I am a Science Teacher

And so what, after the conference?

I was the very first in our college to take part in an international academic conference and the first too, to present a research output. I was wondering why it took me two years after my Master's to do this.

Exposure was the reason why I attended the conference, an international one so to speak (because of the presence of some Thais, Singaporeans, Chinese, Ghanans, Australians, Americans, Irish, etc.). While I was in the conference, I intently observed how paper presentations were done since that would be the next step in my journey. As I went over from one presentation room to another, a voice was telling me that I could equal and do at par with the other presentors. Had I known that earlier then, I could have applied as a paper presenter.
But the big question is: what am I going to present? What is my advocacy in the spectrum of disciplines in science education. While I was having my trip to DOST-SEI, I got to have time to contemplate while on the metro rail and the bus as to what my niche will be in science education. I reviewed my strengths and expertise and I realized that for about ten years now as a science teacher, I actually have developed an innovation which I was not aware of. Reflective thinking indeed is so beneficial.

What do I actually mean? In 1999, my Gen. Inorganic Chemistry professor in the master's level at the Philippine Normal University introduced us in performance-based assessment. The instroduction was just in passing that I wasn't able to get a full grasp of what that particular assessment was all about. A classmate was talking about 'rubrics', and I remembered that I passed a paper work to our Chem professor about that but I only copied them from an internet website (that time, only very few knew how to use the internet).

And so when I started to write my proposal, I became interested with performance-based assessment. With the internet around and a little background about the assessment, I used it in my first year class in a Chinese school in Quezon City. I began to design forms (which actually are the rubrics) and structured investigatory project (which actually is the assessment task).

From the website http://www.teach-nology.com/, I was able to generate different rubrics. But my time to work in the city had to be punctuated with my marriage. I went back to province and taught there as a part-time instructor.

When I passed the comprehensive examination (with flying colors), I went into performance-based assessment as my master's thesis. I learned so much through the various literatures I reviewed and summarized. But my research data were so statistical and it came to me indeed that my work will just be one of those that will gather dust in shelves. And it actually did. After I defended my study in 2006, I actually forgot all about it.

Last week, in an International Conference in Science and Math Education, my interest in research rekindled. With jargons like 'visualization and connections', I was able to see gaps which I actually felt before but ignored since I needed to follow experts, I needed to follow what Australians and Americans do in performance assessment.

The issues raised about 'cultural basis' and 'pedagogical content knowledge' opened my eyes to the significance of what I have been doing in my classes for years.

The use of rubrics. I have been using them a lot of times: in grading projects, written and oral reports, surveys, thesis, term papers, and presentations, etc. Along the way, I have been successful in involving students in constructing rubrics. Just recently, I was impressed with a freshman student discussing her report, and I actually asked her: 'How did you do that?' And she replied: 'I followed what's in the rubrics, sir.' During the thesis defense in our institute, I would find my colleagues appreciating the rubrics I made. The ratings of the students across three examiners were almost the same, establishing the rubric's reliability. An examiner commented that the rubric was systematic and was way far better than the previous instrument used. I have yet to interview my graduate students who excelled very well last summer. Could the rubrics we made contributed to their performance?

And so, educational organizations around the country are pushing for alternative assessment. Their words of encouragement are so strong. But in the grassroots, are there indeed teachers doing performance assessment, designing assessment tasks and rubrics? If there are, what is the ratio to those who do not do it?

The issue boils down to why there are many educators who are not employing performance assessment in their classes? What are their issues and concerns? How could the issues be addressed properly? What are the issues behind construction and scoring of rubrics? How are the scores transmuted to numerical grades? Are the transmutations valid and sound? Do performance assessment activities indeed improve the academic performance of students? What is actually measured by PBA: cognitive, affective, psychomotor or a composite of these skills?

If PBA claims that it enables students to perform at higher levels, how could their high performance be sustained? What are the antecedents of their performance in this kind of assessment? Are they student-related? Teacher-related? etc. How can we validate results of performance assessment? Is concurrent validity test applicable?

Well, these are just of the many practical questions a Filipino teacher like me would ask. And having been active in designing and using rubrics for about seven years, I think my paper on a second look at performance assessment: an experience of an island SUC would be very relevant. In this paper all the above questions will be addressed using research data as bases. What do you think?