[iv] In addition to the concerns emphasized by Duckworth and Yeager, I would note the risk that deploying superficial measures of non-cognitive skills might lead to
superficial instructional responses.
In the same way, assessment becomes instruction when the lines between assessment, instruction, and feedback are blurred; when a learning activity (like having students answer a question on exit slips) is anchored in the intended learning; and when the results of that activity elicit an immediate
instructional response from the teacher (Wiliam, 2011).
When teachers use collaborative common assessments to identify errors, they can generate focused, targeted,
instructional responses in their efforts to reteach.
In this example, unlike the other coaches, Coach Duane presses teachers to make explicit connections between reasons students struggled and
proposed instructional responses:
As you can see, each error requires a
different instructional response and simply re-teaching what theme is or how to support claims with evidence will not help the learners who are making specific types of errors:
Q2: At times,
an instructional response to formative assessment must be made quickly.
When I design assessments, I not only need to make sure that they are designed in a way that will elicit
an instructional response, but also how these assessments will have a profound and lasting influence as I attempt to form confident and capable learners?
Indeed, the whole theory of change for standards - based reform, which has dominated U.S. schools for several decades, rests on teachers»
instructional responses to the standards.