The benefits provided by a high school psychology course are endless. Is there another high school course that can equip students with the skills needed for their life as a critical thinker, student, citizen, consumer, companion, employer, leader or human being? As psychology teachers, knowing how psychology can enrich students’ lives places an increased responsibility on us to ensure that students are immersed in a rich curriculum that is grounded in science. How do we ensure that students have in fact learned the course objectives and transferable skills? There are an abundance of projects and activities available that appear engaging, but good intention in itself does not ensure mastery or deep processing of the targeted information. How do we know our methods of delivery are effective? We know by using assessment data in the way it was intended to be used — to assess student learning throughout the learning process, to modify instruction to meet identified student learning needs, and to empower students to take charge of their own education by developing effective study strategies and metacognition.
Assessment is complicated. The manner in which national, state and sometimes local assessments have traditionally been used can make the term “assessment” seem like a misnomer, as the data from these assessments take so long to get back into the teachers’ hands that it does not help with formative teaching practices. Effectively, this is “dead data,” not providing an organic pathway to address individual student learning deficits in the classroom. In addition, assessment often has a negative connotation attached to its usage, both from a student and teacher perspective. As a student, who actually enjoys taking assessments? As a teacher in the current high-stakes testing environment, assessments have been used as an evaluative measure of teacher effectiveness, which fails to take into account critical environmental factors thus often rendering its implications invalid.
Simply because there are entities that misapply assessment or that do not understand what purpose the data can serve isn’t justification to discredit its importance. The same logic applies to assessment as that of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’s argument in a case of free speech, “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” Hence, the remedy to the misuse of assessment is not reduction, but rather more assessment; assessments that are valid and embedded with empirical science. It is imperative that we as psychology teachers see assessment not as negative buzzword, but rather as an essential and indispensable tool that will drive teachers’ instruction and improve the lessons, labs, activities and discussions in the classroom.
Educators who are deficient in the area of assessment implementation typically feel that through the clear dissemination of content and objectives, definitive student learning occurs. Yet, there are no data to provide evidence of this presumed student learning. As with all sciences, in psychology, the scientific method is emphasized in which experiments are operationally defined and hypotheses are tested. The data are continually examined throughout the scientific process to determine if the hypothesis has been proven or dispelled. How often do we apply this same basic sensibleness to student learning in the classroom? If we discover through summative assessment that our students have not mastered the necessary content, it is a disservice to our students. Using ongoing formative assessments as low stakes measures facilitates teacher direction and helps our students develop their knowledge and skills. This regular and constant part of our instruction creates an environment where true learning and success can flourish. Assessment is a crucial part of teaching, empowering both students and the teacher. It drives teacher instruction, illuminates the needs and strengths of students, and provides meaningful feedback that allows students to develop or enhance their metacognitive skills. Galileo Galilei stated, “We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.”
If we are to create the best possible future for high school psychology, it begins and ends with assessment. At the APA Summit on High School Psychology Education held in July of 2017, a working group on assessment, comprised of Dana S. Dunn, Alan Feldman, Sayra Gonzalez, Jane Halonen, Miriya Julian, Maria Vita, me (Stephanie Franks), and our co-chairs, Regan Gurung and Rob McEntarffer, set a goal to help teachers of psychology develop, refine, critique and add new assessments to their current repertoire. Our work led to the creation of three deliverables.
As classroom teachers, time is of the essence. Whether a teacher is new to psychology, has multiple preps or has external factors that limit the amount of time that she can allocate to create assignments, the “A Team” wanted to provide teachers with vetted assessments that can immediately be implemented in the classroom. The first deliverable, a “Gold Standard Exemplar Template,” is an assessment template that can be used with any new assessment development to ensure that it contains the necessary components. Exemplars of vetted assessments for high school psychology teachers will be made available through APA’s Project Assessment; five initial high school templates are available online now, with 41-42 total expected to be posted before the end of this calendar year. Teachers can search for the “high school” topic area to find these templates.
The second deliverable that the “A Team” produced was the "Assessment Guide for Psychology Teachersopens in new window" (PDF, 617KB). This guide, which was published in April, provides guidance to teachers looking to further develop their assessment skills, as well as build confidence in teachers’ ability to refine their assessments and provide necessary feedback to student learning.
The third and final deliverable, "Assessing Student Knowledge and Skills in Psychology Deliverable: Best Practices for Assessing Pedagogy," will empower high school teachers of psychology with the tools and an opportunity to use action research within their classrooms to determine if the educational strategies being used are effective. Essentially, this guide will provide high school teachers with the ability to assess whether their assessments are effective. Action research has become more common at the university/college level, and the hope is that this races through the secondary level of education as well. This final deliverable should be online this fall.
About the author
Stephanie Franks is a high school psychology teacher at Springboro High School in Springboro, Ohio where she currently teaches AP psychology, serves as the interact advisor and social studies department chair. Of her 13 years in education, she's been teaching psychology for the last four years. She was a participant on Strand 4, the assessment strand, at the APA Summit on High School Psychology Education in Ogden, Utah, is the co-chair of the steering committee for the Ohio Psychology Teacher Conference, and is a new member of the EPIC steering committee for the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. She spends her free time traveling to various national parks, attending psychology conferences and spending quality time with her husband, two daughters, golden retriever and two cats.
