In this episode, Sharona and Boz dive into a concept new to many educators — Teacher Assessment Identity — and explore how teachers’ beliefs, experiences, and professional contexts shape the way they design, interpret, and use assessments.

Sharona introduces the idea after hearing about new research connecting assessment practices to teacher identity, and then leads Boz through a live, on-air reflective interview designed to help him uncover his own “assessment identity.” Together, they model how teachers can ask deep reflective questions about the why behind their assessment choices — revealing that grading and assessment reform are inseparable parts of the same professional journey.

What follows is part self-assessment, part coaching session, and part exploration of how personal, disciplinary, and institutional identities influence assessment ethics, feedback, and student learning.

Links

Please note - any books linked here are likely Amazon Associates links. Clicking on them and purchasing through them helps support the show. Thanks for your support!

• How does assessment shape student identities? An integrative review
• Assess That Podcast - Episode 20
• Evidence of teacher assessment work and its relationship to their assessment identity
• Challenging Assumptions: AI and Teacher Assessment Identity Formation
• Beyond the gradebook: embracing the potentials of teacher assessment identity (TAI) in (re)shaping English language professors’ professional development and success in higher education
• Teacher assessment literacy in practice: A reconceptualization
• Reconceptualising the role of teachers as assessors: teacher assessment identity

Resources

The Center for Grading Reform - seeking to advance education in the United States by supporting effective grading reform at all levels through conferences, educational workshops, professional development, research and scholarship, influencing public policy, and community building.

The Grading Conference - an annual, online conference exploring Alternative Grading in Higher Education & K-12.

Some great resources to educate yourself about Alternative Grading:

• The Grading for Growth Blog
• The Grading Conference
• The Intentional Academia Blog

Recommended Books on Alternative Grading:

• Grading for Growth, by Robert Talbert and David Clark
• Specifications Grading, by Linda Nilsen
• Undoing the Grade, by Jesse Stommel

Follow us on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram - @thegradingpod. To leave us a comment, please go to our website: www.thegradingpod.com and leave a comment on this episode's page.

If you would like to be considered to be a guest on this show, please reach out using the Contact Us form on our website, www.thegradingpod.com.

All content of this podcast and website are solely the opinions of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily represent the views of California State University Los Angeles or the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Music

Country Rock performed by Lite Saturation, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

123 - Teacher Assessment Identity

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Boz: I was exposed very early on actually in my undergrad program at UCO about how damaging a single bad experience in a math class could be to a student and how much time and effort it takes to make up for that bad experience. And right away as a freshman high school math teacher, I was already getting students that were absolutely dreading math because of a single bad experience. Were like, oh yeah, I used to like math until third grade, or I used to like math until sixth grade.

Welcome to the grading podcast. Where we'll take a critical lens to the methods of assessing students', learning from traditional grading to alternative methods of grading. We'll look at how grades impact our classrooms and our students' success.

I'm Robert Bosley, a high school math teacher, instructional coach, intervention specialist and instructional designer in the Los Angeles Unified School District and with Cal State LA.

Sharona: And I'm Sharona Krinsky, a math instructor at Cal State Los Angeles, faculty coach and instructional designer. Whether you work in higher ed or K 12, whatever your discipline is, whether you are a teacher, a coach, or an administrator, this podcast is for you.

Each week, you will get the practical, detailed information you need to be able to actually implement effective grading practices in your class and at your institution.

Boz: Hello and welcome back to the Grading podcast. I'm Robert Bosley, one of your two co-hosts, and with me as always, Sharona Krinsky. How you doing today, Sharona?

Boz: Because you had nothing else to do?

Sharona: Nothing else. No, I didn't just write six versions of a exam, three this morning. I have another exam, three to write this afternoon. I've got a retake exam, two to write, and I'm leaving for New York on Saturday.

So I'm just totally not busy. How are you?

Boz: I'm doing well. We're, we're getting, even though you and I work together in la I don't live in LA so, but we're also getting those torrential rains. It's actually got a little bit of a break right now, I think for the next maybe four or five hours before the next storm comes in.

Sharona: Well, and we actually had to, this is our third time trying to record the podcast this week. 'cause the first two times we got on the recording system and all I could hear was the rain.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: In your background.

Boz: Because of where I record. 'cause you know, this podcast is just mine and your hobby. We're not sponsored at all. This isn't done in any fancy studio. I literally record in my sunroom at my house, which has a tin roof. So when it rains, it is loud in this room.

Sharona: Yes. And the way we record, if we could guarantee it was gonna stay the same the whole time, that would've been okay. But if it had started and stopped, it was gonna cause you a nightmare. So I'm glad we rescheduled, but holy moly.

Boz: What are we talking about today?

Sharona: Well, we've talked a lot on the podcast about the difference between grading and assessment, right?

Boz: Yeah. These are two different things and I think we have probably a half dozen, or maybe even close to a dozen or more, episodes that really do talk about assessment. But even though they're different, they're really closely related. And in fact, several of the people that we've interviewed over the last two years actually got into grading reform through assessment reform first. Whereas you and I, we've done assessment reform, but we started off in grading and realized our assessments no longer work.

