section citesliterature describing the components of the classroom assessment environment andits effects. This literature is also an important part of the framework for this study,since classroom assessments are usually group experiences, dependent upon theircontext. Assessments differ from class to class. Even when the ‘same’ assessment, forexample a unit test from a textbook, is given in different classes, the experience forstudents may differ because of different instructional experiences.

Student Perceptions

Students’ perceptions of the importance and value of a task have been known to beimportant since the early days of educational psychology, when behaviourism wasthe dominant orientation. More recent motivational theory, based in cognitivepsychology, also emphasises student perceptions of the meaning of tasks they areasked to do and their performances. This study selected three areas of studentperceptions that have been identified as important to classroom assessment(Brookhart, 1997; Covington, 1992; Tittle, 1994): student perceptions of theassessment task, including its interest and importance; student perceptions of howdifficult the task would be for them, or their perceived self-efficacy to do that specificassessment; and student goal orientations or reasons for their work.

Interest and importance are related to motivation in cognitive theories because itis on these perceptions that students base their mental schemata for the reasons todo their work (Bergin, 1999; Brophy, 1999; Hidi & Harackiewicz, 2000). Differentstudents will perceive the same task as more or less interesting and important.Students’ estimations of the importance, complexity, and difficulty of a task willinfluence their approaches to it. Expectancy-value theories of motivation proposethat students’ expectancies and values determine students’ motivation toward a goal.Expectancies include both the belief that performing some action will lead to thegoal and the belief that the student can successfully perform the action (self-efficacy). The value component is the student’s belief that the goal is worthwhile(importance). Eccles (1983) distinguished between a task’s intrinsic value to astudent—the task’s importance or interest for its own sake—and its utility value, thevalue it receives because the task is instrumental in doing something else that isworthwhile.

The perceived importance, usefulness, and value of engaging in a task aremotivators for student effort (Pintrich & Schrauben, 1992). Tasks that are perceivedto be important will command greater student effort than those perceived to betrivial or ordinary (Salomon, 1983, 1984). Salomon (1983) reasoned that studentslooked on a source of information as a task or message to be decoded andunderstood. Thus he hypothesised that students’ learning from television might beaffected by how realistic they perceived the message to be. He defined a constructcalled mindfulness—the deliberate, non-automatic, mental rehearsal of material(Salomon, 1983, 1984)—which matches well with what teachers ask students to do

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Students Talk About Classroom Assessments 223

and which is, in fact, related to a deep approach to studying characterised by intentto understand, an active interest in the material, relating ideas to one another, andlooking for evidence (Jackson, 1994).

One reason students perceive a task or assignment as important or valuable has todo with their own goal orientations, that is, why they perceive they need or want todo their work. Ames and Archer (1988) reviewed several taxonomies of goalorientations: task involved versus ego involved, learning oriented versus performanceoriented, and mastery focused versus ability focused (p. 260). They noted that eachtaxonomy offered one goal orientation (task, learning, or mastery) that describedstudents whose main aim was learning some new skill or information. The other goalorientation (ego, performance, or ability) described students whose main aim wasbeing judged successful or capable.

The amount of effort invested in an assessment task involves both mental effort(Salomon, 1983, 1984) and overt activity. Teachers are used to observing the overteffort, things like turning in completed assignments on time. As they work, studentsuse various active and superficial approaches as their learning strategies; the types ofstrategies that students use are related to their goal orientations (Meece et al., 1988).Similarly, in a previous study using similar interview questions (Brookhart &DeVoge, 1999), when students explained the reasons for their efforts they oftendescribed their goal orientations, and so goal orientations were included in this studyto help understand effort.

Hidi and Harackiewicz (2000) reviewed recent theoretical developments in thetwo related areas of interests and goals. They pointed out that there has beena tendency to champion individual, intrinsic interest and motivation and masterylearning goals, and to discourage situational interest, extrinsic motivation, andego or performance goals. Their review concluded that these two constellationsdid not constitute opposite motivational states. They found some evidence thatstudent interest can be focused with situational factors (appealing material,‘interesting’ tasks); once interest is internalised, the student will continue topursue mastery. They also found some studies reported that performance andmastery goals can exist together, and students with both orientations had higherlevels of self-regulation and grades than students with only one or neither goalorientation.

The tasks that are best suited for fostering student learning are those with amoderate level of challenge (Stodolsky, 1988). Students estimate the amount ofchallenge an assignment will pose for them—they estimate its difficulty. Students’self-efficacy beliefs refer to students’ convictions that they will be able to do anassignment successfully, learn what is required, or master the material or skill(Bandura, 1986; Pajares, 1996). Schunk (1994) reviewed literature about studentself-efficacy and found that it was related to students’ own regulations of theirefforts, including their approach to and persistence at their work. Measures thatrequire more specific self-efficacy judgements, for example about particular skills ortasks, are better predictors than global self-efficacy measures (Pajares, 1996). Stu-dents will differ in their perceived self-efficacy to accomplish a task as they perceiveit (Pintrich & Schrauben, 1992; Schunk, 1994; Weiner, 1979). Self-efficacy is

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associated with effort, persistence, and performance. Students make judgementsabout their own self-efficacy by comparing their past accomplishments with stan-dards, either relative or absolute (Lepper, 1988; Schunk, 1994). To make thesejudgements, students must weigh task characteristics like difficulty, amount of effortrequired, and amount of assistance available against their perceptions of their pastperformances and accomplishments.

