Measuring What Matters: How Teachers Assess Students' Noncognitive Skills in Personalized Learning Environments

• In Event: 77.056 - Fairmont Royal York Roundtable Session Seven
  In Roundtable Session: 77.056-1 - Assessing Metacognitive and Noncognitive Skills

Abstract

‘College- and career-ready’ students possess both academic content knowledge and noncognitive skills esteemed by today’s higher education institutions and global workforce. Yet conventional assessment measures do not include separate metrics for these noncognitive skills: There is a mismatch between what is taught, what is measured, and what is valued. Because personalized learning environments prioritize noncognitive skills development (Rickabaugh, 2016), they may be prime places to analyze contextualized measurement practices. This qualitative study focuses on teacher practices within three high school personalized learning environments. Results reveal a connection between the learning environment’s design and teachers’ measurement practices. Specifically, student-teacher conferencing sessions throughout long-term interest-based projects result in strong student-teacher relationships. These relationships are the tool teachers use to measure noncognitive skills.

Author

• Julia Rutledge, University of Wisconsin - Madison