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论文题目：The role of performance tasks in curricular deliberation and design
论文语言：英语论文 English
论文专业：elementary education
字数：650
学校国家：美国
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论文用于：Master assignment 硕士课程作业
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Discuss the role of performance tasks in curricular deliberation and design.
Be sure to include:
1) How is a performance task different from daily class activities and homework assignments?
2) How do the performance tasks in the curriculum maps in Module 4 facilitate the development of essential questions and enduring understandings to ensure that students meet the Common Core State Standards and the standards of other content areas?
3) Distinguish how the performance tasks and final assessments are different.
The role of performance tasks in curricular deliberation and design
Performance tasks mean observing students' performance at the completion of actual tasks to assess achievements already made by students (Chun, 2010). Performance tasks play an important role in curricular deliberation and design, which is reflected in the following three aspects.
First of all, performance tasks are different from daily class activities and homework assignments.
Performance tasks mainly assess students’ practical ability, through presenting students simulated challenges and tasks in the real world to observe students' ability to use knowledge and skills in a variety of real situations (Chun, 2010).Performance tasks require students to construct their own unique answer, it does not provide answers to be selected so that students have the freedom to answer freely. Because performance tasks believe that given choices will limit students' thinking, removing students’ creativity (Chun, 2010).Performance tasks not only need to know students’ learning outcomes, but also pay attention to students' learning process, in order to determine student's overall ability. Teachers need to fully, truly and completely record students’ performance in the course of completing tasks (Chun, 2010). Performance tasks are not intended to evaluate, nor do they grade students. It attaches great importance to students’ self-set goals, self-evaluation, self-regulation with the help of teachers, thereby promoting students’ learning of non-structural knowledge, development of practical skills to have an access to comprehensive development (Norris, 2002).
Then, performance tasks allow students’ to meet the Common Core State Standards and the standards of other areas through promoting developing essential questions and enduring understandings.
Enduring understandings and essential questions are used in Common Core State Standards of curriculum, for example, math, physical education, language teaching, and so forth (McTighe and Wiggins, 2013). Enduring understandings mean a lot in giving importance and meaning to a serious of curriculum expectations. Enduring understandings also work in terms of other topics, disciplines and adult life. They are often defined in a personal and relevant context from the perspective of students (Wilson, 2013). Essential questions are designed to cultivate students’ understandings and allow them to apply their learning to right places. There is no simple "right" answer to essential questions. They mean that the questions are argued and they raise other important questions (McTighe and Wiggins, 2013).
Performance tasks require students to apply the knowledge and skills they have learned to real life, which not only examines whether students remember the enduring understandings of curriculum, more importantly, it investigates whether students can use enduring understandings of curriculum in the actual life, which is conducive to improving students’ ability in observing and gathering information, hands-on ability, oral language skills, ability to communicate and cooperate with others and ability of using knowledge to solve practical, meaningful problems (Wilson, 2013).In classrooms, essential questions are often adopted to encourage students’ discussions and facilitate a deeper understanding of what they have learned (McTighe and Wiggins, 2013). Performance tasks take students' individuality, creativity and subjectivity into consideration. They treat students as active participants in the construction of meaning, rather than recipients of disperse knowledge. Performance tasks revolutionize the roles of teachers and students, they require a student-centered classroom. For students, this kind of change will lead to lower test anxiety and enhanced self-esteem, encouraging students to get more involved in discussions, so as to encourage students to have a deeper understanding of knowledge related to essential questions (Wilson, 2013). All in all, performance tasks are through improving students’ comprehensive ability to improve students' interest and confidence in learning to promote the development of essential questions and enduring understandings, so that students are ensured to meet the Common Core State Standards.
Finally, performance tasks are different from final assessments.
Final assessments focus on the evaluation of learning outcomes, while performance tasks emphasize that learning process and outcomes are equally important. Performance tasks are based on students’ performance and process, it is applied to assess students’ potential thinking level and ability in application of knowledge rather than reproduction (reciting, repeat, copy) of factual knowledge and repeated demonstration of simple skills (Norris, 2002).What final assessments more concern is knowledge and skills, and performance tasks are concerned about the overall development of students. Performance tasks are more suitable for assessing the ability to apply knowledge, ability to integrate interdisciplinary content, as well as the ability in decision making, communication, cooperation and other aspects. It is suitable for assessment of learning process and methods, as well as the development ability in emotional attitudes, values and other aspects (Norris, 2002). Final assessments mostly take the method of pencil-and-paper test, confining to quantified or accurately measured results. By means of various means, performance tasks demonstrate the quality of students and their comprehensive ability as much as possible, through observation, questionnaires, showcase, interviews, self-report and other methods to measure students' learning process (Chun, 2010).
In summary, as performance tasks provide more comprehensive assessment on students’ learning and development, it becomes one of education evaluation methods which are commonly used in current curricular deliberation and design.
References
McTighe J. & Wiggins, G. (2013). Essential questions: opening doors to student understanding. Illinois: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.
Norris, J. M. (2002). Interpretations, intended uses and designs in task-based language assessment. Language Testing, 19(4), 337-346.
Chun, M. (2010). Taking teaching to (performance) task: linking pedagogical and assessment practices [online]. Retrieved from: (Accessed 29 January 2014).
Wilson, D. (2013). Performance tasks: essential questions [online]. Retrieved from: http://www.ukassignment.org/mgzydx/ (Accessed 29 January 2014).
Wilson, D. (2013). Performance tasks: enduring understandings [online]. Retrieved from: (Accessed 29 January 2014).
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