Meyer et al. (1997) divided 14 fifth- and sixth-grade students whom their teacherjudged to represent a range of risk-takers in mathematics into two groups: challenge-seekers and challenge-avoiders. Challenge-seekers reported higher tolerance of fail-ure, higher learning goal orientations, and a higher self-efficacy in maths thanchallenge-avoiders, who reported less tolerance of failure, higher performance goalorientations, and lower self-efficacy in maths. After describing these patterns anddocumenting them with group differences on scaled variables, Meyer and hercolleagues interviewed four of the students in depth and were able to documentstudents’ own descriptions of these tendencies. The students were articulate anddescriptive about their own perceptions and feelings, providing evidence that theydeveloped these perceptions over time and that they used them to interpret theirclassroom work and learning. For example, when asked about taking on extra work,a challenge-seeker said, ‘Because I think [in completing] a harder project you learnmore, so I like to take harder projects to learn more’. A challenge-avoider said,‘Because I never imagine math as doing it for fun, doing it in my free time, doingit for extra’ (Meyer et al., 1997, p. 510).

The relationships among interest and value, self-efficacy, learning goals, and effortare not simple. Students who have high expectations for success persist, even whentheir effort sometimes fails. Students who have low expectations for success some-times do not make even minimal efforts that might result in success, so they canprotect their self-worth by explaining failure in terms of not trying. Covington(1992) developed self-worth theory, which holds that ‘the search for self-acceptanceis the highest human priority, and that in schools self-acceptance comes to dependon one’s ability to achieve competitively’ (p. 74). Thus he explained that studentsengage in various mixtures of success seeking and failure avoiding, with the goal ofmaintaining self-worth.

In summary, the reported interest and importance of an assessment task, students’self-efficacy to accomplish it, and their goal orientations are an important set ofstudent perceptions that together may help explain motivation to accomplish theclassroom assignments students do every day. A solid understanding of the natureof and relationships among the three constellations of student perceptions—taskperceptions of interest and importance, self-efficacy, and goal orientations—will benecessary for understanding classroom assessments in depth. Different theories havedealt with some of these relationships. Expectancy value theory relates self-efficacyand task importance to effort (Eccles, 1983). Goal theory relates self-efficacy andtask importance to effort (Ames, 1992; Ames & Archer, 1988; Meece et al., 1988).Self-worth theory relates effort and task importance to self-worth, and potentially toself-efficacy (Covington, 1992). This study sought to describe some of thoserelationships in students’ own words.

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The Classroom Assessment Environment

The classroom assessment environment (Stiggins & Conklin, 1992) is an importantpart of the classroom atmosphere. The way teachers communicate their expectationsto students and the way they provide feedback as to how well these expectationswere met helps students form concepts of what is important to learn and how goodthey are at learning. Stiggins and Conklin (1992) identified eight dimensions of theclassroom assessment environment: purposes for which a teacher assesses; methodsused to assess achievement; criteria used in selecting assessment method; quality ofassessments; nature of the feedback a teacher gives students on their work; teacherpreparation for and attitudes toward assessment; the teacher’s perceptions of stu-dents; and the assessment policy environment. Seven of these are mainly under theteacher’s direct control; only the last is not. Haydel et al. (1999) called teachers’beliefs about testing and assessment practices ‘the evaluative culture of classrooms’,and found that these beliefs were related to teacher efficacy. Teacher efficacy, inturn, is related to student efficacy and achievement (Ashton & Webb, 1986).Teachers who think they can make a difference, in fact, do—apparently using theirassessment practices in the process.

Students are given specific expectations for particular assessments each time aparticular assessment task is assigned, and they experience the degree to which theymeet those expectations and the related feedback; these instructional segments canbe called classroom assessment events (Brookhart, 1997). A classroom assessmentevent may be considered a special case of an activity segment—a lesson or part of alesson that has a focus, a beginning and an end, participants, materials, and goals(Stodolsky, 1988)—where students realise that the degree to which their perform-ance achieves the goal will be judged by the teacher.

The salience of the classroom assessment environment and the importance of theparticular classroom assessment event within the environment prompted the de-cision to study student perceptions—of the task and its interest and importance,student self-efficacy to accomplish it, and their reasons for doing so or goalorientations—at the event level. It was reasoned that students’ answers to perceptionquestions might be different depending on the assessment to which they werereferring.

Most teachers in the USA are taught a model of instruction that emphasisesplanning clear instructional goals or objectives. Lesson planning involves decidingwhat instructional strategies will help students meet those goals, and assessment isfinding out how well the students accomplished their learning goals. Stiggins (2001)used the metaphor of helping students hit an ‘achievement target.’ Classroomassessment provides the information and evidence on how well students have donethis. Given this model of instruction, many assessments in American classrooms—including all of those in this study—function in a summative fashion regarding theunit of instruction for the particular goals or objectives. They also can be formativein the sense that they give teachers and students information for use in futureinstructional decisions or studying. Teachers are often very explicit about their useof this model. Some even write their objectives on the chalkboard so the

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students can see the intention for the lesson. This instructional approach was partof the context for the assessments in this study and of student perceptions aboutthem.

