Assessing the AOs "authentically"

In the lead up to students completing their exhibition I had been working with the Level 5 AO "understanding how economic decisions impact on people, communities and nations". However, the way to check if students understand a concept is if they demonstrate the use of it in a non-contrived way. But if in an integrated programme 4 teachers all tell students that their exhibition displays have to involve the demonstration of concepts set out at the outset, it is sure to kill any creativity through too much structure. As a complexity theorist would say, the constraints would be far from enabling.

So instead my students did what they wanted to do for their displays and I turned the AO into a question for them to answer in a test situation. Very few, understandably, actually bought into it. The exhibition diplays were not done with any particular attention to their social significance, or backgrounding in depth and detail the social issue, or any real consideration of values and perspectives. And as for involving a social action, I have written about that else where. So to summarise, the problem is that students didn't have a clear understanding of what we do in social studies education, which meant they were not able in any systematic way to strive towards them. And although they were all familiar with the Achievement Objective I was teaching them, the assessment of it was contrived and almost none used their exhibition to demonstrate conceptual knowledge of it.

Here are some solutions to the problem as I see it at the moment:

• Negotiate the theme with students as I have written about in the previous blog entry and based on this, decide which AO and conceptual understanding fits best to what emerges.

This turns some fairly traditional notions of planning on their head though. "Topics" wouldn't be known until the teaching had started, although the teacher would need a general idea about what might interest them to get the ideas flowing. And much of the planning such as the social studies inquiry template would need to be tailing the teaching. At the end this could be filed away as a record of what worked in one instance and could work in another instance with another teacher, but probably not without some considerable adaptation. Teaching and learning would have to be emergent from the specific conditions and interactions of the moment. We would have to be very well prepared for what arises, not well planned for what we predict.

• Tell students that the exhibition (or other performance opportunity) is a place for them to demonstrate an understanding of the concept under study. But if the concept focused on during the class time leading up to the performance opportunity really doesn't fit with their interest, they could discuss with the teacher another AO and conceptual understanding to demonstrate.

There is nothing in the curriculum document that says all the AOs must be taught, much less that they must be taught sequentially, or at the same time to everybody. Schools would need to have a system whereby teachers could keep a track of what has been taught and when. ERO will probably struggle with this level of complexity but there is no reason why anyone else should.

• Discuss with, or tell students which aspect of the social studies inquiry rubric (see image and previous blog) they will need to focus on for their exhibition or learning performance.

It would be great if towards the end of a two year teaching cycle and when students are very familiar with what we do in social studies, they could choose what aspect they wanted to be assessed on. Otherwise I think they use the key concept derived from the AO studied in class or personalised for them to "do" one of the aims as per the rubric. Another layer of assessment rubric will be too cumbersome. And if this doesn't happen, there should be numerous opportunities in social studies class time for students to demonstrate their conceptual understanding. Perhaps some more thinking is required here. The last thing students need is multiple layers of assessment rubrics! But in an integrated approach it is more than possible for me to assess anything they choose to learn about and perform for others for social studies, as long as what they do is related to some kind of real world issue.