Eric.ed.gov – “How Does My Teacher Know What I Know?” Third Graders’ Perceptions of Math, Reading, and Assessment.

The present study, which was drawn from a larger project in which teachers developed and implemented performance assessments in their classrooms, investigates children’s perceptions of what reading and mathematics are and how they understand their teachers’ knowledge of them as readers and mathematicians. Two students from each of 13 third-grade classrooms were interviewed 3 times during the school year. In all, 75 interviews about reading and 76 about mathematics were conducted. Responses make it clear that students do recognize reading as a meaning-making task but that this recognition becomes distorted when they are assessed on their reading ability. They believe that assessment is often aimed at handwriting, punctuation, or expression when reading aloud. In mathematics, these students demonstrate consistency across definition of math and assessment of math. Teachers are thought to know how well students can do math as a function of their right and wrong answers. Mathematics to these students is correctly solving arithmetic problems. Understanding what students think assessment does is important in designing new assessments that help students construct new understandings. An appendix contains a scoring rubric. Eight tables present study findings. (Contains 38 references.) (SLD)