Method

Yin (1993) categorised case study research as single-case or multiple-case and asexploratory, descriptive, or explanatory. This study’s design is an example ofmultiple-case, descriptive research. This study used the interview data collectedduring the same school year from a total of 161 students in four different schools.It is multiple-case because seven teachers in four different schools participated, anddescriptive because it seeks to describe something (student perceptions of theirclassroom assessments) and uses theory to identify what needs to be described.While descriptive studies have been historically undervalued, description is import-ant to understanding a phenomenon (Yin, 1993), especially a phenomenon likeclassroom assessment where context plays an important role (Stiggins & Conklin,1992).

The four schools, and the teachers within them, were not selected randomly. Eachschool was one where the researcher had a relationship with one or more interestedteachers or administrators. The researcher’s connections with schools were import-ant in order to gain access, permission, and the level of trust and co-operationnecessary to interview 161 children. As a group, the set of schools comprised anintensity sample (participants represented a range of levels of a characteristicrelevant to the study, Gay & Airasian, 2000, p. 139) of socio-economic levels.Within classrooms, the selection of higher and lower achieving students comprisedan intensity sample of achievement level relative to the context of the particularclassroom and course. No claim is made that students were comparable acrosscontexts. For example, the high achieving students in the World Cultures classeswere not the same as the high achieving students in the Anatomy classes. Thisreflects the reality of the field settings; it also reflects the theoretical point thatclassroom assessment, including students’ perceptions, occurs in environmentalcontexts (Stiggins & Conklin, 1992) and needs to be studied accordingly.

The design of this study considered each teacher a case, because the classroomassessment environment is created mostly by the teacher (Haydel et al., 1999;Stiggins & Conklin, 1992). For each teacher, several assessments were studied;where possible, these included both paper-and-pencil tests and performance assess-ments. For each assessment, some low and high achieving students were studied,allowing a look at what arguably might be different perspectives on the assessmentsby which students’ achievement would be judged. The goal was not to generaliseabout teachers (cases), but to write a description of the way students perceive andrespond to a variety of classroom assessment events, in a variety of classroomassessment environments, in several different school and grade-level contexts. Themethod chosen to do that was to look at similarities and differences among students’interviews across cases.

Students were asked interview questions based on the constructs identified in the

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TABLE I. Interview questions

1. What does your teacher expect you to do for [classroom assessment event]? How do you knowthat?

2. Are you interested in [classroom assessment event]? How do you know? Would you beinterested in learning what you need to know for [classroom assessment event] even if you weren’tgetting a grade?

3. Do you think it is important to know how to do [classroom assessment event]? Why? How doyou decide if it’s important?

4. How hard will (or was) [classroom assessment event] be for you? How do you know that? Whydo you say that?

5. How well do you think you will do (or did) on [classroom assessment event]? Why? How doyou know that?

6. (High schools only) Do you care about how others did on [classroom assessment event]? Doyou care what others think about how you did? Why?

literature review: task perceptions (interest and importance), perceived difficulty andself-efficacy, and goal orientations. Questions were specific to each classroomassessment (e.g., ‘Do you think it is important to learn about fractions?’). Table Ipresents the basic interview questions, which were supplemented by probes (e.g.,‘Tell me more about …’, ‘What do you mean by …’, and so on).

Teachers identified students for the researcher to interview for each assessment,choosing both more and less able performers. Teachers were in the best position tomake these designations because classroom performance level, not standardised testperformance level, was the basis for selecting students. This followed from thetheoretical stance taken: to examine classroom assessments as events within particu-lar classroom contexts and to make questions refer to specific assessment events.The specific assessment contexts are apparent in Figures 1–4.

Two third grade teachers (Teachers #1 and #2 in this study) in an elementaryschool and two fifth grade teachers (Teachers #3 and #4) in the adjoining middleschool volunteered to be part of the study. Four language arts classroom assessmentsin each third grade and two each of social studies and maths assessments in fifthgrade were observed. Teachers were selected because of comparability of teachers’teaching loads, so that at least some of the assessments would be the same betweenclasses. Figures 1 and 2 present descriptions of the classroom assessment events inthese classes. These schools were in a small urban district of 2,300 students; 62%of the elementary, and 55% of the middle school students were classified aslow-income. A total of 63 students was interviewed.

Two different high schools were studied, one in a suburban district and one in aninner-city location. Teacher #5 taught Social Studies at the urban high school(1,500 students, of whom 42% were classified as low-income) in a district of 40,000students. This teacher taught two classes each of 10th grade World Cultures and

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Teacher #1, Language Arts, female teacher, 13 students

Pecos Bill adventure paragraph (write how you would have reacted to one of the threeadventures you read)Mean performance (4-point rubric) � 3.08, sd � .49

Meaningful sentence test (write 5 meaningful sentences for vocabulary words)Mean performance � 94.00%, sd � 6.76

Story test (comprehension test on story ‘Rachel’s Journey’ from reader)Mean performance � 77.00%, sd � 10.82

Language test (correct errors in sentences)Mean performance � 89.92%, sd � 4.76

Teacher #2, Language Arts, female teacher, 16 students

Pecos Bill adventure paragraph (write how you would have reacted to one of the threeadventures you read)Mean performance � 84.31%, sd � 10.03

Story test (comprehension test on story ‘Eliza’s Daddy’ from reader)Mean performance � 91.79%, sd � 7.29

Spelling test (20-word unit test given on St. Patrick’s day with answer sheet to colour)Mean performance � 92.81, sd � 7.95

Story test (comprehension test on story ‘Legend of Bluebonnet’ from reader)Mean performance � 82.88%, sd � 10.41

FIG. 1. Classroom assessment events in elementary school, third grade.

