Multi-Modal Assessments
Rather than creating assessment tools to strictly measure safe and caring ‘achievement’, this assessment tool was developed to “measure performance, but also to change it, by encouraging teachers and students to modify their practice” (Pellegrino et al., 2001 p. 39 as cited in Bonner, 2013, p. 97).
Safe, caring and welcoming school environments is a rich, deep field of study and one that has not been given the attention it deserves. The research that does exist is mainly theoretical but there is little research done looking for student participation other than those from alternative schools. I believe the assessment tools in this project will lead to further research, measure performance and possibly change it “by encouraging teachers and students to modify their practices” (Bonner, 2013, p. 93). So rather than creating assessment tools to strictly measure safe and caring ‘achievement’ these assessment tools are developed to “measure performance, but also to change it, by encouraging teachers and students to modify their practice” (Pellegrino et al., 2001 p. 39 as cited in Bonner, 2013, p. 97).
So how can we effectively assess if a school is safe, caring and welcoming? Due to the nature of this latent construct and it’s high subjectivity, I believe that having a combination of assessments and research would result in rich, robust data. It would also allow staff and administration to correlate emerging data with professional development in hopes of improving the degree of perception of a safe, caring and welcoming environment.
So how can we effectively assess if a school is safe, caring and welcoming? Due to the nature of this latent construct and it’s high subjectivity, I believe that having a combination of assessments and research would result in rich, robust data. It would also allow staff and administration to correlate emerging data with professional development in hopes of improving the degree of perception of a safe, caring and welcoming environment.
Quantitative Survey (research/assessment)- The survey as an assessment/research tool would allow me to code the data and look for trends of both the staff and student population. I think this would be great for pre-assessment to understand areas of interest of students, the current level of caring of the school providing a solid baseline to compare with at the end of the year when the survey is administered again for achievement. The survey would be blueprinted to the sub-constructs to increase validity of the assessment. The survey blueprint “improves and documents validity by mapping the way the test instrument as a whole represents the assessed domain” (Bonner, 2013, p. 93). Currently, the TTFM survey nor the accountability pillar survey is mapped to any construct of safe, caring and welcoming schools.
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Monthly Journals (assessment) – students would have the opportunity to blog, vlog, write, record their thoughts on safe, caring and welcoming school with guided questions. Their homeroom teacher would be responsible for reading and analyzing the work submitted and then initiate intervention, provide supports as necessary.
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Self-Reflection survey/journal for staff – Bonner (2013) stated “teacher self-inquiry may be more effective than researcher-driven inquiry for improving validity of teacher practice” (p. 103) so I have incorporated a self-reflection survey/journal assessment for staff to complete quarterly. I would be mindful to ensure that embedded time was provided and to follow-up with requested PD supports so teachers have administrator support through this process. Of particular interest is how many of the construct facets are directly correlated to the Teaching Quality Standard.
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Longitudinal Narrative Inquiry (research)– Narrative inquiry “describe[s] the lives of individuals, collect and tell stories about people’s lives, and write[s] narratives of individuals experiences (Creswell, 2015, p. 504). It would be important to be reflexive during this process to ensure I am getting an accurate portrayal of students’ perceptions of caring, safe environments (as their administrator). I would not want my position in the school to sway their answers. I think this would provide a strong insight into students’ perceptions of safe, caring schools as well as direct professional development for teachers and implement programs for the school.
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Safe and caring schools project showcase (assessment)– students throughout the school are given the opportunity to showcase why they think JTF is a safe, caring and welcoming building in any format that they choose. They may choose to create dramatic production recreating events throughout the school or bringing to life moments of care; presentations; video productions; portfolio presentations; write a story; conduct an experiment; calculate the probability of working with a caring teacher based on their own experiences etc. All stakeholders would be invited to the celebration of safe and caring schools, including senior administration, board members, parents and community members. This showcase gives teachers, counselors and administrators a strong understanding of who students care about or who they feel cared-for by (an adult in the building) and begin intervention if there are gaps.
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How reliable will this assessment tool be? Keeping in mind that my goal is to modify student and teacher practices (where necessary), I am mindful that the assessment tools will need to altered for reliability. It is virtually impossible “eliminate the need for human judgment” (Parkes, 2013, p. 111) in this construct assessment. The entire purpose is to understand the construct using human judgment. But reliability can be attained by providing detailed instructions and guidelines to the students when they are responding to their open-ended journal entries, use ‘best practices’ when developing the survey questions, provide and use a rubric to evaluate the journals and projects and engage teachers with the design of the survey, journal prompts and projects. Another way to improve reliability, once the assessment tools are modified to meet the construct assessments’ needs, is to “increase the number of replications or observations” (Parkes, 2013, p. 112). I believe that the validity of the assessments will speak volumes and override any reliability issues as the assessments will capture important perceptions, behaviours and dispositions of care in the school.
To improve student perceptions of a safe, caring and welcoming school is not a static target and one is a dynamic, on-going process. This will likely involve shifting conceptions, methodologies, assessments and research once the data is accumulated and analyzed. This is a social process and therefore needs to be responsive to the student and staff bodies.
To improve student perceptions of a safe, caring and welcoming school is not a static target and one is a dynamic, on-going process. This will likely involve shifting conceptions, methodologies, assessments and research once the data is accumulated and analyzed. This is a social process and therefore needs to be responsive to the student and staff bodies.