Competency-Based Assessments in STEM Classrooms: Using Creative Story Writing as a Formative Assessment

Competency-Based Assessments in STEM Classrooms: Using Creative Story Writing as a Formative Assessment

Garima Bansal
Copyright: © 2023 |Pages: 24
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-6684-6932-3.ch003
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Abstract

It has often been observed that what is assessed often becomes what is taught. To enable teachers to teach 21st century skills, it is crucial that school systems upskill their models of designing high-quality competency-based assessments. This chapter reports a competency-based formative assessment used to equip students with the skills required for successful survival in the 21st century. It reports a formative assessment task in which story writing is used to develop graph development skills among STEM students studying in middle grades in an Indian school classroom. The results indicate that competency-based assessments unravel student-held misconceptions which can be used by the teachers to provide appropriate formative feedback.
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The principal goal of education is to create people who are capable of doing things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done - people who are creative, inventive, and discoverer. (Jean Piaget as cited in Ginsberg & Opper, 1969, p. 5)

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Time For Change: A Movement Towards Competency-Based Assessments

Various educational policy documents have been reiterating that in the present day society vast amount of information is easily accessible at the click of a mouse through the use of internet, so the need of the hour is no more gathering factual information rather it is the ability to sift, select, and organize the information and knowledge meaningfully to solve problems and make decisions in new situations (NCERT, 2006). In his prologue to the book “Four Dimensional Education” Andreas Schleicher (p.1) says,

Put simply, the world no longer rewards people just for what they know—search engines know everything—but for what they can do with what they know, how they behave in the world, and how they adapt. Because that is the main differentiator today, education is becoming more about creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration; about modern knowledge, including the capacity to recognize and exploit the potential of new technologies; and, last but not least, about the character qualities that help fulfilled people live and work together and build a sustainable humanity (Fadel, Bialik, & Trilling, 2015).

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