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Northwest Report
September 1996

Bibliography Lists Tools for Assessing Attitudes

Student attitudes and classroom climate-those often intangible but always potent factors in the schooling equation-exert a powerful effect on academic achievement. Writing about the role of assent in learning, educator and author Herbert Kohl says in his 1991 essay I Won't Learn From You: "In the course of my teaching career, I have seen children choose to `not-learn' many different skills, ideas, attitudes, opinions, and values. At first, I confused not-learning with failing. But there were many cases I came upon where obviously intelligent students were beyond success or failure when it came to reading or other school-related learning. They had consciously placed themselves outside the entire system that was trying to coerce or seduce them into learning and spent all their time and energy in the classroom devising ways of not-learning, short-circuiting the business of failure altogether."

To help educators uncover valuable information about the affective areas of education-school and classroom climate, student self-concept, student motivation to learn, and student attitude toward school-the Northwest Laboratory has compiled a bibliography of assessment information and tools. Factors That Influence Achievement describes nearly 80 articles and instruments. Here is a sampling:

Reading Assessment

More than 140 articles and assessment tools are described in the expanded and updated edition of the Bibliography of Assessment Alternatives: Reading. Items have been collected from a wide range of sources-local school districts, state education agencies, research centers, ERIC, the International Reading Association, commercial publishers-even other countries.

Among the listings are:

  • Oregon Open-Ended Reading Assessment. Oregon Department of Education. (TC#440.3OREOPE) Oregon is experimenting with assessing student reading ability in grades four, seven, and 10 using a procedure in which students read a complete passage (about six pages) and answer a series of essay questions, such as: "What is your first response to this story?" "Explain how your own experiences helped you understand the story." "Brian has always had good feelings about the outdoors. Do you think his opinion has changed? Explain your reasons." Passages are narrative, expository, and persuasive. Some tasks require both individual and group work. Tasks extend over several days. Student responses are scored on four dimensions: constructing meaning, making connections within text, making connections beyond text, and risk-taking.

  • Retelling Stories as a Diagnostic Tool. Lesley Morrow. (TC#440.3RETSTD) The author (1) provides a set of instructions to guide student retelling of a reading passage; (2) includes a sample checklist to use when analyzing the retelling for comprehension; (3) provides an example of how to analyze a retelling to show knowledge of setting, theme, resolution, and sequence (story structure); and (4) presents one technique for analyzing the retelling for average length of clauses and syntactic complexity (to assess language complexity).

  • Self-Reflection: Supporting Students in Evaluating Themselves as Readers. Cheryl Ames. (TC#440.6SELRED) The author discusses high school student self-reflection in reading-its importance and how to promote it in students.

  • Improving the Assessment of Literacy. Peter Winograd, Scott Paris, and Connie Bridge. (TC#440.6IMPASL) The authors present reasons why multiple-choice tests of comprehension based on short passages do not adequately reflect what we know about reading. They take reading out of its inherent meaning context, test skills in isolation, ignore prior knowledge, and don't look at strategies.

  • Authentic Reading Assessment: Practices and Possibilities. Sheila Valencia, Elfrieda Hiegert, and Peter Afflerbach. (TC#440.6AUTREA) This book describes nine projects attempting to implement authentic assessment in reading. It includes an overview of authentic assessment in reading, including definitions and rationale for alternatives; three examples of classroom assessments; three examples of assessments based in the classroom and used to report to other audiences; three examples of large-scale assessments; and a summary of the state of the art.

  • Of Scribbles, Schemas, and Storybooks: Using Literacy Albums to Document Young Children's Literacy Growth. Kathleen Roskos and Susan Neuman. (TC#070.3OFSCRS) This paper describes the use of "literacy albums" in both documenting early literacy development and in beginning to have students take control of their own learning. The article covers early literacy development, indicators of development, and how to assemble and use a literacy portfolio. Some student work and checklists are included.

    Articles and instruments described in the bibliographies can be borrowed free for three weeks from the NWREL Test Center by educators in the Northwest region (Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington). Users in other states are charged a handling fee. For more information, contact Matthew Whitaker by phone at (503) 275-9582 or (800) 547-6339, ext. 582 or by e-mail.

    Copies of Bibliography on Assessment: Factors That Influence Achievement and Bibliography of Assessment Alternatives: Reading are available online as PDFs at www.nwrel.org/eval/library/bibliographies.html, and can be ordered from NWREL's Online Catalog.

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