11th grade honours US History, and a 12th grade Philosophy elective. Fourassessment events in each course (total 12) were studied (see Figure 3). A total of48 students was interviewed.

The suburban high school (990 students, of whom 5% were classified lowincome) was in a district of 3,200 students. One English teacher (Teacher #6) andone Anatomy teacher (Teacher #7) there participated. Two sections of 11th gradehonours English, one section of 10th grade English, and three sections of Anatomywere studied (see Figure 4). A total of 50 students from this high school wasinterviewed.

Permission to conduct the study was obtained from the respective district admin-istrators. Informed consent letters were sent to parents. Initial observations weremade in each class to note general instructional practices and classroom routinesand to familiarise the researcher, students, and teachers with each other; this wasimportant because of the focus on classroom environment. After the initial observa-tion, the researcher and teachers together decided on which classroom assessment

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Teacher #3, Social Studies, female teacher, 28 students

Middle Colonies test (unit test from textbook)Mean performance � 88.93%, sd � 10.96

Role play, ‘We protest!’ (group development & presentation of skit about peaceful protest toBritish regarding unfair taxation)Mean performance (4-point rubric) � 3.71, sd � .50

Teacher #3, Math, 25 students

Geometry cartoon (‘state-test-like’ performance, draw a figure using geometric shapes)Mean performance (5-point rubric) � 4.88, sd � .60

Unit test on 1-digit division, finding averages, solving equationsMean performance � 81.96%, sd � 13.02

Teacher #4, Social Studies, female teacher, 21 students

Middle Colonies test (unit test from textbook)Mean performance � 75.95%, sd � 18.93

Pre-revolutionary and French/Indian War test (unit test from textbook)Mean performance � 71.52%, sd � 16.46

Teacher #4, Math, 19 students

Unit test on 1-digit division, finding averages, solving equationsMean performance � 58.89%, sd � 22.13

Unit test on fractions and mixed numbersMean performance � 67.11%, sd � 18.58

FIG. 2. Classroom assessment events in middle school, fifth grade.

events would be observed for the study, with the intention of including a range ofdifferent types of assessments, as Figures 1–4 illustrate. Assessments ranged fromtraditional paper-and-pencil tests to group presentations graded with student-writ-ten rubrics.

Student interviews were coded according to the theoretical constructs: perceivedtask characteristics such as interest and importance, perceived self-efficacy to do thetask, and goal orientations (whether the task was important in its own right, amastery orientation, or whether external approval was the reason for working, anego/social orientation). Two readers coded a sample of 5 interviews; coder agree-ment was 87%. After categories were coded, thematic analysis looked for patterns inthe responses within category (e.g., what reasons did students give for their percep-

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U.S. History, 11th Grade honours track, 26 students in 2 classes

Revolutionary America test (paper and pencil, individual exam)Mean performance � 75.96%, sd � 14.98

Events Leading to the Civil War Comic Book (performance assessment, group project)Mean performance, 17.84 on a 20-point rubric scale, sd � 3.38

‘History Game’ of events 1877–1900 (performance assessment, group project, student-written rubrics)Mean performance � 95.52%, sd � 8.49

Evaluating JFK Project (performance assessment, group project, student-written rubrics)Mean performance � 93.86%, sd � 19.64

Philosophy, 12th Grade elective, 15 students

Early Philosophers test (paper and pencil, individual exam)Mean performance � 96.50%, sd � 4.46

Philosopher Presentations (performance assessment, group project)Mean performance � 12.60 on a 15-point rubric scale, sd � 1.92

Hinduism Presentations (performance assessment, group project, student-written rubrics)Mean performance � 95.77%, sd � 4.00

Current Issue Presentation (performance assessment, group project, student-written rubrics)Mean performance � 80.71%, sd � 17.74

World Cultures, 10th Grade, 40 students in 2 classes (70 enrolled)

Renaissance quiz (paper and pencil, individual quiz)Mean performance � 65.25%, sd � 16.17

Hobbes/Locke Conversation (written performance [imaginary conversation that Hobbes andLocke might have had if they discussed the American revolution], individual assignment)Mean performance � 18.44 on a 25-point rubric scale, sd � 4.74

Industrial Age Game (performance assessment, group project, student-written rubrics)Mean performance � 77.30%, sd � 33.43

World War II Timeline (performance assessment, individual assignment, student-writtenrubrics)Mean performance � 82.32%, sd � 17.10

FIG. 3. Classroom assessment events in urban high school, Social Studies, Teacher #5, Male.

