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What were the goals of this project?
How does this work relate to previous efforts on assessment?During the last two decades educators have explored alternative forms of assessment. Unsatisfied with the limitations of standardized tests to describe and inform students about relevant aspects of their understanding, innovative teachers have invited students to make their understanding public in a variety of forms. Portfolios, reflection journals, artistic representations, and rubrics are examples of the range of forms teachers have found useful. Performances make students' understanding public and therefore open to constructive critique and sensible curriculum adjustment; and yet, making students' understanding public is the first step in the larger journey toward making it better. Often, while engaged in a broad educational dialogue about the forms in which students express what they know, educators have side-stepped the question of the content of students' understanding. What qualities of thinking constitute deep historical understanding? Why should students learn about the rise of Nazi Germany and what about it should they understand? Can students' understanding of the past legitimately inform the way in which they make sense of the present? What is the project's current focus?During the academic year 1997-1998 we have developed a performance assessment case that explores students' ability to draw on their understanding of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust to make sense of the events that led to the mass murder of Tutsis and Hutu opponents in Rwanda 1994. After examining Amnesty International's documentary "Forsaken Cries" as one account of the Rwandan genocide, students encounter a variety of challenges. For example they are asked:
Each challenge includes a rubric depicting various qualities of historical understanding and examples of students' responses at three levels of understanding. During the academic year 1998-1999 we tested the assessment case in a variety of school environments and refined the performance design and the associated assessment rubric. The framework emerging from these investigations was captured in a publication about the possibilities and challenges to assessing young people's historical understandings as they use the past to interpret the present.
Selected readingsBoix Mansilla, V. (2000). "Can they use what they have learned to make sense of the present? Historical Understanding beyond the past and into the present" In Knowing Learning and Teaching History. Seixas, P. Stearns, P. and Wineburg S. (Eds.) San Francisco: Lawrence Erlbaum. Boix Mansilla, V. (1998). Beyond the Lessons from the Cognitive Revolution. Canadian Social Studies: The history and social studies teachers, 32(2), pp. 49-51. Boix Mansilla, V. (1998). 'Can they use the past to make sense of the present?': Challenges of assessing students' understanding of history. Paper submitted to the Spencer conference on history teaching and research. Pittsburgh: November 1998. Boix Mansilla, V., & Gardner H. (1997). Of kinds of disciplines and kinds of understanding. Phi Delta Kappan, 78(5), pp. 381-386. Boix Mansilla, V., Gardner, H., & Miller, W. (1999). On disciplinary lenses and interdisciplinary work. In P. Grossman & S. Wineburg (Eds.), Disciplinary Encounters, New York: Teachers College Press. Boix Mansilla, V., Gardner, H., & Strom, M. (1998). What can students do with what they learn about history? The challenges of assessing historical understanding. Facing History and Ourselves Newsletter Spring 1998. Boston: Facing History and Ourselves. Gardner, H. (1999). The Disciplined Mind: What All Students Should Understand. New York: Simon & Schuster. |
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