ASSESSMENT AND

EVALUATION
IN SOCIAL STUDIES
Objectives:
CLASSROOMS
Present and analyze the state of assessment and
evaluation in the Social Studies and Social Science
today.
What Is the State of Assessment and Evaluation in Social
Studies Today?
Since public education began in Canada 150 years ago, assessment has identified
and ranked students using tests, essays, and quizzes. This limited role for assessment
has broadened over the past twenty years for a number of reasons:
 First, the goals of education in general, and social studies in particular, have greatly
expanded as we attempt to help our children acquire the knowledge, skills,
attitudes, and behaviors required for living in the twenty-first century.

As social studies educator Joseph Kirman argues, social studies is not about the accumulation of selected
facts for later recall but should aim to:
Produce a responsible person able to cope with change, capable of making reasonable decisions, who
is an intelligent consumer and controller of science and technology, able to live with and appreciate human
diversity, and support and defend human dignity. Such a person should be able to settle differences
honorably, avoid the use of violence, be cognizant of, and active in, the stewardship of our planet, and
have the skills necessary to maintain a functional economic system and democratic government.
 Assessment reform has also been driven by increased knowledge about
learning. After decades of viewing learning as a relatively passive
accumulation of facts and discrete skills, we now recognize learning as
a more active process in which learners construct knowledge and make
connections among facts and concepts. Innovations in recent decades,
such as curriculum integration, authentic assessment, and cooperative
learning, reflect these current theories.
 A third factor driving assessment and evaluation reform comes from the
widespread view that traditional ways of reporting student achievement—
the evaluation side of things—are not telling us what we really need to
know. It is not enough to want students to learn and to express our best
intentions by setting course, unit, and lesson objectives. These objectives
need to be achieved. We need results: clear evidence students have met
the outcomes set for them.
Concurrent with these trends to broaden the scope of what and how to assess
student progress has been a rise in large-scale, standardized assessments .

The instructions to students, the test conditions, the timing, and scoring are the
same in all places. They are generally norm-referenced and provide comparative
data on students. They usually test for what the test authors determine to be basic
skills and knowledge, and are considered to be objective; i.e., free of teacher bias in
scoring.

Whatever benefits such tests have in determining student acquisition of basic facts
and simple skills they do not set a standard as to what students should be able to do.

Even at the school and classroom levels there are competing trends in assessment
and evaluation. The key focus is to promote “assessment literacy”; the capacity to
better match assessment methods.
What Is the Vocabulary of Assessment and Evaluation?
The terms “assessment” and “evaluation” are often used interchangeably
but they do not always mean the same thing. For many, assessment is the
process of collecting data on student performance that is then used to
evaluate (make judgements about) the attainment of certain expectations,
objectives, or outcomes.
 Because we speak of judgements, evaluation is never neutral. It can only be
objective in that assessments provide us with a quantity and quality of
information sufficient to make judgements that are fair to the strengths and
needs of all learners
 It is important to remember that all assessments and evaluations are limited in
that they do not tell us everything there is to know about the learning of
particular individuals or groups.
Informal assessment occurs when teacher
collects information to use for the purposes of
Assessment and shaping on-going instruction.
evaluation are continuous
activities in the classroom Formal assessment is normally more overt and
and they can be both: systematically planned. We are all familiar with
typical manifestations of formal assessment:
quizzes, tests, essays, and projects.
A key to effective assessment and evaluation is clarity about purpose. Broadly
speaking in terms of purpose, there are two types of assessment: formative and
summative.
A research synthesis by Marzano,
Pickering, and Pollock noted the
Formative
Feedback consists following principles of quality feedback:
assessment is to of information that  First, feedback should be timely
provide teacher tells us how we are
 Feedback should be specific (criterion-
and student with doing and what we
need to do next, in referenced) and “corrective” .
feedback that can
the light of our  Feedback can be verbal and written and
direct future
intentions and can come from teachers, peers, or the
teaching and
goals student him/herself.
learning.
 Feedback should allow students to make
decisions. 
 Summative assessment provides an accounting of student progress at a particular
point in time. It is normally a measurement that describes where the student
stands in regard to some sort of standard such as curriculum outcomes.

 The most familiar summative assessment is the report card

that communicates to students and their parents the degree to
which students are meeting expectations with regard to the
curriculum. Of course summative assessments can be used
in a formative manner—report card might help students
focus on particular areas where they need extra work—but
that are not their primary intent.
Assessment and Evaluation in
Social Studies Classrooms
In order to overcome the limits and minimize the errors in our assessments and
evaluations, the assessment tools we use must be valid and reliable.

Validity simply means that the data collected is truly related to the
outcomes we intend to measure.
Reliable assessment instruments are ones that will produce the same results in
different situations. There are two components to be concerned about in producing
reliable instruments.
 First, the activity itself should produce clear, consistent evidence of student
achievement in the desired area.
 Second, the evidence should be interpreted the same way by independent
observers.
It is important to remember that no single instrument, no matter how carefully constructed,
can collect all the information needed for a comprehensive evaluation of student progress
or be completely valid and reliable.
What Are Some Particular Assessment and Evaluation
Challenges for Social Studies Teachers?

 Even within a single social studies discipline, the kinds of learning’s to be

assessed cover a wide range.
 Many key social studies outcomes such as critical thinking, social responsibility,
and informed decision-making are hard to define compared to outcomes from
other subjects.
 As a result of these varied and contested outcomes, the field of social studies has
had great difficulty reaching consensus on its key concepts and purposes,
including what constitutes sound assessment and evaluation.
   Because social studies is concerned with affairs in the real world, it has always
been subject to pressures from that world (the political dimension)
How Do I Plan for Sound Assessment and Evaluation?

