Teachers and Teaching : Theory and Practice , 4 ( 2 ) , 299-316 . Student Evaluation in Cooperative Learning : Teacher Cognitions

Student evaluation procedures used by Cooperative Learning [CL] teachers, and their feelings about them, have rarely been investigated. This interview study of 13 exemplary users of CL methods found that negative feelings ran through teachers' cognitions about evaluation: expressions of guilt, anxiety and uncertainty were frequent. There was a substantial gap between private and public knowledge. When individual insights were assembled in a composite picture, generic strategies emerged, for example, for teaching students their role in self-evaluation. In this study the mechanisms for making private knowledge public were weak. This deficiency was subsequently addressed by the teacher-researchers involved in this study in a series of action research projects. Cooperative Learning 3 Student Evaluation in Cooperative Learning: Teacher Cognitions 1 Cooperative Learning [CL] demands changes of teachers and students, particularly in evaluation. Teachers who have evaluated students as isolated learners have to figure out how to evaluate students working in groups. Guidelines for giving students feedback on group work abound in CL manuals (e.g., Authors, 1991) but little is known about the effectiveness of these strategies, the frequency of their use, or whether teachers and students find them satisfactory. Pressure to reform student evaluation practices creates additional tensions for CL teachers. The purpose of our research was to investigate how exemplary implementers of CL approaches handled these tensions. We wanted to find out what they were doing, why they did it, and whether they felt they were successful. Our goal was to identify workable evaluation strategies that other teachers might try in their own classrooms. Motivation for the Study Teacher Attitudes to Assessment Teachers view student evaluation as an important teacher function and devote substantial classroom and teacher preparation time to it. Teachers rely on evaluation instruments of their own creation (Herman & DorrBremme, 1983; Wilson, 1990), primarily because these measures are better integrated with their teaching practices than externally produced tests. Yet teachers give themselves low proficiency ratings on evaluation tasks and believe they could benefit from practical in-service (Gullickson, 1986; Impara, Plake, & Fagar, 1993; Marso & Pigge, 1992), even teachers who have experienced fairly lengthy training (e.g., 1-3 days in Bennett, Wragg, Carré & Carter, 1992). In addition, feedback from researchers about the quality of teachers' assessment practices is often negative. Anderson (1989), for example, criticized teachers' tests because few of their items measure higher order objectives and item writing guidelines are frequently violated. Shift in Conceptions of Assessment Conceptions of good assessment are moving toward direct observation of complex performance rather than brief written tests that correlate with the target aptitudes (Linn, Baker & Dunbar, 1991). In these performance Cooperative Learning 4 assessments students are observed working on complex tasks (e.g., Baron, 1990; Shavelson, Baxter & Pine, 1992) or dealing with real life problems (Raizen & Kaser, 1989). These instruments are often administered to groups of students because group work represents out-of-school performance better than individual production (Webb, Nemer & Chizhik, 1995). Such approaches to testing would seem to be ideal for CL classrooms. Teachers' responses to alternate assessment have been mixed. Mandated alternate assessment programs produce teacher resistance due to schedule disruption, concerns about consistency, and doubts about the usefulness of the data (Howell, Bigelow & Evoy., 1993; Madaus & Kellaghan, 1993; Wilson, 1992; Worthen, 1993). Yet, when teachers have the freedom to choose, there is enthusiasm for alternate assessment (Bateson, 1994; Calfee & Perfumo, 1993). Alternate conceptions of evaluation escalate demands on teachers. Alternate assessment must be transparent (Fredericksen & Collins, 1989), meaning that the criteria for appraisal, the population from which tasks are drawn, the scoring key and interpretive schemes must be visible to students, even when the teachers who devised these procedures have an imperfect grasp of them. Asking teachers to engage students in setting evaluation criteria (Bellanca & Berman, 1994; Garcia & Pearson, 1994) intensifies demands. Authentic assessment standards require precise specification of what will be measured, identification of multiple levels of attainment, and descriptions of opportunities to learn (Linn, 1994). The heightened concern with the moral dimension of evaluation (e.g., Wiggins, 1993), requires that teachers support due process, and allow students to be assessed at an appropriate level of difficulty and when ready. Making such changes is not easy. Briscoe (1994) found that when beliefs about teaching and the constructivist