21st Century Skills Assessment for Students

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jenny Ankenbauer on January 13, 2010 at 9:30pm

By 21st Century skills you are referring to assessments that quantitively and qualitively measure use of critical thinking, collaboration, motivation, metacognition and embedded use of instructional technology as well as measures of core academic mastery. That sort of evaluation process suggests a matrix approach to assessment and not one that relies on a single data point of GPA, attendance, or college acceptance etc. In others words, not only has there been a need to infuse greater complexity and substance into the curriculum, there's a need to identify assessment tools that appropriately measure those too.

My suggestion is to begin by reviewing work being done by Marzano and Kendall on educational objectives (2007) Corwin Press. It is a detailed taxonomy that defines learning objectives and assessments with the complexity you are seeking. It builds on Bloom's taxonomy and also explains the impact of student motivation and metacognition on student performance. It even discusses teacher epistomology and why a teacher's conception of how knowledge is constructed greatly influences how programs are written and what is being taught.

My second piece of advice is to look at one of my favorite rubrics that measure this sort of "thinking-skills curriculum". It is the SOLO rubric and stands for structure, observed, learning, outcomes. It was developed by Biggs at the Univerisity of Queensland, Auckland. http://www.tedi.uq.edu.au/downloads/biggs_solo.pdf

For a quick look:http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/solo.htm

ATHERTON J S (2009) Learning and Teaching; SOLO taxonomy [On-line] UK: Accessed: 14 January 2010

Jenny

• ▶ Reply