Subject: Assessing High School Students

Posted by Richard Turnock on 12/4/2004

Message:

With William (Bill) Moore’s permission, below are two paragraphs he emailed me when I inquired about using the Perry scheme assessment methods with high school students. This seems to link to prior comments on this listserv.



One of the items Scott Guthrie wrote about was the factoid and trivia testing each state is using. As an alternative assessment, I’m suggesting using Perry scheme based assessment methods to measure high school student transitions through the Perry positions (pre-test/post test) after using systems concepts as a learning intervention. Funding for this idea will probably be through a non-profit approach going directly to school districts. To get things started, maybe a children’s institute funds a research project with a cooperative school district like Glynn County School System. Over time, as systems concepts spread and the benefits are measured by this assessment method, K12 systems thinking and dynamic modeling ride the wave.



I have not included the attachments here but will make them available through Lees if anyone wants them.



Richard



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From email by William Moore dated 11/27/2004



There have been a handful of projects with high school students over the years—most recently with the Matteo Ricci program run by Seattle University and a small study by a teacher in the Highline SD near Seattle. Certainly it’s reasonable for the model to extend to high school students; the one small concern with the “best class” prompt would be the extent to which HS students have had adequate opportunities to be exposed to a wide enough array of learning environments reflecting a full range of Perry position perspectives, thus potentially creating an artificial “ceiling effect.” I think it’s a minimal concern, though, and in any case one could use the “ideal learning environment” prompt as an alternative.

Re interventions, I’ve attached a couple of handouts I’ve used in the past with Perry workshops around these issues; I think if you do some literature searching on “developmental instruction” you should be able to find at least a few studies, especially dissertations, that would give you more detail about that framework, developed by Lee Knefelkamp and Carole Widick in the mid-70’s based on Perry’s work. You could also explore Marcia Baxter Magolda’s work and the work based on Kitchener and King’s Reflective Judgment model; all of that work is grounded in the Perry scheme and helpful in thinking about developmental interventions.



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