Rubrics

If AfL is to be used to provide feedback that moves learning forwards, Dylan, in his book "Embedding Formative Assessment", asks us to be careful with the following ways we do provide feedback:

Limitations of the rubric:

1. they are unidimensional

2. they focus on evaluation achievement rather than improvement

3. they don't have the same meaning for teachers and students

He highlights the following ideas:

• Sometimes quality cannot be put into words. Sometimes the best we can do is help students develop a "nose for quality" (Claxton, 1995)

• When quality has multiple dimensions, we need to help students see beyond surface features of a problem

• Don't abdicate responsibility for quality. The teacher is the expert in the subject and students are novices, so while it is appropriate for the teacher to listen to the students' views. it is essential that the final learning intentions and success criteria, however they are (co-)developed, are consistent with the teacher's understanding of quality in the subject.

One last point on this topic: Rubrics assume that each level is worth the same. Perhaps the jump from a one to a two is harder than a jump from a three to a four - how does this get represented in a rubric?

While typically, rubrics are tools that are used for summative assessments, Dylan notes that we can still extract some formative assessment data of them. To the right is a site with examples of innovative rubrics produced by the French consultants (or click here).

Another style of rubric designed to be formative and to supply the student with teacher feedback is the "single-point" rubric (SPR). To convert a traditional rubric into a SPR, take the top level descriptors of each criteria and write them in the central column. Then, leave an empty column on the left and right labeled "not yet" and "above or beyond" respectively where you can leave comments to the students about their work.

Click here for more.