Making Sense of Sound Waves: A Look at an OpenSciEd Assessment
In this post, I take a look at a mid-unit assessment from the OpenSciEd eighth grade instructional unit on sound waves titled How can a sound make something move?. OpenSciEd is an online source of free, open resource instructional units for middle school science designed to exemplify the vision of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). In this unit, students develop ideas related to how sounds are produced, how they travel through media, and how they affect objects at a distance. Students' investigations are motivated by trying to account for real-life sound-related phenomenon and underpinned by a series of sense-making activities rooted in observation and investigation. The NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this unit are MS-PS4-1 and MS-PS4-2.
Lesson 6 of the sound waves unit concludes with a formal mid-unit assessment task. This task begins with a short video clip showing, in slow motion, how the strings of a harp behave when plucked by a musician. Then, students are presented with five questions related to sounds generated by the harp. Four of the questions ask students to explain in words and images (models) how different sounds are created and one question asks students to explain the different loudnesses and pitches in terms of waves. Questions are presented as open response items, with graphic organizers provided to support answer construction in two of the five questions.
The full assessment may be viewed here or, with more context, in the Sound Waves Teacher Edition found on the OpenSciEd downloads page. A free account is required to access the materials on OpenSciEd.
From a historical perspective, this assessment aligns most closely with social constructivism. Social constructivism is a theory of learning that emphasizes the collaborative nature of learning. Key assertions of social constructivist theories include: (a) learning is an active process of knowledge construction, (b) what is learned depends in large part on what the learner already knows, (c) learning happens in context and context shapes what is learned, (d) learners are enabled to go beyond their limits when supported by a more knowledgable other who can provide feedback, (e) learners must actively monitor their understanding in order to progress, (f) motivation and feelings of self-efficacy influence learning, and (g) the ability to apply knowledge from one context to another (transfer) is inhibited when information is presented in ways that require little "construction" of understanding.
Looking at the OpenSciEd Sound Waves assessment through the lens of social constructivist theory, one notices that by asking students to show what they learned about sound from a series of investigations and sense-making activities, the assessment is acting as a check on understanding of knowledge constructed actively through experience (a). By prompting students to apply their learning to a phenomenon related to those studied in the first six lessons, but not specifically discussed, the assessment is serving as a check on students' ability to transfer knowledge between contexts (c,g). By grounding all of the questions in a single phenomenon (sounds created by a harp) and including a video clip of the harp's string action in slow motion, the assessment recognizes the role of prior experience in learning and attempts to level the playing field for all learners (b): Everyone, regardless of prior harp experience, will have the same unique view of harp strings in action to draw upon as they answer the questions. All three of these qualities are consistent with assertions made by social constructivist theory.
It is possible that some ideas from social efficiency and behaviorism may also come into play in this assessment, depending upon what happens after students complete the task. The social efficiency movement of the early 1900's applied principles of management, intended to maximize the efficiency of factories, to schools. A primary goal of the reform efforts emerging from this movement was the elimination of waste: it was considered wasteful to teach people things they would never use. According to education assessment expert Lorrie Shepard (2000), the most telling principle to emerge from the social efficiency movement was that each individual should be educated "according to his capabilities", with little opportunity to move beyond your expected role. Behaviorism, championed by John B Watson and B.F. Skinner, is based on the belief that learning happens when students are conditioned to gain new knowledge or skills through a sequence of reinforcements (rewards) or punishments.
Unlike many of the learning activities described in this OpenSciEd unit - which are collaborative in nature and designed to support students' co-construction of knowledge - this task is designed to be completed individually and used as a summative assessment of learning to date. Grades or other rewards distributed for different levels of "correctness" may function as external incentives for performance, as described by behaviorist theory. The extent to which these rewards will affect students actions depends upon how they are framed by the teacher and received by the student. Social efficiency could come into play if the assessment were somehow used to sort or track students into groups with differential access to future learning, however, that approach would be inconsistent with the student-centered design of the rest of the materials in this unit.
Two assumptions embedded in this assessment are that open written responses are an effective way for students to communicate what they know about how different sounds are generated, and that the ability to explain how a harp works is a valid way to gauge students' understanding of the physics of sound. It should be noted that the OpenSciEd curriculum provides suggestions for other ways to allow students to respond to the questions in this assessment (verbally, using hand gestures, or employing some sort of manipulative) as part of notes labeled "attending to equity" however, the print-ready materials rely largely on writing.
This assessment aligns with my beliefs about effective assessment in that it takes place at the classroom level and is directly related to the content being studied, is part of an ongoing process of varied assessments employed throughout the unit, and would provide teachers with useful insights into students' understanding of the content addressed in the unit to date. The extent to which students would also receive useful feedback about their own learning from this experience would depend upon what happens after students complete the assessment. Some suggestions for ways to close the loop for students would be a nice addition to what I think is an otherwise excellent assessment.
References, Credits and Links
Shepard, L. A. (2000). The Role of Assessment in a Learning Culture. Educational Researcher, 29(7), 4-14. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X029007004
Master of Arts in Educational Technology (2021, Summer). Course content from Unit 1: Foundations of Assessment and Evaluation. Michigan State University, CEP 813: Electronic Assessment. https://d2l.msu.edu.
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