Sound assessment begins with the learner in mind. This

“backwards design” or “design down” process
requires us:
(1)determine what the learner needs to know and or do
as a result of the learning;
(2)identify clear evidence of learning; and
(3) Design instruction so that students will have
opportunities to learn and demonstrate their leanings.
Good teachers will keep the following questions
in mind when planning for assessment.
1. What is to be assessed?
 In order to design appropriate methods of assessment, teachers must be very
clear about exactly what it is they want information on.
2. What is the purpose of the assessment?
 The means of collecting information and reporting on it will vary depending
on whether the purpose of the assessment.
3. What assessment tools will best provide the information we need?
 Tools will vary depending on what is to be assessed and the purpose of the
assessment.
4. Who will collect the data: teachers, students, or outside judges?
 Involving students in self- or peer-assessment can be a very effective teaching and
assessment technique Asking students to use a checklist to rate their peers’
performance in a debate by collecting data on several criteria(content, presentation,
argument, etc.) both directs the students to pay specific attention to these important
criteria (teaching) and provides information on how well they understand them
(assessment).
5. How often and when will the data be collected?
 As stated above, teachers assess students all the time.
6. What will be done with the data making up the assessment?
 As stated above, we assess for different purposes and, depending on the purpose,
different things will be done with the data.
 Underpinning all these questions, of course, is the principle that our
assessments must align with curriculum
• With good instruction we are well on our way to making those first steps
towards assessment literacy.

What Specific Forms of Assessment and

Evaluation Can Be Used in Social Studies?
As stated above, assessing and evaluating student progress is a complex
endeavor. Good teachers will develop a range of tools for helping with this
task. It is important to remember that each of these tools has strengths and
weaknesses and teachers need to be able to select appropriate ones to serve
their particular assessment and evaluation purposes.
Selected response tests
 often called “objective paper and pencil tests” consist of multiple choice, true
false, matching, and fill-in-the-blank items. The phrase “selected response” is
most accurate since it reflects the procedure of selecting correct responses from a
range of possibilities.
 True-false tests, data are quickly collected on a range of knowledge targets such
as generalizations or propositions, with little demand on reading ability.
 Fill-in tests work for outcomes such as vocabulary understanding and, unlike
other forms of selective response, do not promote guessing.
 Matching is particularly useful for assessing student recognition of how ideas are
associated.
 Multiple-choice items, usually consisting of a complete statement of the problem
or question (stem/lead); construction of plausible distracters (wrong answers);
random placing of the key (correct answer), are the most versatile form of
selective response, ranging in use from recall of basic information to
interpretation, analogies, and other complex outcomes.
Extended- or essay-response tests
Essays are items that require an extended or constructed written answer to a
relatively open-ended question for which a variety of appropriate responses
are possible.
 Essay tests or assignments may be more valid than selected response items
in that they are more likely to provide data on important outcomes such as
the ability to identify an issue, organize relevant information into an
argument, reveal cause-effect relationships, recognize human-
environmental interactions, weigh evidence, and so on.
 The essay can range from a short paragraph to many pages.
 Without clear and precise scoring criteria, applied consistently by teachers,
one person’s “A” can be another person’s “C.”
 Committees of specialists, especially teachers, meet to design questions
based on curriculum outcomes, to be assessed with clear criteria and reliable
scoring systems.
 We can narrow or broaden the content focus by increasing or decreasing the
factors or variables to consider.
 We can also specify the cognitive demands.

Document-based questions
 These questions are not designed to test student’s recall of information but
rather their abilities to critically use sources as the basis for constructing
historical accounts.
Performance Assessment
Performance assessment is considered new although it is as old as
assessment itself. Unlike selected response, the assessor does not count
correct responses in order to render a judgement.
 Instead she or he collects data on the process or makes a judgement about
the quality of the final product as students actually do something.
 Performance assessment tasks are not add-ons, fillers, or breaks for the
teacher, but opportunities to combine instruction with assessment.

According to Bower, Lobdell, and Swenson, culminating performance

activities or projects:
 are central to the unit and its big question
 are known to students in advance
• ask students to create a meaningful product or performance
• demand students use different learning styles and intelligences
• make clear to students the standards by which their work will be judged
• foster the habit of self-assessment
• allow teachers to act as coaches
• require students to think deeply about important issues

Authentic Assessment
 Authentic assessments are a particular form of performance assessment where
students are required to perform a real-life activity and an assessment is made
based on that activity.
Structured Observation
 Many performance and authentic assessments will include “hard” evidence
of student progress such as written components, constructed models, and
visual representations, but often much of the evidence of student progress
will be gathered through watching them work.
 We need to be able to be more specific about what we mean and that kind
of specificity can be obtained by structured observation: watching for, and
collecting evidence on, particular behaviors.
 These observations would be structured not only in the sense that the
teacher looks for evidence for precise criteria like these but also in the
sense that some form of record is kept of the observations such as
checklists or anecdotal notes.
A rubric is an achievement scale: a set of scoring
guidelines for evaluating student work. 
 Before determining specific criteria, it is important for
students to discuss what quality looks like.
 A word on weighting criteria for grading purposes: the
issues around converting performance levels to marks or
grades are complex.
 evaluation using a grade or rubric represent a judgement
about what is valued
Conclusion
 The trends in assessment and evaluation in social studies, as in other parts of the
curriculum, are in a state of flux.
 The issues are complex; easy solutions are impossible. Assessing student
progress is one of the most difficult and public things teachers do.
 It takes time and hard work to develop the range of procedures and
instruments necessary to adequately provide feedback to both teacher and
students (formative assessment) and end-point information for students, parents,
and others in the education System (summative assessment).
 Informed, reasoned discussion by researchers, practitioners, and policymakers is
a must.