Where some of our other people that we've interviewed, like Dr. Sean Nank back in episode 20 and Dr. Patrick Morris back in episode 78, they both are now into alternative grading, but they got there through doing assessment reform first.

Sharona: Exactly and contrast that with a couple of other recent episodes. We had Dr. Sharon Stranford on very recently, on episode 122, who started actually more looking at grading or was inspired by their grading experiences to change their assessments. And also Mark Aronson from episode 114 also was initially looking at grading practices, but then came to assessment reform.

Boz: Yeah. So these two things are very closely related and oftentimes when you really get into one, you will eventually get into the other as well. But they are definitely different.

Sharona: Exactly. So then this week I was listening to someone else's podcast because I actually do that. I'm a a big podcast listener, and they were talking about this research that this guest that they had on had done about teacher assessment identity.

I was like, huh. What? Wait, what? Teacher assessment identity? And they were talking about how much assessment is a reflection of so many facets of a teacher's identity. And I was just fascinated.

Boz: Yeah. 'cause we've talked about how much grading is a part of a teacher's identity and how when people really start getting into alternative grading, it makes grading so much more enjoyable for them because it is now matching their identity. And vice versa that sometimes those that are really opposed to it, it actually taps down into their own identities as an instructor as to why they're so reluctant to make any kind of reforms.

Sharona: Exactly. Exactly. And I had not thought deeply about my identity as an assessment person other than to say I have a couple core beliefs that I've said before.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: I believe that what you assess is what a student will learn.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: That's a key part of what I believe. But there are parts where you and I have discussed like I'm uncomfortable going in certain directions, and sometimes I'm uncomfortable because I'm not confident in my ability to utilize that assessment to accomplish what I want.

So when I sort of started down this path, I discovered another whole body of research about assessment identity and its impact on student and its impact on teachers. And I think that's one of the things I love about this podcast is you and I'll just kind of go down some sort of path where we're looking at an article or something and we'll end up at a whole other area of research that we're not familiar with.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: I didn't know this was a thing.

Boz: No, until you brought this up, I've never heard of teacher assessment identity. So what is that?

Sharona: Okay, so I'm gonna give you a little bit about what it is, but then I have a proposal.

Boz: Okay.

Sharona: This might go very poorly, like we might end up having to rerecord the whole episode, but I wanna walk you through a process to discover your assessment identity so that it's a model for anyone who's listening to this to be able to do it for themselves.

Boz: Okay? So, to make this clear, I have no idea what you're going to be asking. I've not seen this research, so this is going to be putting me in the hot seat, which

Sharona: Yep.

Boz: Like you said.

Sharona: Which you deserve. After this week, I just have to say.

Boz: Yeah, this, this might be great, or this might be a disaster.

We'll have to see.

Sharona: Right? So I'm gonna do a really quick summary of what the research says.

Boz: Okay.

Sharona: So basically it says that every teacher has an assessment identity, and it's some combination of our beliefs about what assessment is for, what it should look like, whether or not it feels ethical or not, and what the different things are in our backgrounds that have influenced and shaped those beliefs.

Boz: Interesting.

Sharona: So it's this very strong construct of confluence, of these belief systems.

Boz: Okay?

Sharona: So the goal here is to help you, live on the air, discover what your various belief systems are that build your assessment identity.

Boz: Okay? So when, when we get through with this, are you going to like, put me into a category?

Like is there some sort of groupings on like

Sharona: not

Boz: a personality?

Sharona: Yeah,

Boz: test.

Sharona: Not as far, not as far as I have discovered yet. Okay. In this literature. But it's more that there's multiple facets of your identity that will come out through these various belief systems that help you shape why you assess the way you assess and what your opportunities are.

Boz: All right.

Sharona: There's not like a name on it as far as I know.

Boz: Okay. Okay. So let's do this and see how it goes.

Sharona: Okay. All right. So we're gonna start with the biggest question of all is when you think about assessment, what is it for in your classroom? What's the job of assessment in your classroom?

Boz: So, depends on what kind of assessment you're talking about. There are multiple types of assessments from summative to formative to formal or informal. So I would really say it depends on what kind of assessment we're talking about.

Sharona: So let's narrow it down just a little bit. Let's specifically look at assessment for the purpose of this podcast, which is to support alternative grading practices.

Boz: Okay. Then the goal or the purpose of my assessments is to get evidence for where students are in their journey of mastering the learning targets that I have for that class that are being assessed on that assessment.

Sharona: Okay. Now, would you say that that is the same purpose that you had earlier in your career for this type of assessment?

Boz: I would. It's very different now, but I would say the overall goal of my assessment has been the same.

Sharona: So when you say it's very different, what's different? Between early career versus now?

