Approaches to MYP Sciences Assessment
Maybe (as Einstein said) not all that counts can be counted but MYP assessment is about far more than giving grades. If you are new to MYP assessment then the pages in this section give an overview of the principles of criterion-related assessment in MYP (generally) and Sciences (specifically.) If you are an experienced MYP practitioner, you may also find some ideas for different approaches, too.
MYP Assessment basics
You can spend quality time in MYP workshops focusing on assessment principles and practice, but here are a few bullet-points to frame thinking and perhaps get you started.
MYP assessment IS...
... directed to identify specific competencies and skills when the student demonstrates them in a given performance task. The competencies and skills are stated in the assessment objectives for the MYP subject concerned.
... an evaluation of the student's level of competency in a certain objective. The levels of achievement demonstrated are identified by statements given in the assessment criteria.
... formative in that students should have a variety of opportunities in a given grading period to demonstrate their level of achievement, and the outcomes of these formative opportunities should be shared with them, along with the teacher's feedback, so that they know how to improve.
... therefore criterion-related in that the teacher makes a judgement about the overall level of achievement that the student has demonstrated over a range of performance tasks:
'This “criterion-related” approach represents a philosophy of assessment that is neither “norm-referenced” (where students must be compared to each other and to an expected distribution of achievement) nor “criterion-referenced” (where students must master all strands of specific criteria at lower achievement levels before they can be considered to have achieved the next level).'
- MYP: From Principles into Practice (IBO, 2022) p.79
So MYP assessment is NOT...
... normative. In MYP assessment we do not give points / marks / scores, then apply a distribution to figure out grade boundaries or set a pass/fail boundary.
... normative (again!) in that students should not be ranked within their group / cohort. OK, there is nothing in the actual criteria to prevent this happening, but I'm going to take the position that the practice of ranking students is not in the spirit of student-centred education, nor orientated towards a growth mindset (more on this here.)
In addition to these, I would argue that as far as possible and in as many situations as possible
MYP assessment should be...
... low-impact, because assessment is integrated into the flow and process of learning, not ‘dropped in’ so that all learning stops in preparation for the assessment.
... low-stakes, in that we 'harvest' information and provide feedback for the student over a variety of tasks on multiple occasions, not relying on one single assessment event to determine the learning.
Formative or summative?
As mentioned above, MYP assessment is designed as formative in the sense that it provides feedback for student growth and continued learning. In a sense, all assessments are formative, but it is perhaps important here to distinguish between assessment practice and assessment instruments.
Assessment practice refers to the ways in which teachers gather and interpret information about their students' learning. So formative assessment practice is about doing this in a low-impact, low-stakes way that intends to inform teaching and learning. We design formative assessment tasks that allow us to do this - more on this here.
Summative assessment practice is about gathering point-in-time information that allows us to make a global evaluation of the student's learning, most often for reporting purposes. While this still should be fed back to students, and should also provide an opportunity for formative reflection, it is likely that the summative assessment will mark an end-point in a cycle of learning, for example at the end of a topic where the teacher will now move onto something else. Summative assessment might therefore mean gathering data from a variety of earlier (formative) assessment tasks and making a summative judgement about the best-fit of a student's performance to global criteria. Equally, this summative judgement might be strongly informed by a summative assessment task which itself covers a range of criteria. More on this here.