ALTERNATIVE ASSESSMENT

Alternative assessments, also referred to as performance tests or authentic assessments, are used to determine
what students can and cannot do, in contrast to what they do or do not know. In other words, an alternative
assessment measures applied proficiency more than it measures knowledge. Typical examples of alternative
assessments include portfolios, project work, and other activities requiring some type of rubric.
The essence of a performance assessment is that students are given the opportunity to do one or more of the
following:
 Demonstrate their ability
 Perform a meaningful task
 Receive feedback by a qualified person in terms of relevant and defensible criteria
In short, the purpose for using alternative assessments is to assess students’ proficiency in performing complex
tasks that are directly associated with learning outcomes.

Advantages of Alternative Assessments

 They provide a means of assessing valued skills that cannot be directly assessed with traditional tests.
 They provide a more realistic setting for student performance than traditional tests.
 They focus on student performance and the quality of work performed by students.
 They can be easily aligned with established learning outcomes.
 Process can be costly in terms of time, effort, equipment, materials, facilities, or funds.

Disadvantages of Alternative Assessments

 Process can be costly in terms of time, effort, equipment, materials, facilities, or funds.
 Rating process is sometimes more subjective than traditional exams.

Guidelines for Constructing Alternative Assessments

1. Define the instructional outcome you want to assess as clearly and unambiguously as possible in terms of
both the subject-matter content and the set of skills or operations that a skillful performer would exhibit.
o Example: Students will perform five types of Cha Cha steps in correct dance position without error.

2. Distinguish between those outcomes that can validly be assessed solely by performance assessments and
those that can be assessed just as effectively by objective measures.
o Students would have a difficult time demonstrating dance steps on paper.
3. Create tasks that elicit evidence of the student’s ability to perform the targeted skill.
o Task: Set aside a block of classroom time for students to dance with a partner, two or three couples at a
time. Allow students to dance for at least 2 minutes so they have time to demonstrate all the steps they
know. Students should have sufficient time to practice the steps before they are assessed.
4. Decide what kinds of teacher guidance can be used while still allowing students the freedom to learn and do
it their own way.
o Students may do the steps in whatever order they would like. Teacher may put the names of the different
steps on the board to help students remember them if needed.
5. Try out the assessment and make revisions as necessary.
o Revisions could include giving more detailed instructions and expectations to the students or inviting an
assistant to write down dictated comments while the teacher keeps his or her attention on the dancers.

BRAIN RESEARCH
Brain research is beginning to create a foundation that educators can build on, said author and consultant Pat
Wolfe of Mind Matters Inc. at her Special Feature.
Nevertheless, brain research has yet to yield much knowledge that teachers can use to help students learn
better. "There are [only] three specific neuroscience studies that have been conducted that have direct
application to the classroom," Wolfe said.
Some general findings about the brain may also have application to the classroom, Wolfe said. "But let me tell
you who's going to have to research these: you. You are in the real lab, the classroom," she told her audience
of educators.
Wolfe offered five general findings:
1. "Experience sculpts the brain. You learn much better by doing something than by reading about it. Reading
about something doesn't change the brain a lot; doing it changes the brain a great deal."
2. "Information is not stored in a single place in the brain. This is very important for educators [to understand],"
Wolfe said. "In any experience, all the modalities are involved. When an experience comes into the brain, it
is deconstructed"—the visual, aural, and emotional components are stored in different places—but is hooked
together by circuit neurons. Therefore, when we recall something, we have to reconstruct it. "The more
modalities you use in learning something, the more pathways you have to retrieve it," Wolfe said.
3. "Memory is not static, and it decays rapidly. You have a brain that is programmed to forget." The main
purpose of the brain is survival, and the brain is designed to forget those things that have nothing to do with
survival of the individual and the species. "Most of what we teach in school the brain does not consider to be
important to survival," Wolfe noted wryly. "You can delay the decay with elaborative rehearsal strategies,
such as telling [the new information] to someone, writing about it, acting it out, explaining it, mapping and
webbing it, or putting it into rhyme."
 4. There are two types of memory: procedural and declarative. Procedural memory does not involve conscious
thought—for example, remembering how to drive a car, ride a bike, play the piano, or decode text.
Declarative memory is "what you know." Rote rehearsal helps develop procedural memory, but it is not very
efficient at strengthening declarative memory.
"We need to use appropriate rehearsal strategies for each type of memory," Wolfe said. "The application
here is that you should use rote rehearsal for a motor activity that you want to get to the automatic level, but
for semantic memory, you need to use more elaborative rehearsal strategies."
5. Emotions are a primary catalyst in the learning process. "Emotions stamp the brain with extra vividness,"
Wolfe said. So if educators can provide "appropriate motivational emotion," students will remember new
information longer.
However, "emotion is a two-edged sword," Wolfe cautioned. In a threatening environment, the brain is less
capable of rational thought. Therefore, teachers must ensure a physically and psychologically safe environment,
as well as provide emotional "hooks."
Some Brainy Advice
In closing, Wolfe offered some advice to educators:
 Become scientifically literate. "Learn the terminology, read analytically, and question everything."
 Don't look at brain research as a panacea. "Marry our behavioral understanding with other disciplines:
neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and education research."
 Intensify our collaboration with the researchers. "We need to begin the dialogue."
 "Conduct your own action research."
 "Be cautious about our interpretation of the research."
 "Make certain that brain-compatible instruction is centered around relevant, rigorous curriculum."