Boz: Well, definitely the way that I am looking at the individual learning targets and it's not just okay, did they get this problem right? I look at assessment now much more holistically and more focused on did they get this specific learning target? Where are they on their journey of mastery of this learning target? And not necessarily were they able to factor this quadratic equation to graph it.

Sharona: So is that a change in your philosophy of your assessment, or is it a change in what you're assessing? Like how would you explain the difference to someone? Let's say you have a new math instructor coming in to you.

Boz: Mm-hmm.

Sharona: How would you explain the difference in your assessments from earlier in your career to versus now?

Boz: See and because my assessment changes really were brought on by my grading reform changes. I would say that it is because of that. Because of the way I now grade my students and how my grading architecture is set up, that the assessment really is focused on those four pillars and assessing the specific learning targets. So I would explain the change in my assessments really in the lens of the change of my grading architecture and my beliefs on grading.

Sharona: Okay. So if your students tried to guess your assessment philosophy, because it sounds like your philosophy is, to some degree, you're trying to measure what they've actually learned.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: Right. If they tried to guess your philosophy based on your experience in your class, what would your students say? If I went to your students and said what does Mr. Bosley believe? What's his philosophy about why he gives you assessments? What would they say?

Boz: That's a interesting question. Because I think the students would struggle with that just because assessment is such a cornerstone in education and has been their entire lives. But what would they say?

I would hope they would say something similar to what my belief is, that it is to assess how much they have learned on a specific learning target. They might say something about my beliefs of math actually stands for mistakes allow thinking to happen because we do use, multiple assessments and reattempts, and not in my statistics class, but the last time I taught, you know, in the high school classroom, I also did corrections if the students' assessment had some minor mistakes, but things I just didn't wanna let go, but they had kind of the broad concepts, I would give it back to them. And instead of them having to reassess, they could correct and resubmit. So I would hope something about maybe tying it back to some of my beliefs about how we learn through mistakes.

Sharona: Because you have a belief that evidence that comes from corrections is just as good as evidence that is correct from the beginning.

Boz: Oh, I actually believe that it can be even more so. Because how they can take and explain, not just make the corrections, but explain those corrections, I think is more telling than just getting it right the first time.

Sharona: Okay. I wanna put a pin in that because I wanna come back to that idea.

Boz: Okay.

Sharona: Because would you say that you believed that in the beginning? Would you have believed that the evidence they gave you after correcting would've been as valid?

Boz: See, and I want to say, I think I would've, except I didn't do corrections like I do now. I would often put some of the topics from like the first test or exam, especially if I had a group of students that didn't do well on it, on the second one as a chance to make up a little bit for their grade.

But I wasn't going in and going back and taking those corrections and changing grades, I was doing it as a way to, in my mind, help bump those mistakes up from the first one. But that looks very different in a traditional graded class, which my class was for over a decade than it does now.

Sharona: Okay. So I'm just going to keep that piece of it in the back of our minds. I wanna move on to the next set of questions.

Boz: Okay.

Sharona: Which is walk me through your assessment design process. Let's go for a class that you and I don't teach together, because I think we have different processes in those two environments.

So you had that second semester statistics a couple years ago or whatever. Mm-hmm. And I know you did it very differently. What was your process for coming up with the assessments, designing them?

Boz: So, first thing I would want to do is try to come up with multiple forms of assessments. 'cause I know some students can thrive in one kind of settings where others thrive in others.

So I would often try to mix my assessments between traditional paper and pencil quizzes or tests with projects or presentations. But I also, one of the big things that has really changed for me since I've gone to alternative grading is I look for evidence everywhere. If I'm having a conversation with a student and they're able to explain something, I'm gonna take that oral communication between the two of us, that conversation as an assessment, and I'm gonna count it if there is clear evidence that that student actually knew what they were talking about.

And that often happens with conversations about corrections or what went wrong on a traditional type of quiz or exam.

Sharona: Have you ever revised an assessment based on an experience, like in one of those conversations? Like you've had some sort of a good conversation, you're like, oh, this is something I'd really like to get from everybody, and then wrapped it around? Or have you ever had student engagement influenced those design choices?

Boz: I don't think I would say I've ever done it on an individual student conversation. I have definitely done it from getting like feedback, especially on some of my projects, getting feedback from my class as a whole and looking at their feedback and looking at some of the patterns of the feedback.

I don't know I can say that I've ever done it on an individual conversation.

Sharona: Okay. So you start with the form and you try to vary it up. What's your next step after you've done the form of the assessment, or decided I want some exams, I want some portfolios. What do you do next?

Boz: Well, I mean, you know, obviously ID look at what it is that I am wanting to assess. Doing that whole backwards design of starting with what do I want my students to know? How am I gonna know that they know it? And then designing my test from that.

Sharona: Okay. Which part of that process, the form choices, the alignment with the standards, the actual execution of the assessment, which of them feels most like you?

Like the part like this is Bosley's identity coming out in the process?

Boz: I would really say when I'm designing the projects or the presentations

Sharona: okay, why?