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Teacher #6, 11th Grade honours English, female teacher, 41 students in 2 classes

I-Search paper (research an original topic of personal interest, using informal sources, includefamily interviews)

Hypothesis paper on the novel Out of This Furnace (identify an apparent contradiction in thenovel, forward an hypothesis about the reason, support with evidence)

Literary Analysis paper (prepare a conventional analysis of an author, a work, or a set of works,using the skills of literary criticism and secondary sources)

Teacher #6, 10th Grade English, 17 students

I-Search paper (research an original topic of personal interest, using informal sources, includefamily interviews)

Poetry writing project (write a set of original poems according to assigned forms)

Teacher #7, 12th Grade Anatomy elective, male teacher, 53 students in 3 classes

Skeleton Lab Practical (identify bones or parts of bones at stations around the lab)Mean performance � 92.02%, sd � 17.69

Muscle Cell Contraction test (multiple-choice test on the chemistry and physiology of musclecell contraction)Mean performance � 84.10%, sd � 9.63

Muscle Lab Practical (identify muscles and their functions at stations around the lab)Mean performance � 90.76%, sd � 9.98

FIG. 4. Classroom assessment events in suburban high school.

tions of the importance of the task?) and relationships among categories. Since thefirst author was the one who visited the schools and conducted the interviews, thesecond author did the primary analysis of relationships among categories. Memosand discussion between the authors refined this analysis into the final set ofgeneralisations reported below. A word processor was used to organise material fromthe interview verbatims into sets of supporting quotations that formed the patternsfor each generalisation.

Results

There were more similarities than differences across cases. The following sectionsorganise these similarities and differences as generalisations categorised under thestudent perceptions that formed the framework for the study. For each generalis-ation, example quotations from student interviews are given, identified with the

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student’s grade, teacher, and assessment. These quotations and the others theyrepresent comprise the evidence for each generalisation.

Task Perceptions

In order to describe the interest and importance students ascribed to an assignment,it was first necessary to understand what students thought the assignment was.When describing what their teacher expected them to do for a particular assessment,third and fifth grade students usually talked exclusively about either the mechanicsof doing an assignment or the content of that assignment. Student talk aboutmechanics described the format of tests and performance assessments, the pro-cedure to follow for doing the assignments, and the like (22 comments).

She expects us to study for it. Because she gives us study guides and we goover them in class the next day. She tells us to study them and we have tocorrect them to make sure we get the right answers on them. (5th grade,teacher #4, Middle Colonies Test)

She expects us to try our hardest and try doing neat work and completesentences and do very good on it. Because she said just try your hardestand you’ll get it if you try. (3rd grade, teacher #1, Pecos Bill AdventureParagraph)

Talk about content included descriptions of the substance of what the students wereexpected to learn (12 comments).

To study. I just take like … study my problems and times tables, then I getmy division and how to do them. I studied with my mom how to solveequations, and I just studied the stuff I was supposed to study. (5th grade,teacher #4, Math Test)

To learn the difference between the Puritans and the Quakers. Because shereally narrowed it down. (5th grade, teacher #3, Middle Colonies Test)

Third and fifth graders described content in either general or specific terms.Students using general terms (15 comments) mentioned the subject area (maths,writing, history) but not what they were studying specifically.

Yes. Because I like to do math a lot. (5th grade, teacher #4, Math Test onfractions)

Yeah. Because it talks about the history and how our country was formed.(5th grade, teacher #3, Role Play)

Students using specific terms (8 comments) talked about some of the material theywere expected to learn.

Yes. Because it’s about Pecos Bill and how he fights the mountain lion andthe snake turns pale—he turns real white when he bites him. (3rd grade,teacher #1, Pecos Bill Adventure Paragraph)

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Well, I like learning about the Revolutions because I never learned aboutit but for the First Continental Congress not really because I’m not intopolitics. The war I like. (5th grade, teacher #3, Role Play)

When asked what their teacher expected them to do on a specific assignment,many of the third and fifth grade students talked about expectations for the qualityof their performance (i.e., ‘to do good’, ‘to get all the questions right’)—how wellthey were expected to do (14 comments).

Make sure that I answer all of the questions correctly, make them com-plete. That’s really what all teachers expect you to do. They don’t want youto be dumb. (5th grade, teacher #3, Middle Colonies Test)

Get them right and study for the test. Because she tells us and she wantsus to. (5th grade, teacher #4, Middle Colonies Test)

High school students also talked about the tasks they were supposed to perform asthey studied—what they were supposed to do (23 comments).

I’d have to study—look over notes and reread some of the things we readin class … excerpts from Plato’s allegory of the cave, Ryle, Cartesiandualism. (12th grade, teacher #5, Philosophy, Early Philosophers Test)

He expects us to go back and break down everything we learned intosimple steps so we’d be able to master the material and give it back to him.I brought my binder home and studied a little bit every night for a week,but then I realised that I hadn’t studied enough so I studied really hardWednesday night. I talk to myself in the mirror and I recopy my notes.Those are my main study techniques. If I can hear it, I learn better. Onemore study technique you might want to know about … we [self andgirlfriend] made sock puppets for the myosin head. When I got to onequestion [on the test] I laughed, and then I heard my friend behind melaugh a few minutes later. She must have gotten to the question about thesock puppet stuff. (12th grade, teacher #7, Anatomy and Physiology,Muscle Cell Contraction Test)

When describing what their teacher expected them to do for a test, many studentsat all schools and all levels said that they were expected to study. They usually wenton to describe the way in which they studied or were expected to study. Commentsabout the process of studying were much more common than comments aboutspecific knowledge or skills students were supposed to learn. Out of 46 commentsabout studying for tests, only five mentioned specific content.

