A repost. I once asked Claire Walter to expand on something she had said about how curriculum, instruction and assessment should all go together as a unit. Like they are not three rings in a circus but all in one ring with perhaps a very slight level of Venn diversion, but not much.
She replied:
Ben, it’s called “constructive alignment” and NOT my original idea (like everything I write on assessment); it was Dr. John Biggs. I’m attaching a diagram for fun:
Here’s the easiest way to think about this:
The strength of Authentic Assessment is in validity, which requires that assessment, instruction, and curriculum align.
Our instruction and assessment are already overlapping because we focus on formative assessments, no problem there. The assessment and instruction blur when we teach to the eyes and notice what’s happening real-time in class. Our “data” happens when we collect real work they did as a group or independently based on language they heard and read in class. Plus, it’s a two-way street, we don’t just throw our data away, we use our assessments as a general guide for what input we provide. Assessment and instruction align fluidly enough to serve their purpose: improve instruction.
But traditional teachers have a designated “test” time two weeks out. They don’t pick ability appropriate language based on formative assessments. They have a disconnect in their instruction and assessment that is so severe, they tend to think of chapter tests as “summative” (like you’re done with this language)…but that’s not how language acquisition or assessment works.
You get how we are better at this? We have more valid assessments that measure what they are supposed to: they assess what kids can be reasonably expected to have heard and read during instruction. We’ve got two out of three elements: assessment and instruction.
But then all data turds have to do is say is, “But that’s not on your curriculum!” And they would be right. The validity argument falls apart. We are assessing what we say we are assessing, communicative competency, but that is not what we are “teaching” according to our curriculum.
This doesn’t hurt instruction, but technically the assessment is less valid without content-related criterion. In any criterion-referenced assessment, not aligning criterion to curriculum is a concern.