Boz: Because I think if you look at some of, for, let me give you an example. For one of my assessments for understanding probability is having a project where my students design a game of chance that has to meet certain criteria. It has to have so many possible outcomes. It has to have an expected value that favors the house by a certain amount. So, but that idea of putting the math into a practical use and actually designing a game that we end up playing and the students decide which game they would play if they actually had to put money in it and pay for the game, which ones sounds the most fun and which ones sound like they could win the most.

So I think that those kind of projects and stuff show me as an instructor better than a lot of the other types of assessments that I still do because they are oftentimes quicker and easier and the more traditional it does give some of our students do thrive in that kind of setting.

So, but yeah, I would say those projects and presentations.

Sharona: Okay. So none of this stuff comes outta nowhere. Right? So the fact that you think projects are the most fun, or the fact that you think that the purpose of assessment is to gather evidence of learning, they don't kind of come out of anywhere.

They come out from influences that have sort of shaped you. So what experiences in your own life, either as a student or an early career teacher, most shaped this? I mean, understanding that your grading journey drove a lot of this.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: But the grading journey can drive some people to a very test heavy environment, which that tends to be me. Like I go towards single problem assessments to a large degree. That's like my identity and I could talk about that. I have to think about it some more, but I could, but, so something is driving you to these more complex style assessments. What do you think that is?

Boz: You know really thinking about it, I think it was two things. It was when I was an early educator and also even before that, 'cause I, as a high school and as a college student and in between that time, I've always done a lot of tutoring. And it always struck me as odd that I could work with someone, they could seem to get it on this problem and you change the problem up a little bit and it's completely new to them. Or we come back to it a month later and it's like they've never seen it before. And I'm like, we were just doing this a month ago and you were getting it. What happened? So looking and thinking about that and thinking about why math kind of stuck for me, not the early stuff, 'cause arithmetic and early algebra just came natural. It came easy.

But the more complex stuff, and I go back to, and I know you and I have talked about this, I don't know if I've ever talked about it on air, but like my physics two class made a lot of my calc and calc two make sense to me. So it was the application, it was seen how math was actually used in the real world rather than just the theoretical that made it make a lot more sense to me. And that's part of my identity as a educator, is always trying to answer that famous, or notorious, question depending on who you ask that every math teacher is in the world, has ever been asked, when are we ever gonna use this?

And you can choose what kind of adjective is used. But, so yeah, I think being an early educator and seeing that so much, and it puzzling me and then me thinking about my own journey as a student and just realizing that that application and I go back to a specific professor I had at Oklahoma City Community College when I was making up some of my grades after I stopped going to college at OU for a while. But he was like a retired, FAA investigator. And he did a lot of work with cold weather radar or something. I can't remember exactly, but him in his classes and lecturing and talking about how this was actually used in air traffic control or in crash investigation, made it just come alive to me.

Sharona: Well, and that actually, that idea that you just shared actually leads into one of the research papers that I ended up reading.

And this particular paper I just wanna share is called Teacher Assessment Literacy In Practice. Okay. And what they did is they came up with a conceptual framework and one of the base of this framework, it's a typical pyramid, but the base of this framework has what they call the knowledge base of the teacher.

And so on the one hand you have your disciplinary and pedagogical concept knowledge framework. Yeah. You know, you have to have your disciplinary knowledge and things like that. But there are six other dimensions of knowledge that inform a teacher's choices in this area.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: And I just wanna read them to you.

So when I hear you talk about these connections and why they're driving you to this more robust project style, I think you're unconsciously integrating a huge number of these dimensions and this is just the base of assessment literacy for a teacher. So there's assessment identity, which is what we're really talking about.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: But it's based on teachers having assessment literacy. Understanding how to build them. So I just thought that was an interesting tie in.

Boz: And we'll link that plus a whole bunch of others to the show notes here.

Sharona: Right. So it sounds like those experiences that you had as a student drove, to a large degree, an awareness of what's possible. Because even though you were actually a really, really good math student, up to a point, I think you were really good math student probably all the way through, but it got harder, right?

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: And then the physics and the FAA brought dimensionality and context to your experience. So that leads me to now, so that was as a student, but now you work in systems such as LA Unified, but also Cal State LA and you also work for the center. All three of those have different cultures of assessment. Would you agree that that's a true statement?

Boz: Yeah. Yeah.

Sharona: So what parts of these systems have contributed then to your assessment identity? You've have 20 years at LA Unified. You've got eight years now, six, seven years.

Boz: Seven, seven years.

Sharona: Cal State LA.

Boz: Seven years.

Sharona: And a couple years at the center. You know, how do those systems affect the choices that you're making? How do you feel about yourself in regards to creating assessments?

Boz: Okay, this might sound arrogant.

Sharona: You?

Boz: Yeah, I know. If any of my old teachers, especially my math teachers ever heard this, they would fall out of their chairs laughing at that comment. But I don't know if the systems affect me or if I try to affect the systems because I'm not sure that I can say exactly how. I mean, I guess we could look at, especially when COVID hit, how going remote changed all of our assessments and then how that had changed the way that I like to assess since then. But other than that, I think I can point more ways of how I've tried to impact the systems and the structures in place to affect them than allowing those to affect me, if that makes sense.