Pay attention in class, take substantial notes to pass with a good grade.(10th grade, teacher #5, World Cultures, Renaissance Quiz)

He told us we should read the book as a backup and study our notes andstudy with other people and like make up our own essay questions and tryto answer them. I didn’t really do that. I just read my notes a couple of

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times, like I didn’t study with other people or anything. (12th grade,teacher #7, Anatomy and Physiology, Muscle Cell Contraction Test)

For the students who did research projects (high school level), finding sources wasthe main thing the majority of the students focused on when they described theirteacher’s expectations for the assignment.

You had to have six sources to support your I-Search. Three had to betraditional and three non-traditional. (10th grade, teacher #6, English 10,I-Search paper)

Relationship of Task Perceptions to Perceived Difficulty or Self-Efficacy

For research projects, the reported ease or difficulty with which students foundappropriate sources was the most common reason given (11 comments) to justifyhow hard the assignment itself was perceived.

It wasn’t that hard. I found all my information pretty good. (10th grade,teacher #6, English 10, I-Search Paper)

I thought it was pretty hard. Because I couldn’t find a lot of information onmy two books. (11th grade, teacher #6, English 11 Honours, LiteraryAnalysis Paper)

For group work, a few high school students said the group nature of theassignment affected how confident they were about the assignment. A few weremore confident than they would have been otherwise because they were workingwith others. Some said their lack of confidence was directly tied to concerns abouthow the group would function, but they worked well together in the end.

I was pretty confident because I wasn’t working alone and I had some ideasas soon as I heard him give the assignment. (11th grade, teacher #5, USHistory Honours, Civil War comic book)

… but it’s hard to do in a group when everyone is not together. You wantto learn as much as you can but it’s hard to do in that situation. (12thgrade, teacher #5, Philosophy, Hinduism presentation)

When asked what their teacher expected of them, one student talked aboutdividing up the tasks among the group members and the other said that theassignment was to teach them how to work as a group. One student said that thework was easier because he was working with others, and one student said that heonly cared about the performance of his group members because the performancesof others in the class did not affect him.

Interest and Importance

Third and fifth graders gave two main reasons for thinking an assignment wasimportant: either immediate, school-related goals (e.g., ‘I’ll need to know it for sixth

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grade’, 15 comments) or distant future, ‘when I’m older’ goals (23 comments). Inaddition, four students expressed both reasons.

[school-related] So next year when the teacher tells us to write a paragraphwe know how. (3rd grade, teacher #2, Pecos Bill adventure paragraph)

[school-related] Because if we want to go through fourth, fifth, sixth, andall the other grades up, we should know what to put when our teacher asksus about sentences. (3rd grade, teacher #1, Language test)

[future] Because it comes later on in life if you’re like an architect orsomething. (5th grade, teacher #3, Geometric Shape cartoon)

[future] Because if you don’t know how to write and if you had a job andyou didn’t know how to spell you might get fired. (3rd grade, teacher #1,Meaningful Sentence test)

High school students almost always said that learning the content and skills for theassessment was important for college or for a specific career (22 comments).

I think it really helps the pre-med students because you actually get to lookand feel the bones and get some idea of what you’re going to expect inmedical school. (12th grade, teacher #7, Anatomy & Physiology, SkeletonLab Practical)

It prepares you to do future research in college and in your profession.(11th grade, teacher #6, English 11 Honours, I-Search Paper)

Sixteen high school students talked about the learning being important in a‘real-world’ sense, for example learning about muscles because it is important toknow how the body functions or learning about history because it is important toknow about the past.

Because I play lots of sports and when I work out I like to know whichmuscles to get in shape and stuff. (12th grade, teacher #7, Anatomy &Physiology, Muscle Lab Practical)

Sixteen high school students said that the skills learned were important in and ofthemselves. Sometimes this took the form of explaining that learning in general wasimportant for leading an informed life.

Oh yeah [it’s important]. It’s the scientific method, but you use it not justin Science. You use it to basically come to conclusions in Math and Englishand a lot of stuff. (11th grade, teacher #6, English 11 Honours, HypothesisPaper)

I guess just understanding basic cell movement and how things work at thecellular level is important. Other processes probably work the same way. Itgives you an idea of how intricate the body is. (12th grade, teacher #7,Anatomy & Physiology, Muscle Cell Contraction Test)

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Relationship of Task Perceptions to Interest

For third and fifth graders, expressed like or dislike of only one of the parts (contentor mechanics) of an assignment could determine whether or not a student reportedinterest in doing the assignment.

