CHAPTER 8: ASSESSMENT IN THE PARTNERSHIP PEDAGOGY

This chapter sort of supplements the first chapter, also written by Marc Prensky. In chapter one, Prensky proposed that students and teachers should be in a partnership in the classroom, where there is less direct instruction and more student-discovered knowledge gathering. Chapter eight discusses many possible ways to provide assessment in a partnering classroom, other than just traditional tests. Prensky suggests multiple methods of assessment such as: ipsative assessment (students “compete” against themselves and try to better their best), peer assessment (allows students to feel valued by their peers but also compare their work and hopefully strive to be better), real-world assessment (students receive feedback from students from around the world) and self-assessment (students assess their strengths and weaknesses, just like is done in a job). In addition to discussing the types of assessment that might be used with partnering, the author makes the point that with this partnering relationship, assessment of student work should be with the same tools the student has been using to do the work. In his discussion, Prensky also brings up some of the fears people have about partnering and assessment. He proposes that people are afraid that with partnering, students will not do as well on standardized exams. He also proposes that fears have come forth that current assessment does not take into account some of the new skills that students learn through partnering, so they “don’t count”. Further discussion reveals that those who are using it seem to feel that students in partnering settings actually do better on standardized exams because they are more engaged in their learning. Prensky points out that the fear that new skills are not accounted for is real and that assessment should be upgraded to include more skills-based learning.

The remainder of the chapter deals with assessing the progress of others in the partnership besides students. These others would be the teachers, administrators, parents, schools, our nation and then the world. Basically, Prensky gets to the root of a true partnership, which is in a partnering relationship, every partner has to give and take for the relationship to thrive and work. In focusing on the individual partners, he is looking at how each should be contributing to the partnership as well as benefiting from it and how do we assess that these contributions are where they need to be.

As I mentioned for chapter one, I think the idea of partnering is really neat. I think in a classroom that is set up for this, that the assessment methods proposed in chapter eight would work very well. This is definitely something that would require a lot of work on the front-end, making sure that guidelines and boundaries are well established so that true assessment takes place. Again, if organized well, I truly do think that meaningful learning could happen and meaningful assessment would be required.