Sharona: Well, yes, and I'll challenge it a little bit because I do think that you're just aware of the pressures the system is putting on you and you're trying to fight back, but you're not always successful.

Boz: No.

Sharona: In fighting back.

Boz: No.

Sharona: And I say that in part because we're going through some things today,. But did you, when you made the transition though, going back to sort of the process of transitioning your assessment, what pressures or norms did you have to unlearn to get to a point more where you are now? Was there anything you had to like, take a step back and go, oh, whoa, I didn't even kind of realize I was doing that and I don't like that, that doesn't match?

Boz: Well, definitely. You know, and this kind of goes back more to the grading than the assessment, but just how when I was doing traditional grading and even though I was trying to put things in place, like letting some makeup points for corrections or allowing, you know, like I said, putting some of the old stuff along with the new stuff so students could try to better those scores.

But yeah, really looking at and being exposed to this idea of early mistakes just constantly being a punishment to the students in traditional grading and in traditional assessments. That definitely is where a lot of my changes started. And again, I've always claimed I have this belief that mistakes allow thinking to happen, but it took me quite a few years and quite a bit of research and reading of people like Joe Feldman to understand how my assessment or more my grading practices was a contradiction to that core belief. I'm not sure if I answered your question.

Sharona: I think so. I mean, I think part of the challenge with this particular modeling of an interview is I actually know a lot of the answers to these questions. So for example, if you were telling someone new, instead of me, 'cause you know, I know this, you would probably have said a little bit more about how you started with minimal grading because you had never thought about the impact of the zero, for example, until you got exposed to it.

And then when you went to minimal grading, and I remember you talking to me about it, I have major discomfort with minimal grading, meaning giving a 50% baseline mark because I totally get the math behind it, and it is the right mathematics to start to try to fix the problem, and I also understand that giving half credit does weird psychological things to students when they get half credit for literally not turning anything in.

So like that has always been a disconnect for me. And I've had to, I feel like we've both had to unlearn the mathematics of traditional grading.

Boz: And since you brought that up, I have said I made a lot of little changes before I went into full-blown alternative grading. I never gave the 50% for no work.

I never gave that high. To me it's like, okay, I'm gonna give, I started off, I think, at 40% for, for no work. And, but if you turn something in and it was just total garbage, the worst I would do was a 50. So I was still punishing for that zero compared to just really bad work. When Joe Zeccola and I were first working with this together at that illuminate conference where mine and his friendship really started, we were looking at, and we came up with a bunch of different mathematical, I think, like I said, I landed on 40%.

He landed on 35% on for his. And when we were doing these early PDs at our school. And showing people how to use Illuminate and how you could use it to set that minimum bar, we had discussions and we talked about, you know, this is kind of our opinions, it's we should set it somewhere between 35 and 45.

'cause we still wanted to punish that zero compared to someone that did something that was just total trash, even though neither one of them showed any evidence of student actual learning.

Sharona: And see, my first reaction when I learned about minimal grading, I was like, look, if the argument is you're skewed to failure, then just deskew it. If you've got five letter grades A, B, C, D, F,

Boz: 20 point scale,

Sharona: you do 80 to a hundred, 60 to 80, 40 to 60, 20 to 40, zero to 20. Like in my brain I was just like, if you're gonna do math, then just make the math even. And everyone's like, oh, now you're lowering standards. 'cause now A is an 80% and I'm like this made no sense to me.

This is why I never went the minimal grading route, because I'm like, you're fixing the math and it doesn't make any sense mathematically to me.

Boz: Yeah. And so that's actually the reason Joe and I went the direction we went instead of just doing the 20 point scales is because the first few people we talked about blew an a absolute gasket with the idea of doing 20 point scales in that because we were in high school, that a 21% could be a passing grade.

'cause that would be the bottom end of the D.

Sharona: Right. And again, mathematically I have some sympathy for that because the question is if you're gonna have, I mean, what does passing mean? Right? Like, none of this makes any sense to me, which is why I never ended up going any of these directions. And I went to proficiency scales right away. I feel like that is the place where we're still having the biggest single fight is unlearning this idea that you should be putting mathematics as your measurement system for measuring student learning.

Boz: I think that has been one of the, and I don't know when or where it happened, but I think that was one of the biggest freeing things to myself and the way I look at grading. And you're right, it is one of the hardest things to undo from other people when I'm working with them. I have one colleague that we were colleagues at Santee, we're still colleagues at ETO. She's actually the one that put my name out there for ETO if you're listening, Jillian, love you.

But when I was working with her when she was still in the classroom at Santee, that idea of having to have some sort of mathematical numeric base to her grade because she was an English teacher and just thought that you had to have math and that math was the grade. Like she could not get past that.