7 Discoveries from Brain Research that Impact Education (Eric Jensen)

1. Allostasis: the Secret Role of Stress. This discovery tells us how our brain “resets” our mental thermostat
in ways that explain PTSD, anxiety and depression. More importantly for educators, this understanding
helps us understand student behaviors such as anger, apathy and reluctance to change habits. When staff
has allostasis, behaviors don’t change! You’ll get BOTH the science and the solution to this pesky problem.
2. Emotional-Cognitive Links. Learn what the science tells us about the percentage of overlap between
emotions and cognition. Find out how the brain responds to negative emotions and why positive ones can
facilitate more motivation and change.
3. Neuroplasticity: How Student Brains Change. This principle says that the brain can rewire itself and
remap the very boundaries as well as add and even take away gray matter based on experiences. Teachers
need to know that the way they teach can either BUILD UP or reduce brain size.
4. Memory Malleability. Here we uncover a key to our memory; they are NOT fixed like a “file” in a file
cabinet. In fact, they are more like a digital file that can be corrupted when retrieved or alter once it is
retrieved. In the classroom, teachers need clear strategies to help reduce the negative affects of this pesky
problem and you’ll get them!
5. Neurogenesis: The Science of Growing Your Brain. What teachers can’t see CAN hurt student
achievement. A ground-breaking discovery revealed that humans can and do grow new brain cells. This
process regulates our cognition, mood, memory and even weight control. But more importantly, in the
classroom, the WAY teachers teach can either enhance or impair the production of student’s new brain
cells. This shows us just how much more influence teachers have than they thought.
6. Social Neuroscience: How others affect our brain. We’ve all known that others can make us feel better
or worse, but the new science goes MUCH further. This new discipline reveals that the friends we keep (or
don’t) can influence our brain so much, that brain scans show increases or decreases in gray matter!
Teachers will learn the new value of class friendships, teams and collaborative work.
7. Gene Expression: Why DNA is not Your Destiny. Our genes contribute about 30-40% of who we are. But
new science now tells us that the environment affects our genes to either help “switch on” or “switch off” the
expression of individual genes. In short, the way teachers teach does more that help them learn their
content. Teachers are sculpting their student’s brain by orchestrating a complex “switchboard of decisions.
Staff will find out that they have MUCH more to do with how students turn out than they thought. T

CHARACTER EVALUATION

Character Education Program Evaluation & Assessment

Regardless of the scale of your character education initiative, it’s a good idea to establish some means
of evaluating it so you know whether you are achieving your goals. Such an assessment may be as
rigorous as a full blown longitudinal study, or it can be as informal as counting disci plinary referrals or
gathering anecdotal teacher impressions.
Assessments are usually designed to measure one or more of the following:
• changes in the students
• changes in the school climate
• how well the staff is implementing the program
COLLABORATION

Collaborative learning is an educational approach to teaching and learning that involves groups of students
working together to solve a problem, complete a task, or create a product. According to Gerlach, "Collaborative
learning is based on the idea that learning is a naturally social act in which the participants talk among themselves
(Gerlach, 1994). It is through the talk that learning occurs."

