TESL 628

Dr. Koubek
Case study Pearl --- 38 points total
Directions: Respond to the following questions succinctly by providing the amount of
facts as stated below. You are being graded on content, and not on mechanics and
citations.
1. 4 ideas = 8 points
a. Mr. Hartman uses visual representations of key themes and concepts on the
board and adds definitions to assist with student discussion and understanding
during the class (pp.306-309).
b. Mr. Hartman asks students to apply key concepts previously studied to the text
in a way that is meaningful and engaging (p.224).
c. Mr. Hartman elicits information and opinions from students and asks students
to explain further when he feels they do not sufficiently support their opinion
(p.6)
d. Mr. Hartman moves from the here and now or more concrete topics of
discussion such as setting to increasingly abstract concepts with the last one
being symbolism. This is effective scaffolding of the discussion in order to
allow for increasingly complex analysis and a small to large approach (p.224).
2. 2 ideas = 4 points
a. Rusty has difficulty remembering the word crux because he only remembers
the first letter, indicating that he was not able to accurately distinguish the
sounds in the end of the word (p.161).
b. Its not perfectly clear but it also seems that perhaps Mr. Hartman did not
write the word down yesterday so Rusty was not able to remember it based on
its visual representation (pp.306-309).
3. 1 idea = 2 points
a. Rob makes an analogy for what the finding of the pearl means in relation to
the setting, theme and conflict of the story. He is able to conceptualize the
pearls symbolism in a simplified idea (p.274; p.279).
4. 2 ideas = 4 points
a. Based on the review session we can assume that the assessment is not valid
because it was designed to measure students understanding of character
personality traits, story events, specific plot details, and vocabulary words
rather than the concepts of setting, theme, conflict, and symbolism. The
content being assessed is completely different causing a lack of content
validity (pp.30-32).
b. The assessment is also not valid because it does not accurately reflect the
students actual knowledge of the story. It is clear from the discussion that at
least some of the students have read the book and have attempted to
understand and analyze it on a deep level. However, their scores on the test
likely indicate that they did not read or understand the book. In this way the
assessment is also lacking criterion-related validity in its ability to indicate
student comprehension because of what kind of focus it took (p.32).

5. 2 ideas = 4 points
a. Mr. Hartmans test is not reliable because he is refusing to throw out questions
which were consistently answered wrong- suggesting that there is something
wrong with the questions themselves. These questions introduce lack of
reliability because students who answered those questions correctly probably
did so out of luck rather than skill (p.42).
b. Mr. Hartmans test was also not reliable because certain students were able to
score higher than others based on their attention to specific details or chance
of studying certain information when it was not a central focus of the
instruction. Those students by chance or personality were able to do better on
the surprise questions in way that does not accurately reflect their
comprehension when compared to their classmates or to the standards (p.42).
6. 4 ideas =8 points
a. His choice of the test is based on experts, which is fine, but then his
curriculum does not match the test. Its hard to say what happened based on
the excerpt here but it looks like he taught the content and then just randomly
picked a test. Assessments should be chosen first and then the class time
should be designed backwards based on the assessment (pp.29-35).
b. Corrective feedback in class should ideally lead towards the summative
assessment. The teacher should be scaffolding towards students proficiency
on certain criteria or skills- which are what will be measured in the
assessment. Again, its hard to have a complete picture with just the review
session. However, it looks like he gave positive formative feedback to his
students indicating that they were on the right track and had excellent
knowledge of the content. Once the students got to the summative assessment
they were shocked because the formative assessment given by the instructor
indicated they were going to meet the goals but then the summative
assessment had completely different goals as measurements of success (p.7-8).
c. The way that Mr. Hartman handles criticism of the test is pretty much
guaranteed to have negative washback in his class. He says that future tests
will be the same way and refuses to discuss students criticisms. I can
understand not wanting to discuss criticisms at the moment but I think his
students would lose trust for him if their questions were not sufficiently
answered. Students also do not understand teachers not using their own work
and that would definitely make him lose credibility. Ive had students critique
me for using national standards that werent my ownlet alone other peoples
tests. If I was a student in his class I would completely disregard classroom
content from this point on and only study the topics that are going to be on the
assessment (pp.37-38).
d. They type of review he gave allowed students to form their own opinions on
the text and argue for their interpretation or perspective. The way Mr.
Hartman asked questions led to these types of responses since the questions
were broad and open-ended. He rarely added information to the responses
further indicating that his goal was for the students to be able to articulate
their ideas with textual support. There was a sentence at the end of the review
session which slightly indicated the students were frustrated with this type of

review. Most students probably wanted clear answers to the questions.

However, if Mr. Hartmans goal was the skill of analysis of the novel and
application of the themes then the review could have been good. An
appropriate assessment would be open-ended questions asking for detailed
support. Students would have been relatively more prepared to answer this
kind of question based on Mr. Hartmans teaching style. The questions ideally
would have mimicked the ones he gave during the review session. In this
sense it seems that Mr. Hartman is teaching skills during the review with the
novel as context while the actual assessment was specific data from the novel
without any of the skills used in class. This is another way the test was
administered poorly (pp.90-100).
7. 2 ideas = 4 points
a. If I was Mr. Hartman and this review session was what I had to go off of then
I would have created a short-answer type assessment where students were
asked to support their opinion with two examples from the novel. I may have
included a place where students could identify the four terms written on the
board in their own words. Its hard to completely answer what I would do
without the whole picture of what has led to the review session. However, I
think an opinion-based assessment would be a more fair way to assess the
students comprehension (p.247; p.254).
b. Another assessment which could help students demonstrate their concept of
the four themes would be a presentation on one of the themes. Perhaps a
project which gives students a rubric and asks them to expand on one theme
while using examples from the text would give students a platform to
accurately demonstrate the skills and knowledge they have been practicing in
class. This type of assessment would feel more authentic for students and
would probably increase their confidence in being able to intricately analyze
literature. Again, its hard to say what the standards are in this situation or
what the students have studied and practice in class- but I think this type of
assessment would be a more fair reflection of their actual comprehension
(pp.126-127).