Lee, Ai Noi

Student success in the 21st century requires not only the mastery of basic classroom-type knowledge and skills but also the ability to engage in higher-order thinking, reasoning, and real-world problem solving. This will enable our students to become productive workers and responsible citizens who can also actively participate in lifelong learning. A number of researchers in the United States and Australia have systematically examined the authentic intellectual quality of the teachers’ assessment tasks/assignments and student work in response to the tasks/assignments (e.g., Newmann & Associates, 1996; Luke et al., 2000; Lingard & Ladwig, 2001). These studies have shown that when teachers design and use highintellectual quality assignments that demand higher-order thinking, in-depth understanding of knowledge, elaborated communication, and making connections to students’ lives beyond school, students produce higher quality intellectual work. This paper reports the preliminary findings from teacher-moderated judgments of written assignments or assessment tasks and student work in Singapore. The teachers’ assignments/assessment tasks and student work were collected from 36 Singaporean schools across four major subject areas: English, Social Studies, Mathematics, and Science at the Primary 5 and Secondary 3 levels. Subject-specific panels were formed by a group of experienced teachers. They were trained to understand the authentic intellectual standards and to use the scoring rubrics collaboratively prior to their actual scoring of the teachers’ assignments and student work. The paper will report the outcomes of the statistical comparisons of authentic intellectual quality of the teachers’ assignments and that of related student work across subject areas, grade levels, and streams.

This study examined the quality of teachers‟ assessment tasks and associated student work in the Singapore Science classrooms. Using the authentic intellectual quality framework, two sets of standards and scoring rubrics were developed for the training of teachers to judge the quality of teachers‟ science assessment tasks and student work. The samples of teachers‟ assessment tasks and student work were collected from 30 elementary schools and 29 high schools. The results show that the teachers‟ assessment tasks at both grade levels did not demand high authentic intellectual performance from students. As a result, student work did not demonstrate high authentic intellectual quality. The findings suggest the need for improving teachers‟ assessment literacy in science through professional development in authentic assessments.

This study examined the quality of teacher assignments and associated student work in Singapore schools. Using the authentic intellectual quality framework, two sets of standards and scoring rubrics were developed for the training of teachers to judge the quality of assignments and student work. The samples of teacher assignments and student work were collected in English, Social Studies, Mathematics, and Science subject areas from 30 elementary schools and 29 high schools. There were significant differences for the authentic intellectual quality of teachers’ assignments by subject area, stream, and grade level. Subject area effect was found to be larger than stream and grade level effects. Likewise, the differences of authentic intellectual quality for student work were significant and varied by subject area, stream, and grade level. Subject area effect was large. The correlations between the quality of teachers’ assignment tasks and student work were strong and significant at both grade levels. The findings suggest that teacher professional development in high authentic intellectual quality task design is necessary for improving student learning and performance.