There are many approaches to collaborative learning. A set of assumptions about the learning process (Smith
and MacGregor, 1992) underlies them all:

1. Learning is an active process whereby students assimilate the information and relate this new knowledge
to a framework of prior knowledge.
2. Learning requires a challenge that opens the door for the learner to actively engage his/her peers, and
to process and synthesize information rather than simply memorize and regurgitate it.
3. Learners benefit when exposed to diverse viewpoints from people with varied backgrounds.
4. Learning flourishes in a social environment where conversation between learners takes place. During
this intellectual gymnastics, the learner creates a framework and meaning to the discourse.
5. In the collaborative learning environment, the learners are challenged both socially and emotionally as
they listen to different perspectives, and are required to articulate and defend their ideas. In so doing, the
learners begin to create their own unique conceptual frameworks and not rely solely on an expert's or a
text's framework. Thus, in a collaborative learning setting, learners have the opportunity to converse with
peers, present and defend ideas, exchange diverse beliefs, question other conceptual frameworks, and
be actively engaged.

Collaborative learning processes can be incorporated into a typical 50-minute class in a variety of ways.
Some require a thorough preparation, such as a long-term project, while others require less preparation,
such as posing a question during lecture and asking students to discuss their ideas with their neighbors
(see concept tests). As Smith and MacGregor state, "In collaborative classrooms, the
lecturing/listening/note-taking process may not disappear entirely, but it lives alongside other processes
that are based in students' discussion and active work with the course material." Regardless of the
specific approach taken or how much of the ubiquitous lecture-based course is replaced, the goal is the
same: to shift learning from a teacher-centered to a student-centered model.

The Anatomy of Effective Collaboration

To be effective, the art of collaboration requires thoughtful consideration on the part of educators. Time must be
set aside for developing lessons and deciding on appropriate learning approaches to use with specific students
or groups. In many schools, administrators set up collaboration schedules a year ahead in order to ensure that
teachers will have shared planning times. Even so, many collaborative teachers spend time before and after
school to coordinate their efforts. Additionally, deciding on which teachers will be paired together can make or
break a successful teaching partnership. Collaborative teachers need to bring their best strengths and practices
to the team while remaining flexible to adapt to new methodologies that can benefit student learning. In this way,
teachers continue to grow in their professional skills and students gain understanding from a variety of
instructional approaches. Team teachers must also present a united front so that students perceive each as
being of equal importance in knowledge and authority thus leading to more respectful learning environments.
Types of Teaching Collaborations
There are a wide variety of of collaborative teaching styles and many are used interchangeably by team teachers.
Particular models include the following:

 Lead, Observe, Assist – One teacher presents new content while the co-leader observes students and
assists any who may be off-task or struggling with concepts.
 Teach and Reteach – The lead teacher presents new material and activities while the co-instructor
reviews previous information and skills for retention purposes.
 Simultaneous Teaching – The class is divided into two smaller groups and both teachers present the
same material at the same time.
 Instructional Stations – Students rotate between several stations to receive new instruction or work on
activities monitored by teachers.
 Supplemental Teaching – While one teacher instructs the majority of learners, the other takes a small
group aside to work on different instructional goals related to readiness or literacy skills.
 Co-teaching Rotation – Both teachers present new information rotating between presentation and support
roles during the lesson.
Benefits of the Collaborative Instruction
Collaboration is a wonderful teaching tool. Teachers have the opportunity to assess and differentiate instruction
for students more readily and they can learn new instructional techniques from one another to expand their
teaching repertoire. Cooperative teaching experiences also provide mutual support and assistance for planning
and implementing lessons, assessing students’ progress, sharing professional concerns, and addressing
students’ learning needs. Most importantly, teaming allows more opportunities for students to understand and
connect with content thereby maximizing individual learning potential.
Considering the number of ways that team teaching can be used effectively in the classroom, it is no wonder
that it remains a popular instructional model. Collaborative teaching allows teachers to impart information to a
broader range of learners using approaches that spark students’ imaginations while supporting individual
learning differences.

