Reading the Reading Research: Afflerbach on Assessment

Barb Novak contributed this post. 

Click here for more of Barb's thinking.

Click here for more Literacy Booth thoughts about research.

Note. I'm sharing this article simply to give access to how I process when I read from academic journals - how I organize my thinking before, during, and after reading. This post is not intended to be an endorsement of the research or its conclusions.

"Reading Assessment: Looking Ahead"

Peter Afflerbach in The Reading Teacher (2016)

Wisconsin educators can use Badgerlink to access full-text of Reading Teacher articles. .

Click here to access Afflerbach’s article.

Why this article?

I’m feeling now, more than ever, the need to think carefully about assessment in order to actively seek change where it is needed. From his book (Understanding and Using Reading Assessment) to that time he recorded a webinar just for Wisconsin, I trust Peter Afflerbach’s thinking about and work around assessment.

This is not research; “The Inside Track” is a column in each issue of The Reading Teacher. The author of the column is selected (issue-by-issue) by the journal’s editors.

Research Questions:

Not applicable - this is a column written by a literacy expert rather than research.

Methods:

Not applicable - this is a column written by a literacy expert rather than research.

Main Points:

Afflerbach uses the article to advocate for “developing comprehensive formative assessments, assessing the wide array of factors that contribute to students’ reading development, and fostering student independence by helping students learn to use reading assessment on their own” (p. 413).

• An assessment system (and each assessment within it) must be based on “a detailed model of the thing we are to assess” (p. 413). What is reading? How do we define it?
• Afflerbach believes all assessment should follow this credo: “Assessment should produce information that is useful in helping students become better readers, and assessment should do no harm” (p. 413 - 414).
• Widely used assessments measure what was considered by the National Reading Panel Report, which is not a match for what is required of a reader on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) or by the Common Core State Standards.
• Assessment should include “affective aspects of reading” (p. 416).
• Students should be the end users of data from reading assessments. Afflerbach states, “When we view reading assessment as an important teacher task, we may gather information that informs our instructional decision making. When we view reading assessment as something to teach, we can help students move toward the goal of independence through self-assessment. We want to use assessment that helps shift students from an outward orientation, where there is dependence on the teacher for assessment feedback, to one that looks inward” (p. 417).
• What impact could we have if we took all the money we spend on assessment and, instead, spend it on professional learning for educators about instruction and assessment?

Limitations:

• I wanted/needed more about “comprehensive formative assessments”. Common formative assessments, in my opinion, are interim assessments and are too formal to be considered formative. I was hoping comprehensive formative assessments could be an idea to replace common formative assessment.
• The article is theory; there is not a research component. It could inform questions for future reference.

Discussion:

• I’m interested in how Afflerbach’s ideas about engaging students in instruction and practice to become reflective readers could apply within universal instruction and intervention. What would it look like to make this a systemic and systematic practice? How could the results of implementing this practice be measured?
• Reliance on numeric data and the high-stakes nature of numeric data are obstacles to implementing Afflerbach’s ideas - especially his ideas about assessing the affective aspects of reading.

• This article would be useful foundational piece for reading and discussion by a school/district team reviewing its literacy assessment system.
• Excerpts from the article could be used to consider how a school/district engages students in reading assessment and teaches self-efficacy.

Full Citation:

Afflerbach, P. (2016). Reading assessment: Looking ahead. The Reading Teacher 69(4), 413 - 419.