[mechanics] Not really [interested]. Because I don’t like taking tests. (3rdgrade, teacher #1, Story Test)

[content] Yes [interested]. Because I liked this chapter because it had a lotof good stuff in it. (5th grade, teacher #4, Middle Colonies Test)

[content] Not really [interested]. I don’t see how it’s really anything that’sgoing to help me in life. It’s nice to know if you’re a big history guy andinterested in your area. (5th grade, teacher #3, Middle Colonies Test)

Relationship of Perceived Self-Efficacy to Interest

For third and fifth graders, perceived self-efficacy regarding either the mechanics (4comments) or the content (24 comments) of the assessment could determineinterest in the assessment.

[mechanics] Because I can’t draw them that well. And it’s harder to seewhat I want to see when I can’t draw them that good. (5th grade, teacher#3, Geometric Shape Cartoon)

[content] I only like the averaging and the dividing, not solving theequations. It’s confusing. (5th grade, teacher #3, Math Test)

Relationship of Interest to Importance

Among high school students, those who found an assignment interesting almostalways also thought that it was important in some way. There were 35 instanceswhere student comments affirmed interest and importance regarding the sameassessment. For example, the same student who said:

Yeah I was [interested], actually, a little bit. I kind of had an inspirationfrom reading ‘The Raven’, and I actually memorised it and read it to theclass when we started doing that unit. I just thought it might be interesting

also said:

Yeah, I do [think it’s important], actually. It expresses creativity, andprobably intelligence. It can be used in a variety of different ways, differentsubjects. You learn to become a better writer and probably a better reader.(10th grade, teacher #6, English 10, Poetry Writing Assignment)

But some students who did not think an assignment was interesting thought that itwas important. Although this was a less frequently occurring relationship (9 in-stances) than the interesting/important combination, students did not have to find

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an assignment interesting to find it important. For example, the same student whosaid the following and indicated that she would not be interested in doing theassignment if it was not for a grade:

Not at all [interested]. Just because it’s almost like doing three papers. Youhave to think up solutions: it’s not really in the book

also said:

Probably [important]. Because we’ll have more papers like that later,maybe in college. I’m sure they’ll have similar papers. (11th grade, teacher#6, English 11 Honours, Hypothesis Paper)

Goal Orientations

Students with a mastery goal orientation report wanting to learn for the sake ofmastering material or skills that they find worthwhile in themselves (Ames, 1992).Therefore, students were asked whether they would be interested in doing theassessment if it hadn’t been required for a grade. Students with a performance goalorientation report wanting to learn in order to be deemed smart, competent, ortalented by others (Ames, 1992). Therefore, students were asked whether they caredwhat others thought of their performance and, conversely, whether they cared aboutthe performance of others. High school students usually did not care about howothers performed on an assessment (39 comments).

No. I’m here for me, not for anybody else. (10th grade, teacher #5, WorldCultures, Hobbes-Locke Conversation)

Not really. Because I just care about what I do. (10th grade, teacher #6,English 10, I-Search Paper)

High school students usually did not care about how others thought they performedon an assessment (42 comments).

Not really. Their opinion of my writing doesn’t really bother me, either. Aslong as I’m happy with it then it’s fine. (11th grade, teacher #6, English 11Honours, Literary Analysis Paper)

I don’t necessarily care what they think about what I did. I’m confidentwith myself. (12th grade, teacher #7, Anatomy and Physiology, SkeletonLab Practical )

Sixteen students expressed the sentiment that others should not concern themselveswith how they performed.

No. ’Cause they shouldn’t care about me. (10th grade, teacher #5, WorldCultures, Hobbes-Locke Conversation)

I don’t think its any of their business what I did. I mean I’m not going toask other people what their grades were. (12th grade, teacher #7, Anatomyand Physiology, Muscle Lab Practical )

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High school students were more likely to care about how others thought theyperformed if they felt that others’ reactions affected them in some way, whether formastery or performance reasons. A mastery goal orientation was expressed in twoways, as a desire for others to learn from their project or report or a desire to learnfrom another’s project or report. A performance goal orientation was expressedwhen students wanted the approval of their peers. Teacher #7, the Anatomyteacher, encouraged a performance goal orientation with a promise to reward the top16 students in the three Anatomy sections by taking them on a field trip to observea knee replacement surgery at a local hospital.

Depending upon whether we’re going to play them [other groups’ games]or not. If we play theirs, I might learn more about the topic [if they did agood job]. If we don’t play them I really won’t know how they did. (11thgrade, teacher #5, US History, The History Game)

Only because I’m borderline going to surgery. That’s our goal for the year,the top 16 [ranked in order of class average] go and I’m in the low 20’s.But I don’t compare myself to other people. I’m in a class with a lot ofsmart people and a lot of hard workers. So only if I understand … But that[field trip to observe surgery] was my motivation when I studied Wednes-day night. This is hard stuff, and some of the others may not work as hard.(12th grade, teacher #7, Anatomy and Physiology, Muscle Cell Contrac-tion Test)

Some students cared about others’ performance for sympathetic or altruistic rea-sons.

I wouldn’t want anyone to have failed. I think everyone’s worked hard atit and deserves to do good. (12th grade, teacher #7, Anatomy and Physi-ology, Skeleton Lab Practical )

I think that—like, I care that other people did good, but … as long as wedo good … like in comparison I think we all did good. (12th grade, teacher#5, Philosophy, Current Issue Presentation)

Relationship of Goal Orientations to Interest and Importance

High school students who said they cared about how others performed also tendedto express that they perceived the assignment to be meaningful, interesting, andimportant. There were 11 of these comments relating caring for others withmeaningfulness.