Like she really struggled with, no, I've gotta have the system give me some sort of numeric value that I can base the grade off of.

Sharona: So when you're talking about assessment identity, these systems do impact us. They impact who we believe ourselves to be and how our assessments are gonna work. So that's a big part of this.

I do wanna move on to the next question that we might ask ourselves as we're trying to uncover our assessment identity. If that's okay. Okay. I think this one's gonna be really interesting. So I'm gonna ask you, 'cause I think this, you're gonna have a very quick and clear answer.

Prior to doing the changes you did, how did you feel when you sat down to evaluate the student evidence that you were collecting?

Boz: Oh my God. I despised grading tests. Grading other stuff like homework or warmups, that kind of stuff didn't bother me that much, but grading tests, I despised it.

Sharona: Why?

Boz: Well, part of it was, it took a while and, at the time, I was fairly new into my educational career when I became a father to my first daughter. Yes, I have an older son, he's my stepson. I didn't come into his life until he was six. So this was my first baby.

Scarlett was my first baby, and she was a daddy's girl from minute one. So I hated spending that much time at home grading. So that's one reason I despised it. Second reason, part of the reason it took me so long is because I was always concerned with being equitable with my grading. So I would often take my first few tests and my last few tests and compare them to see if I was taking off the same amount of points for similar mistakes. That I hadn't, through the process of the couple hours of doing it, or if I had to break it up, which I often did. I didn't change from taking two points off for assigned mistake here, but now I'm taking three points off here.

So going back and then regrading and really just going, okay, this question's worth 10 points. These are the mistakes they made. Is this a two point mistake? Is this a three point like that? I hated that and it took me forever and I never felt like I never felt good or I don't wanna say good about it. I never felt that it was always a hundred percent right.

Sharona: Okay. And did you ever think about your students while you were doing that or were you really just grappling with the dread of the math?

Boz: Well, no, I was definitely thinking about my students. Especially the ones that were struggling, 'cause I was exposed very early on actually in my undergrad program at UCO about how damaging a single bad experience in a math class could be to a student and how much time and effort it takes to make up for that bad experience.

And right away as a freshman high school math teacher, I was already getting students that were absolutely dreading math because of a single bad experience. We're like, oh yeah, I used to like math until third grade, or I used to like math until sixth grade. So I was always really cautious and trying to find ways to be fair and accurate, but also encouraging.

And knowing that, well, not knowing why, but knowing that it wasn't working very often, not knowing that all this time I spent on feedback was just getting ignored. 'cause all the students we're looking at were the damn score up at the top. Which we've talked about that research that that has shown that as long as there's a number on it, the students just don't pay attention to the feedback. And I would spend all this time trying to be encouraging with my feedback, especially with the students that were struggling and it just not doing anything.

Sharona: So now let me ask you, how do you feel today? Because you sit down every week for a couple of hours with your stats students. How do you feel during that hour or two that you're doing that?

Boz: I wouldn't say I enjoy it, but I don't dread it. Before I used to dread it. I don't spend the time going back and rechecking to make sure I'm still normed with myself. I don't feel like it's necessary to do that.

Sharona: But when you think about your students as you're going through the grading process, how does that feel compared to what you just said about worrying about the devastating experience and all that kind of stuff?

Boz: Well see, and I do think with the way that I assess and specifically grade and give feedback, I do think the students see the assessment more as part of the learning process than the learning stop that it was in traditional grading. Because they're getting feedback and they're, they're taking that feedback and they're going, okay, so on the next assessment I need to do this. And the assessment doesn't feel as final. At least I don't think it feels as final to them as it did before.

So it's more of the learning process, which means I enjoy it more. I mean, I'm not gonna ever say I like sitting down, spending two hours on a Friday night, hours on a Friday night or, you know, a couple hours on a Saturday morning grading and giving feedback. But I definitely don't dread it like I used to.

Sharona: It sounds also like it's more in line with your belief systems.

Boz: Oh, much, much more so.

Sharona: So you've built, we've refined our systems, your systems in multiple settings. How much agency, and you can be brutally honest here, because you're working in a pretty constrained environment. How much agency do you feel you have in shaping assessment, and where do you feel boxed in?

Boz: Okay, so I definitely feel boxed in with especially this semester with the placement of those assessments. So a little background, and we've talked about this before, but the stats class that we do together, when we went to remote, of course our assessments also had to go asynchronous online. But when we came back we actually kept that.

And I really, really enjoyed keeping that because that meant I got a lot more instructional time with my students back that I wasn't spending on me sitting there and watching them do an assessment. So I felt the students got a lot more out of the class if I was teaching that stats class right now. And it was just me and not in a coordinated, course where we're doing things a lot of very similar ways? I would still be doing that. But because of AI and because of some other concerns, I was in the minority of this group, so we brought some of the assessments back in. And I have not liked losing that instructional time.

And if it was, if it was just me, I would not be doing that. That is definitely the firmest and most clear example of feeling boxed in.

