Evaluation without Tears: 101 Ways to Evaluate the Work of Students

Teachers evaluate students’ work constantly. It is a built-in part of the job of teaching. Yet, what is hardly acknowledged is the subjectivity and unfairness of evaluation. Although grades and marks have long been discounted as having any reliability or validity, they endure as real and exact measures of ability and performance. Not only are they specious, they have little or nothing to do with the important goal of evaluation – that is to provide feedback to learners that enables their subsequent growth. Evaluation Without Tears provides teachers with specific examples of how they might provide evaluative feedback to students that is enabling and affirming, rather than punishing, respectful of the learner and protective of the learner’s dignity, recognizing that one person’s judgment is not truth. Teaching students to self-assess, an important dimension of growth and maturity, is a significant feature of the book.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Preface Acknowledgements Chapter 1: What’s Evaluation For? Force of Habit What’s Evaluation For? Chapter 2: Marking and Grading: The Tail that Wags the Dog A House of Cards Chapter 3: A Case for Using Evaluative Feedback Evaluation as Feedback Obstacles to Using Evaluative Feedback In Lieu of Grades Chapter 4: Evaluative Feedback that Enables and Promotes Growth Identifying the Criteria: What are we looking for? What is Being Measured? Learning Goals and Evaluation Practices Chapter 5: Written Diagnostic Evaluative Feedback Across the Curriculum Examples from the Primary Grades Examples from the Intermediate Grades Examples from Secondary School Conclusion Chapter 6: It’s All About How You Say It Reflecting in Action Examining a Classroom Discussion Hooked on Praise Chapter 7: Impediments to Good Diagnostic Judgment Taming the Impulse to Punish by Evaluative Judgment Two Cents Worth of Advice to Teachers Chapter 8: Reporting to Parents Some examples of teachers’ written reports Parent-teacher-student conferences Chapter 9: Students as Self Evaluators Children Evaluating Themselves in the Primary Grades – The Child in the Process Written Self-Evaluation Reports in the Primary Grades Students Evaluating Themselves in a One-on-One Tutorial Students Evaluating Themselves in the Secondary School Teachers’ Assessments on the Profiles Conclusion Chapter 10: Institutional Changes Toward Using Evaluative Feedback in Reporting to Parents Examples of Schools that “Dare to Be Different” Chapter 11: Evaluation as a Subversive Activity: What Can a Teacher Do? Chapter 12: Postscript: A Personal Odyssey A Professional Journey References Index About the Author

About the Author :
Selma Wassermann is Professor Emerita in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. Her books include What’s the Right Thing to Do? (2019), The Art of Interactive Teaching (2017), This Teaching Life (2004), Teaching for Thinking Today (2009) and An Introduction to Case Method Teaching: A Guide to the Galaxy (1994).

Review :
In equal parts a fascinating history of assessment and a concrete call for action. Professor Wassermann empowers readers to reflect on their own approach to evaluation and confront biases, preconceptions and challenges, taking the reader beyond already well-trodden themes of basic weaknesses in the methods and our “love affair” with numbers. Key distinctions are made between enabling or disabling feedback, complemented by a wealth of examples and specific feedback. Wassermann suggests approaches that can be adopted even when teachers are faced with pressure to conform to traditional measures from administration, parents and even students themselves. With Evaluation Without Tears, Selma Wassermann continues her tradition of important books in teacher education. This work presents a valuable guide to evaluation techniques that are clear and comprehensive, yet concise. Real-life examples serve to amplify the concepts and contribute to more complete understanding. Evaluation is not limited to students’ mastery of material but gives teachers the means to evaluate their own work. I was especially struck by the statement that a teacher should also evaluate if the concepts being taught are worthy of being learned. Altogether this is a book every teacher should own and cherish. It is a superb, challenging and timely book, destined to change students’ learning and students’ lives for the better. It is an invaluable gift for educators who choose to enable students to learn in a way that offers each student opportunities for personal growth, choice and success. Wassermann provides the history and educational theory that supports the necessity for radical changes in the way learners are evaluated. The sample transcripts of learning conversations and teacher evaluative feedback are absolutely invaluable, providing a wonderful guide for teachers wanting to embark on the process of evaluative feedback. This is a fine piece of work on the touchy subject of evaluation, one that is too often ignored. It is a thoughtful, conceptually strong and practice-focused work. Teachers and administrators and policymakers will read this book not only for the importance of evaluation in school and classrooms, but also because the writing is crisp, clear and marked by elegant brevity. Many specific examples and a wealth of metaphors and phrases stud the work. The author’s gift of writing is unusual among academics and K-12 educators. The book is a pleasure to read. If you have read any of Dr. Selma Wassermann’s books, you can anticipate that Evaluation Without Tears will be beautifully written, well-constructed and designed to reach a significant audience. And this book is. Selma takes on any teacher who still uses measurement to rank or punish students for their work. She speaks of evaluation as feedback as well as to students as self-evaluators in all grades. Rich in examples, Selma’s book is delightfully lucid, and filled with passion. It is a great educational ride.