CONFLICT RESOLUTION MEDIATION

What is Conflict?
Interpersonal conflict has been defined as:
“An expressed struggle between at least two interdependent parties who perceive incompatible goals, scarce
resources, and interference from the other party in achieving their goals”.
Conflict is not always a bad thing
Conflict can be destructive, leading people to develop negative feelings for each other and spend energy on
conflict that could be better spent elsewhere. It can also deepen differences, and lead groups to polarise into
either/or positions.
However, well-managed conflict can also be constructive, helping to ‘clear the air’, releasing emotion and stress,
and resolving tension, especially if those involved use it as an opportunity to increase understanding and find a
way forward together out of the conflict situation.
Step 1: Define the source of the conflict.
The more information you have about the cause of the problem, the more easily you can help to resolve it. To
get the information you need, use a series of questions to identify the cause, like, “When did you feel upset?”
“Do you see a relationship between that and this incident?” “How did this incident begin?”
As a manager or supervisor, you need to give both parties the chance to share their side of the story. It will give
you a better understanding of the situation, as well as demonstrate your impartiality. As you listen to each
disputant, say, “I see” or “uh huh” to acknowledge the information and encourage them to continue to open up
to you.
Step 2: Look beyond the incident.
Often, it is not the situation but the point of view of the situation that causes anger to fester and ultimately leads
to a shouting match or other visible and disruptive result.
The source of the conflict might be a minor issue that occurred months before, but the level of stress has grown
to the point where the two parties have begun attacking each other personally instead of addressing the real
problem. In the calm of your office, you can get them to look beyond the triggering incident to see the real cause.
Once again, probing questions will help, like, “What do you think happened here?” or “When do you think the
problem between you first arose?
Step 3: Request solutions.
After getting each party’s viewpoint, the next step is to get them to identify how the situation could be changed.
Again, question the parties to solicit their ideas: “How can you make things better between you?”As mediator,
you have to be an active listener, aware of every verbal nuance, as well as a good reader of body language.
You want to get the disputants to stop fighting and start cooperating, and that means steering the discussion
away from finger pointing and toward ways of resolving the conflict.
Step 4: Identify solutions both disputants can support.
You are listening for the most acceptable course of action. Point out the merits of various ideas, not only from
each other’s perspective, but in terms of the benefits to the organization. For instance, you might suggest the
need for greater cooperation and collaboration to effectively address team issues and departmental problems.
Step 5: Agreement.
The mediator needs to get the two parties to shake hands and accept one of the alternatives identified in Step
4. The goal is to reach a negotiated agreement. Some mediators go as far as to write up a contract in which
actions and time frames are specified. However, it might be sufficient to meet with the individuals and have them
answer these questions: “What action plans will you both put in place to prevent conflicts from arising in the
future?” and “What will you do if problems arise in the future?
This mediation process works between groups as well as individuals.
Having conflict or dealing with conflict can be stressful. Register to attend our webinar to learn how to be resilient
to workplace stress.
CONSTRUCTIVISM
Constructivism is basically a theory -- based on observation and scientific study -- about how people learn. It
says that people construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world, through experiencing things
and reflecting on those experiences. When we encounter something new, we have to reconcile it with our
previous ideas and experience, maybe changing what we believe, or maybe discarding the new information as
irrelevant. In any case, we are active creators of our own knowledge. To do this, we must ask questions, explore,
and assess what we know.

In the classroom, the constructivist view of learning can point towards a number of different teaching practices.
In the most general sense, it usually means encouraging students to use active techniques (experiments, real-
world problem solving) to create more knowledge and then to reflect on and talk about what they are doing and
how their understanding is changing. The teacher makes sure she understands the students' preexisting
conceptions, and guides the activity to address them and then build on them.
 Constructivist teachers encourage students to constantly assess how the activity is helping them gain
understanding. By questioning themselves and their strategies, students in the constructivist classroom ideally
become "expert learners." This gives them ever-broadening tools to keep learning. With a well-planned
classroom environment, the students learn HOW TO LEARN.

You might look at it as a spiral. When they continuously reflect on their experiences, students find their ideas
gaining in complexity and power, and they develop increasingly strong abilities to integrate new information. One
of the teacher's main roles becomes to encourage this learning and reflection process.

For example: Groups of students in a science class are discussing a problem in physics. Though the teacher
knows the "answer" to the problem, she focuses on helping students restate their questions in useful ways. She
prompts each student to reflect on and examine his or her current knowledge. When one of the students comes
up with the relevant concept, the teacher seizes upon it, and indicates to the group that this might be a fruitful
avenue for them to explore. They design and perform relevant experiments. Afterward, the students and teacher
talk about what they have learned, and how their observations and experiments helped (or did not help) them to
better understand the concept.

Contrary to criticisms by some (conservative/traditional) educators, constructivism does not dismiss the active
role of the teacher or the value of expert knowledge. Constructivism modifies that role, so that teachers help
students to construct knowledge rather than to reproduce a series of facts. The constructivist teacher provides
tools such as problem-solving and inquiry-based learning activities with which students formulate and test their
ideas, draw conclusions and inferences, and pool and convey their knowledge in a collaborative learning
environment. Constructivism transforms the student from a passive recipient of information to an active
participant in the learning process. Always guided by the teacher, students construct their knowledge actively
rather than just mechanically ingesting knowledge from the teacher or the textbook.

