Fairness with Assessment

When creating assessments, it is important to be fair. Each student should have an equally likely chance to succeed and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the unit content. I believe that students must be engaged and motivated in lessons, have a safe, comfortable learning environment, and be able to relate to the material. All of these things play into being to able fairly assess students.

 I believe it is the responsibility of the educator to teach the students in a way they can relate and understand the material. If the educator cannot teach in a way that it is relatable to the students, should the blame be put onto the students for not performing on their assessments? I think it is the educators responsibility to make the content relatable. A student is not going to be encouraged to learn something they cannot totally understand. Relating lessons to things that students show interest in makes the topic more memorable. For example, when teaching quadratic functions, I used a lot of basketball and football analogies to better explain the topic because there was a culture of basketball and football in the school. I also created a lab, where students were able to catapult different objects and diagram its motion.

In addition to making the lessons relatable, the learning environment must be comfortable and safe. The students must feel safe to make mistakes as they learn new material. If a student does not feel like they can make a mistake, then it will be impossible for them to learn. Students must also feel comfortable with the educator and their classmates to share answers and collaborate.

In making my own assessments as fair as possible, I need to ensure that the questions that I am asking are clear and concise. They need to be specific to what I am looking for and align with expectations. I also need to ensure that the questions match the content that was actually taught and are worded in a way that matches what the students are familiar with. The assessment needs to have multiple types of questioning and at the end of each assessment I want to add a reflection piece so I can also get feedback about the unit, so I can teach it better the following year and alter my future lessons. Bias in questioning needs to be eliminated, so that there is a leveled playing field for all.

Being an educator, I have been able to reflect on things that I did in my first year that might have not been as fair when assessing students. Though I have tried to make my assessments mirror to what was learned, I may have relied more on students knowing my expectations in giving directions. I always made my directions brief and to the point, but then when grading students may not have put all the information I am looking for to give them full points. I should have made my directions specific in order to be able to say that this or that was not done to answer the questions properly. I need to review my assessments and make sure I am giving everyone an equal chance in order to effectively assess their knowledge and my ability to teach material as well.