Cognitive Science Implications for Assessment

 

Knowing What Students Know –The Science and Design of Educational Assessment[1] is the report of the National Research Council (NRC) on cognitive research and its implications for assessment and further assessment research.  The NRC is the principle agency of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering that serves the scientific community, the government, and the public.  Among its recommendations[2] that can inform our efforts at assessment are the following:

 

  1. . . . assessment practices need to move beyond a focus on component skills and discrete bits of knowledge to encompass the more complex aspects of student achievement.

 

Implication:  Assessing larger units of student knowledge, skills, and attitudes can provide more valuable information than tests of individual facts or skills in isolation.  Assessing a complete research project or creative act may lead to better understanding about student learning.

 

  1. Therefore, within the normal range of cognitive abilities, estimates of how people organize information in long-term memory are likely to be more important than estimates of working memory capacity.

 

Implication:  This may help explain why assessing students while they are still enrolled in a course may not give us information as meaningful as assessing their learning after or long after they leave the course.

 

  1. Understanding the contents of long-term memory is especially critical for determining what people know; how they know it; and how they are able to use that knowledge to answer questions, solve problems, and engage in additional learning.

 

Implication:  As we continue learning, we organize what we learn into schemas—how one organizes knowledge and how one accesses that knowledge to solve problems, learn new information, or solve problems.  Assessments ought to consider how and how well an individual is able to use these schemas.

 

  1. Studies of expert-novice differences in subject domains illuminate critical features of proficiency that should be the targets for assessment.

 

Implication:  Experts can draw upon their schema to carry out tasks and solve problems, thereby performing tasks more rapidly and more accurately than novices.  How expert are our students at accomplishing various tasks?

 

  1. Assessment should therefore attempt to determine whether an individual has good metacognitive skills.

 

Implication:  Can a student reflect upon his or her own thinking and draw upon that when faced with a new task or problem?  Assessing students’ abilities to reflect upon their learning may provide valuable insights.

 

  1. Assessments should focus on identifying the specific strategies [students] are using for problem-solving, . . . making students’ thinking visible to both their teachers and themselves . . . .

 

Implication:  Can our assessments determine why some students make specific mistakes or are unable to perform a task?  One assessment strategy could be to ask students to explain how they solved a problem or performed a task, perhaps asking them to consider how they might have improved.

 

  1. . . . focus on making students’ thinking visible to both their teachers and themselves so that instructional strategies can be selected to support an appropriate course for future learning.

 

Implication:  Asking students to explain how they arrived at a conclusion or developed a project can make their thinking and learning processes more overt and might provide insights for steps within our curricula.

 

  1. One of the most important roles for assessment is the provision of timely and informative feedback during instruction and learning . . . .

 

Implication:  This is most important when assessing students within a course, while they are learning, and too late when assessing a program, unless we intend to provide feedback immediately after the assessment(s).

 

  1. Assessments need to examine how well students engage in communicative practices appropriate to a domain of knowledge and skill, what they understand about those practices, and how well they use the tools appropriate to that domain.

 

Implication:  We learn in social contexts, such as the classroom.  Therefore, examining the conditions under which students are learning is appropriate.  Not only might assessments consider the various ways that students learn within academic programs, but they might also examine the relationship between student life and academic learning.  Much of what students learn – or do not learn – is related to what they do and what they experience outside of the classroom.

 

  1. The authors of this book conclude that cognitive science – upon which this book is based – has much to offer assessment practices. 

 


[1] National Research Council. Knowing What Students Know –The Science and Design of Educational Assessment. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2001.

[2] Op. cit., 102-104.