learning theory implicit in alternate assessment conflicted, conventional test practices returned. In Briscoe‟s study, conflict centred on one teacher‟s theory of how assessment influenced learning. The teacher believed that regular monitoring based on unambiguous criteria, such as work completed, stimulated student productivity. For him, the motivational power of assessment resided in the fairness of objective procedures. When he tried to use performance assessment he felt that objectivity was lost. He had little confidence in the rules he developed for interpreting student responses, he believed his grades favoured students he liked, and he felt Cooperative Learning 5 assigning a single grade to all students in a group was unfair. Although he tried to resolve these conflicts, he eventually returned to multiple choice testing. Lorsbach, Tobin, Briscoe, and LaMaster (1992) observed two teachers for whom the purpose of assessment was control of students, tests emphasized knowledge reproduction, and work completion was a heavily weighted grading criterion. Shifting to assessments based on observations and interviews to accommodate experiments with constructivist teaching created conflicts for both teachers. One teacher resolved the conflict by redefining her metaphor of assessment from that of “fair judgment” to providing a “window into a student‟s mind” (p. 309), thereby reconciling assessment with her new conception of teaching. The other teacher did not resolve the conflict. At the end of the study the tension between his constructivist approach to teaching and objectivist assessment practices continued. Other researchers have reported teacher misconceptions about specific alternate assessment techniques. Ruiz-Primo and Shavelson (1995) found over-inclusion: teachers thought performance assessment was anything that involved manipulation of concrete objects. Oosterhof (1995 found under-inclusion: teachers treated only formal tests as valid assessment procedures and included informal methods like observations and oral feedback only after probing. Student Assessment in Cooperative Learning Although the authentic assessment paradigm challenges all teachers, the impact is especially acute for CL teachers. First, they have to disentangle individual from collective performances because students who coast on the work of others must be identified, parents want reports focused on their child, and administrators are legally obliged to promote individuals not groups. Second, CL involves teachers sharing control of assessment with students through procedures like peerand self-evaluation. Such strategies open grading to a new source of bias, making it more difficult for teachers to defend the grades they assign. Third, most of the advice (and instruments) for assessing students when working in cooperative groups focuses on social skills. But accountability demands on teachers emphasize the measurement of cognitive growth. Teachers are therefore challenged to balance the cognition and social assessment demands of CL. Advice from educational research on student assessment in CL is scanty. A few studies (Authors, 1995a; Huber & Eppler, 1990; Johnson, Johnson & Stanne, 1990; Johnson, Johnson, Stanne & Garibaldi, 1990) found that Cooperative Learning 6 specific evaluation procedures, such as structured peer review of group processes, have a positive effect on student achievement. But these studies combined assessment with other treatment elements, leaving consumers of the research uncertain about the relative contribution of the assessment component. Other studies isolated specific evaluation practices suitable for CL. For example, Archer-Kath, Johnson, and Johnson (1995) found that peer evaluation made a greater contribution to students' social skills when individual performances were distinguished from group totals. Conway, Kember, Sivan, and Wu (1993) experimented with alternate forms of combining teacher judgments with peer evaluation of group projects, finding that two complex procedures were received equally well by students. Several researchers compared individual and collaborative test taking. Webb found that group discussions while completing a test over-estimated individual performance (Fall, Webb, & Wise, 1995; Webb, 1993). But she also discovered that group tests revealed information about students‟ concept understanding that was not accessible in individual testing (Webb et al., 1995). Billington (1994) found that having pupils agree on test answers increased student retention over individual test taking. Comparisons of collaborative and individual tests with adult learners have been mixed, with some finding that collaboration increased performance on a subsequent task (Lambiotte, Dansereau, Rocklin, Fletcher, Hythecker, Larsen & O'Donnell, 1987) and others finding no differences (Griffin, McCown, Quinn & Driscoll, 1994; Griffin, Griffin, Warkentin, Quinn, Driscoll & McCown, 1995). These studies suggest that student assessment may be problematic for CL teachers. But only one p