Sharona: Now I wanna ask you specifically something about this. Because I think this is an area where you and I have a slight distance between each other.

Boz: Okay.

Sharona: Which is what makes you so confident that you can get authentic evidence, even if your students are not in a proctored environment and they have access to AI? I am not a hundred percent confident that I can do it, but you seem to be. So how come?

Boz: First, I come from, and I'm not saying you don't, so don't get insulted by this.

Sharona: I'm not gonna be insulted. I'm asking the question.

Boz: I come from a standpoint of I'm gonna trust my students and believe in my students first. Now, does that mean they can't break that trust? Of course. But I'm gonna start with that. So I'm not going to assume they're going to cheat until I've seen them cheat, A. B - I think a lot of this really boils down to those relationships you build with your students. And if you build those really solid good relationships, they're going to want to try more in that class and actually learn with you because those relationships have made them feel comfortable in doing it, especially with the kind of grading that I do that allows them to make those mistakes so they understand mistakes are just part of the process. So cheating cuts the process out. I also do think that, 'cause I'm not gonna say that I don't have the cheating, I do occasionally get it. I've gotten it a couple times this year but here's the difference. As soon as I ask my students about it, they don't deny it. I've not had a single student since doing the asynchronous remote assessment that I've ever expected that if I asked, they did not fess up to it.

And I think that's part of the relationship. And, and we, you know, I am 20 years experience as an educator. I can usually tell when there's a huge difference between what I'm seeing on the assessments and what I'm seeing in the class. And my students realize that really quickly. So, I just, I don't get a ton of that aI cheating that some people are afraid will happen if students can.

Sharona: So I think the big difference between you and me in this area is a question of identity. I think you are confident in your ability to build those relationships with students to a much greater degree than I am confident in my ability to build those relationships with my students.

Now, I've had a lot of good successes and I think it also depends on the type of class. So I felt very confident in my linear algebra class and in my history math class that I could build the relationships that I could get what I needed from the students. For some reason in the statistics class, or even in most of the freshman classes, I don't seem to have that same personal confidence in myself. And even though I've actually been teaching more years than you, you have way more time in a classroom than I do probably by a factor of six.

Boz: Yeah. Well, yeah, most of my experience has been in a high school classroom, and if you look at the time spent with students that I spend with a single student in a single class for a year that I have them compared to how much you might spend with that same student in a semester long college class that you see them three hours a, Yeah. I have a lot more experience in front of the students because of the difference in our settings.

Sharona: And so that's where I think that this was an area of identity that I was like thinking about as I was preparing for this episode, because I'm aware, and that's not a critique on me or you or anything, it's just a difference.

But this informs, but this informs sometimes where you might be more comfortable suggesting something in one in our coordinated setting. And I'm like, I'm just not comfortable enough and as the coordinator, I'm sort of on the hook for it.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: So that's the other piece is you're not the coordinator, therefore you get to be like, this is what I believe and I have to be like, if it goes south, it's on me.

Boz: Well, and, and

Sharona: so I feel the pressure

Boz: and, and to be fair. I think you would feel different if you were coordinating this class and it was just me and you teaching it.

Sharona: Oh, a hundred percent.

Boz: We, we, we've got, there's, there's what, this semester we've got eight,

Sharona: there's like 10 instructors, eight or 10

Boz: instructors.

Sharona: Well, and we also have a political structure at the university that is putting a lot of pressure on the class. So it's not just the instructors in the class that have to defend our choices, but it's other people outside the class that are looking at the class and making assumptions. So that's that institutional context that really is affecting me for sure.

Boz: It's affecting you much more than it is me because of the difference in our positions. So yes, yes. You feel that? So when you asked me about those structural pressures earlier, that's one that I know of because of the conversations I've had with you. But that's not one that I personally feel. In fact, I'm the opposite like I said, I'm trying to fight against that system because I'm not feeling the pressure of it as you, the coordinator, is feeling.

Sharona: So I wanna move on 'cause we're coming towards the end. We're not right at time yet, but I have a couple more sections that I wanna look at. So this whole interview with you, even though it's a little strained, because I know most of your answers, the point is to model how to uncover our own assessment identities. So based on what I just took you through.

Boz: Mm-hmm.

Sharona: And what you know about assessment in general, what questions do you think teachers should be asking themselves as they go to discover their own assessment identities?

Boz: Well, the first I think is the kind of first question you asked me, and what is the purpose of your assessment?

Which I think actually has a bunch of implications, not just identifying your assessment identity, but has a lot of different practical uses. But yeah, that would definitely be the first question, the first and second and maybe third question that I asked.

Sharona: I think one question that I would ask people to ask themselves, because one of the other things here is I'm interviewing you and you are quite frankly a white male

Boz: Yeah

Sharona: in a STEM discipline. So one of the things that you don't usually have to ask yourself is, how does my personal identities come into play in the classroom.

Boz: That's true.

