Introduction  Introduction     Standards &     Skills     Assessment     Items     Scoring     Criteria     Student     Samples     Author     Profiles     References

Introduction Geography teachers have always been concerned with assessment as a critical element of the instructional/learning process. Valid and reliable assessments help them determine what their students know and are able to do with respect to the geography curriculum taught. This process facilitates not only the assignment of grades and a students' progression through the educational system, but also it provides important feedback to teachers on their success in using different approaches to instruction. Concerned teachers often alter their instruction based on such feedback until they hit upon strategies that are more context-appropriate and more effective in bringing about the desired student learning. Assessment of student learning of geography today, as in the past, is accomplished primarily through the use of teacher-made tests. The vast majority of these teacher assessments use objective tests that measure student knowledge of geography at the lower cognitive levels of thought. Even state and national geography assessments, such as the Illinois Goal Assessment Program (IGAP) and National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), contain a number of items which restrict the variety of student abilities which can be demonstrated. Among many educators today, there is growing concern that objective items are ineffective in determining student ability to engage in critical thinking and problem solving--higher cognitive thought processes that are essential if students are to be prepared to deal adequately with the problems of our increasingly complex society. In addition, the educational reform effort of the past two decades, which includes the development of state and national geography standards, indicates the need for assessments that measure higher cognitive thinking ability. Consequently, over the past decade serious efforts have been made to develop alternative forms of assessment that are tied to state and national standards. Such assessments are based on tasks that are considered "authentic" (real life) or that require a "performance" that demonstrates student ability to reason at higher cognitive levels. Both learning theory and practical experience with the varied learning styles of students support the use of alternative assessment in the schools. The creation of good alternative assessment items is a task that should be carried out by classroom teachers. They know the goals and objectives of their curriculum better than anyone, therefore they are more likely to create valid alternative assessment items. However, many teachers feel inadequately prepared to create and use alternative forms of geography assessment, specifically assessments that are designed to measure student achievement on state and national standards. Time is also a factor in the development of such items. This publication is designed to provide assistance to geography teachers who want to develop and use alternative assessment items as part of their regular testing program. Also, it provides teachers with examples of alternative assessment items, which are keyed to national and state standards in geography, scoring criteria, and item-specific scoring rubrics that can be used directly with their students or as prototypes for development of their own alternative assessments. Standards and Skills contains abbreviated versions of the national geography standards and geography skills from Geography for Life: National Geography Standards 1994 and the complete text of Goal 17: Geography, of the Illinois State Board of Education state standards, Illinois Learning Standards. These are included as references for teachers who may not have the state and national standards documents at their disposal. Teachers who develop their own alternative assessments are encouraged to consult the complete text of the national standards for illustrations of performances related to each standard and to examine the benchmark statements for Goal 17: Geography of the state standards. Assessment Items contains fifty-four sample alternative assessment items that have been classified to both the national and state standards in geography. All fifty-four items were developed by a team of social science teachers who have taught or are currently teaching geography. There are eighteen items, one for each of the national geography standards, in each of three grade levels, K-4, 5-8, and 9-12. These items can be copied and used directly to assess student knowledge of the national or state standards. If used in this way, teachers should understand that these items represent a very limited sample of all the items that can be developed in each of the grade groupings and do not constitute an adequate measure of student knowledge of either the national or state standards. These items are valid measures only to the extent that the standard assessed is addressed in the teachers' existing curriculum. Teachers may choose to use these items as examples as they develop their own alternative assessments or modify them to fit their particular learning context. Or they may wish to use some items as student exercises to be included in portfolios. In some instances, teachers may find only the graphic useful for developing their own assessments. Scoring Criteria presents the generic scoring criteria. These criteria can be used to guide the development of item-specific scoring rubrics for any alternative items teachers develop. For example, the Knowledge of Content criterion addressed in general terms can guide the development of four different levels of performance with respect to the specific geographic content of a new alternative item. Teachers may want to add additional criteria to the ones included here or use these criteria as an example for writing their own. In general, it is a good idea to share generic scoring criteria with students long before they attempt to answer alternative assessment items based on them. Student Samples provide field tested examples of five different items for each of the grade groupings from the pool of fifty-four presented in the Assessment Items section. Each item has an item-specific scoring rubric and sample student responses at each of the four different levels of performance described in the rubric. The rubrics can be used as they are for scoring their respective items, should a teacher choose to administer those items in his/her classroom. Or teachers can use the rubrics as examples for developing their own rubrics. Or the rubrics can be modified to conform to scoring criteria that also have been altered. If teachers choose to administer any of the field tested items, they may wish to compare their student responses with the sample responses from the field testing. The authors hope that geography teachers find this publication useful in their efforts to develop and use alternative forms of assessment, to add variety to their assessment efforts, and to measure student ability to think critically about their world.