Yes. I hope they got as interested in it as I did, because I think it’simportant and they’d be better off after learning something they reallywanted to know. (11th grade, teacher #6, English 11 Honours, I-SearchPaper)

In a way because they should know it, too. That’s our job to learn in our

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class. If we don’t know it, he’ll go over it again to make sure we know it.(10th grade, teacher #5, World Cultures, Renaissance Quiz)

Discussion

This study looked at individual students’ responses to 36 classroom assessments inthe context of seven different classroom assessment environments. The design, amultiple-case analysis, was selected to focus on both the individuals interviewed(students and their perceptions) and the classroom assessment environments (cases,or teachers) in which their perceptions were set. Patterns in the responses suggestedthat individual psychology was more salient than the classroom assessment environ-ment. Generalisations about students’ perceptions seemed to hold across cases orsettings. Some differences were apparent between the 3rd and 5th graders and thehigh school students. There were some differences, within settings, related to typeof assessment (test vs. performance assessment). All of the themes had one generalprinciple in common. The overarching theme was that no matter what the assess-ment, students’ comments were referenced to their own needs and interests. Thusclassroom assessment was ‘student-centered’ whether that was the intent or not(Stiggins, 2001).

Regarding tests, when asked what their teachers expected from them, students inall grades said ‘to study’. They usually went on to describe the way in which theystudied. They rarely spoke about what they were expected to learn by studying,although some students also talked about the format of the test. From the students’point of view, the test experience felt like a study process, almost to the exclusion ofconsidering what they were studying. The descriptions they gave about going overclass notes and textbook material and answering practice questions did accord withSalomon’s (1983, 1984) description of ‘mindful’, non-automatic, mental rehearsalof material or ‘mental effort’. One practical implication of this finding is thatassigning a test may be as useful for the studying it triggers as for the summativeinformation it provides.

There were some developmental differences in talk about studying. When askedwhat their teacher wanted them to do for a specific assignment, many of the 3rd and5th grade students talked about the quality of their performance (e.g., ‘she wants meto do good’, ‘to get all the questions right’). High school students mostly did not talkabout expectations for quality, but about expectations for process (e.g., ‘He wantsus to study on our own time’, ‘to come in after class’, ‘go over the exercises’).

In high school, students who found an assignment interesting almost always alsothought that it was important in some way. But the converse was not true; studentswho did not think an assignment was interesting often thought that it was important.In 3rd and 5th grade, students used their judgements about their abilities regardingeither the mechanics or the content of the assessment to help gauge their interest inthe subject.

The results summarised in the previous two paragraphs suggest that there may bea developmental progression in understanding—or at least in the ability to articulateunderstanding—of what it means to succeed in school. It could be that the general

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‘do good’ gradually refines into ‘how to do well’ and that ‘liking’ an assignmentgradually refines into ‘appreciating the importance’ of an assignment as studentsprogress through school. Hidi and Harackiewicz (2000) suggested that interest, oncekindled externally, may become internalised. The results of this study support thissuggestion. What is not clear, and might be illuminated by future research, iswhether this developmental progression is a result of continued exposure to thelearning process throughout students’ school careers or a result of maturation, orboth.

Some of the developmental changes may not be good, and may be worth tryingto modify. For instance, if students move from a concern with assessments showingwhat they know to a concern for doing what the teacher wants for a grade, perhapsthe proper response is to seek to change that. As students naturally become moreaware of others’ judgements of them, especially their teachers’ judgements, thosesame teachers might look for ways to remind students that the reason for certainstudy practices is learning and quality performance. Changes in American gradingpractices and uses would be required to maintain this student focus on learning.

Students usually did not care about what others thought about how they per-formed on an assessment. They were more likely to care about how others per-formed if they thought that outcome affected them in some way. Students weremore likely to care about how others performed if they perceived the assignment tobe meaningful and important. The overwhelming ‘my grades are no one else’sbusiness’ high school response, from both the high and low SES schools in two verydifferent settings, surely is at least in part cultural—a reflection of Americanindividualism. American teenagers often place a high value on being ‘their ownperson’ and not being dependent on anyone.

Keeping one’s grades to oneself would also be consistent with a self-worthperspective on student motivation (Covington, 1992). Because all of the assessmentsstudied were official assessments, intended to count in students’ class grades,students’ replies to interview questions must be interpreted in this context. All ofthese students were ‘playing the summative game’, which includes protecting one’sreputation, self-worth, and self-efficacy as much as possible (Ames, 1992; Coving-ton, 1992; Pajares, 1996; Weiner, 1979). Students were aware that these grades‘counted’ and were protecting their interests.

It is known that the classroom assessment environment matters (Stiggins &Conklin, 1992), and that the subject matters (Stodolsky, 1988). This study contin-ued a research agenda that seeks to describe classroom assessment events acrossvarious environments, grade levels, and subjects. It found that what matters to thestudent affects how a student approaches an academic assessment, and has listenedto students describe some of the ways in which that happens.

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Documents

I Don't Like Writing. It Makes My Fingers Hurt': Students talk about their classroom assessments