Sharona: Whereas I know that for me as a woman in STEM and having been raised in the eighties by another woman in stem, I do have to ask myself, what does my role as a woman, what does my role as someone who's Jewish, what does my role as a higher education person versus a K 12 person? I have to ask myself how all of those things could come in, because those identities also inform all of these things. So that would be a question that I would ask people to ask themselves.

Boz: That's a great point. And thank you for bringing that up. Even though I try to keep my privileges in check, you're right. And I was just having that conversation with one of my teachers that I am coaching at my new job. We were talking about how she is a triple minority. Female, black and in STEM. So yeah, those kind of identities. And if you go in and watch her teach, you can see those identities really in action with how she interacts with her students.

I don't know if we've ever really looked at how they interact and influence her assessment. But boy, you could sure see how it does her actual instruction in front of the students.

Sharona: So this has been sort of a taste of this, honestly, pretty broad body of literature that I think is worthwhile as we continue to try to improve grading because of the tie between grading and assessment practices to help people understand and explore how our own identities are informing these choices.

My identity as a coordinator, your identity as a coach, our identity as being in a STEM discipline versus like, I know that our humanities folks, especially our writing instructors, are grappling even worse with AI than we are. Yep. In some ways. These are all of the questions that we can ask each other.

What I would say in summary to some degree is this stuff is very powerful. It's a very powerful tool for individuals to help them make some of these choices. If we can uncover these unconscious things that maybe we haven't thought about, I think it's got a lot of power to help us really take our assessments further towards helping our students.

Because one of the papers, and I was looking for it just now, but one of the papers is called How Does Assessment Shape Student Identities? And what they said is, "unlike many measurement practices, assessment actually changes its target". So a student who goes into an assessment is different than the student who comes out of an assessment. Even if it's only 20, 30 minutes long. The student has actually been changed. And like you said. It's now part of the learning process.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: And I would argue it's most of the learning process at some level, because that's when you integrate the knowledge that you've been working on.

Boz: Yeah. So, so,

Sharona: so

Boz: that, that's interesting.

We've been talking this whole episode about the teacher assessment identity, but that paper you were just mentioning is talking about the student's assessment identity. So that's another really interesting direction that, that we can get into.

Sharona: But one of the points I wanna make is, I think from an ethical perspective, if you wanna be an ethical instructor, you need to start exploring this because of the impact your assessment practices have on your students.

Boz: I would absolutely agree, but I would also say there's a lot of benefit to the teacher. I mean, yes, it's a benefit to anyone if we're more ethical educators. But like I was saying before, I used to despise the grading. I used to despise doing a lot of that. I don't anymore.

The integrating some of the non-traditional assessments into my practice makes my job a lot more fun. So really understanding your identities and once understanding those, maybe making some adjustments can actually make your job a lot more enjoyable. And anyone that's been in education for more than five minutes knows this.

Anything that we can do to make our jobs more enjoyable is worth doing 'cause it's a hard job and it's oftentimes a fairly thankless job.

Sharona: And that's one thing I'm excited to do as I move into next semester is I do think some of those projects that you talked about, some of those portfolios. I think we can go beyond just not dreading it into actually joyfully looking at the product of our student work.

Boz: Oh, I know I do with the projects and the presentations outside of the stats class that we do together, when I was still had one or two classes a semester, or a year, as I was doing my other out of classroom positions, I always enjoyed doing, in even the grading and the feedback part of the projects and presentations.

Sharona: We're coming up on time, Boz, I wanna thank you for this experiment. See, I didn't, I didn't trap you with anything. Teacher assessment identity. It's not static. I like, that's one thing I want people to take away. Your answers that you gave me today, if I came back two years from now, they probably wouldn't be exactly the same.

You will continue to change, you're gonna continue to grow as an assessment practitioner is my suspicion.

Boz: How can I do that? I'm already perfect. No, I'm kidding.

Sharona: Yeah, whatever. And for our listeners, I hope that hearing this conversation helps you think about your own identity as an assessor. Your beliefs, the tensions you're navigating, the values that show up in your classrooms. None of this is right or wrong, it's just stuff we need to know so that we can make more informed decisions going forward.

Boz: And if you're interested in learning more about this, we'll we'll link all of these articles and research that Sharona had mentioned, plus a few others that we didn't mention, but that she used in her research as she prepared for this episode and this interview of me. But yeah, this is a field that neither one of us really knew existed that I think both of us will be diving a little bit further into and seeing what else might come out of it.

All right. So I wanna thank everyone for sticking around and listening. This has been the Grading podcast with Boz and Sharona, and we'll see you next week.

Sharona: Please share your thoughts and comments about this episode by commenting on this episode's page on our website, www.thegradingpod.com. Or you can share with us publicly on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. If you would like to suggest a future topic for the show or would like to be considered as a potential guest for the show, please use the Contact us form on our website.

The Grading podcast is created and produced by Robert Bosley and Sharona Krinsky. The full transcript of this episode is available on our website.

Boz: The views expressed here are those of the host and our guest. These views are not necessarily endorsed by the Cal State System or by the Los Angeles Unified School District.