Abstract:

Among the many tools for assessment of learning which are available for teachers, it is often recommended self-assessment of the students themselves. In this paper we discuss our aims, problems and achievements that we have got within over 10 years of experience with self-assessment of learning, in university students and secondary school in service teachers. Our main purpose was to pursue objectivity and honesty of our students in assessment of their own learning. Have we got these values?

INTRODUCTION
Everybody knows that evaluation is a tough task in the teaching and learning process, and yet, it is quite strong in determining the way we teach. It is often said: “Tell me how you assess and I will tell you how you teach”.
There are many ways and lots of tools for assessment of learning. Since our aim is to make students responsible for their own learning, we find self-assessment quite relevant to achieve this goal, also leading them to improve metacognition.
Once we have reached self responsibility of students, we think that self assessment is also a means to develop citizenship.

METHODOLOGY
We present two different experiences regarding to self assessment; the first is related to sophomore student’s knowledge of the content of lab experiments. In the second experience we worked mainly on attitudes of secondary school teachers involved in a master degree in education.
In both cases we designed a rubric to guide the self assessment. This paper will include qualitative results in both cases following the designed rubrics, and part of these tools.
As we mentioned earlier, one of the rubrics is focused mainly in attitudes and the other in content. When we work with sophomore students, they self assess the previous work and documents prepared individually before making each experiment. Whereas the in service teachers make teams to work specific topics of the course, and each teacher assesses individually his/her performance in achieving the task given to them.
In any case, self-assessment is not the only way we evaluate learning, we use other tools like performance of the experiments, quizzes, use of Gowin’s V to make the experiment report, etcetera.

RESULTS
Most of the teachers and students have a hard time assessing their own work, they often over grade themselves, but not are always aware of their lack of objectivity.

CONCLUSIONS
The use of rubrics helps a lot in pursuing objectivity in self-assessment, and it is also a good tool to enhance honesty among our students. Nevertheless, the students’ perception of their knowledge or attitudes is not necessarily an indication of their actual knowledge, since they are often flawed. So, it is rather important to go on researching and working to improve honesty and objectivity in self-assessment.

References:
- Elby, A., (2001). "Helping physics students learn about learning." American Journal of Physics (Physics Education Research Supplement) 69: S54-64.
- "Epistemological Beliefs Assessment for Physical Science." 12 December 2001. http://www2.physics.umd.edu/~elby/EBAPS/EBAPS_items.htm Last review June 28, 2011.
- Zoller, U. et al (1999). Journal of Chemical Education, 76(1), 112-113.
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
- Wenzel, T. J. (2007). Journal of Chemical Education, 84(1), 182-186.
www.JCE.DivCHED.org

Keywords:

Self-assessment, objectivity, honesty.