Constructivism is also often misconstrued as a learning theory that compels students to "reinvent the wheel." In
fact, constructivism taps into and triggers the student's innate curiosity about the world and how things work.
Students do not reinvent the wheel but, rather, attempt to understand how it turns, how it functions. They become
engaged by applying their existing knowledge and real-world experience, learning to hypothesize, testing their
theories, and ultimately drawing conclusions from their findings.

The best way for you to really understand what constructivism is and what it means in your classroom is by
seeing examples of it at work, speaking with others about it, and trying it yourself. As you progress through each
segment of this workshop, keep in mind questions or ideas to share with your colleagues.

COOPERATIVE LEARNING

What is Cooperative Learning?

Cooperative Learning involves structuring classes around small groups that work together in such a way that
each group member's success is dependent on the group's success. There are different kinds of groups for
different situations, but they all balance some key elements that distinguish cooperative learning from
competitive or individualistic learning.
Cooperative learning can also be contrasted with what it is not. Cooperation is not having students sit side-by-
side at the same table to talk with each other as they do their individual assignments. Cooperation is not assigning
a report to a group of students where one student does all the work and the others put their names on the product
as well. Cooperation involves much more than being physically near other students, discussing material, helping,
or sharing material with other students. There is a crucial difference between simply putting students into groups
to learn and in structuring cooperative interdependence among students.

Why Use Cooperative Learning?

Extensive research has compared cooperative learning with traditional classroom instruction using the same
teachers, curriculum, and assessments. On the average:
 Students who engage in cooperative learning learn significantly more, remember it longer, and develop better
critical-thinking skills than their counterparts in traditional lecture classes.
 Students enjoy cooperative learning more than traditional lecture classes, so they are more likely to attend
classes and finish the course.
 Students are going to go on to jobs that require teamwork. Cooperative learning helps students develop the
skills necessary to work on projects too difficult and complex for any one person to do in a reasonable amount
of time.
 Cooperative learning processes prepare students to assess outcomes linked to accreditation.

How to Use Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning exercises can be as simple as a five minute in class exercise or as complex as a project
which crosses class periods. These can be described more generally in terms of low, medium, and high
faculty/student time investment.
Cooperative learning can be used across a wide range of classroom settings ranging from small to large lecture,
as well as in online classes. No matter what the setting is, properly designing and implementing cooperative
learning involves five key steps. Following these steps is critical to ensuring that the five key elements that
differentiate cooperative learning from simply putting students into groups are met.
CRITICAL THINKING
What is Critical Thinking?
The aim of Critical Thinking is to promote independent thinking, personal autonomy and reasoned judgment in
thought and action. This involves two related dimensions:
1. the ability to reason well and
2. the disposition to do so.
Critical thinking involves logic as well as creativity. It may involve inductive and deductive reasoning, analysis
and problem-solving as well as creative, innovative and complex approaches to the resolution of issues and
challenges.

Critical Thinking and Education

One of the significant aims of education is to produce learners who are well informed, that is to say, learners
should understand ideas that are important, useful, beautiful and powerful. Another is to create learners who
have the appetite the appetite to think analytically and critically, to use what they know to enhance their own
lives and also to contribute to their society, culture and civilization.

These two aims for education as a vehicle to promote critical thinking are based on certain assumptions.
1. Brains are biological. Minds are created. Curriculum is thus a mind-altering device. This raises the moral
requirement to treat learners as independent centres of consciousness with the fundamental ability to
determine the contours of their own minds and lives.
2. Education should seek to prepare learners for self-direction and not pre-conceived roles. It is, therefore,
essential that learners be prepared for thinking their way through the maze of challenges that life will
present independently.
3. Education systems usually induct the neophyte into the forms-of-representation and realms of meaning
which humans have created thus far.
4. Careful analysis, clear thinking, and reasoned deliberation are fundamental to democracy and democratic
life.

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS

DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION

EQUITY AND EXCELLENCE

EMOTIONAL BEHAVIOR

GLOBAL EDUCATION

INCLUSION

INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING
MEDIA LITERACY

MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

STANDARDS MOVEMENT

TEACHER ACCOUNTABILITY

TEACHER AS RESEARCHER

TECHNOLOGY IN TEACHING

THE AGE OF LITIGATION