• MYP
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Assessment

There is no external assessment by the IBO within the MYP and so there are no formal externally set or externally marked examinations. All assessment within the MYP is carried out by teachers in participating schools and relies on their professional expertise in making qualitative judgments, as they do every day in the classroom. In line with the general IBO assessment philosophy, a norm-referenced approach to assessment is not appropriate to the MYP. Instead, MYP schools must follow a criterion-referenced approach. Students’ work should therefore be assessed against defined assessment criteria and not against the work of other students.

All MYP schools are expected to develop assessment procedures and methods of reporting to parents that reflect the philosophy and objectives of the programme. All schools are therefore expected to use the assessment criteria published in this guide for final assessment, although local or national requirements may involve other assessment models and criteria as well.

It is highly recommended that the procedures for assessment and the MYP assessment criteria are shared with both students and parents as an aid to the learning process.

Formative and summative assessment

Assessment in the MYP should be an integral part of teaching and learning. The use of assessment in a formative sense, to judge regularly the effectiveness of both teaching and learning processes, is essential in allowing teachers and students to identify strengths and weaknesses. The purpose and means of assessment should be clearly explained to the students.

• Formative assessment is an integral part of the learning experience and should not be an artificial “add-on”. The objectives addressed by specific assessment tasks should be shared with students, with feedback taking place as soon as possible.
• Summative assessment is the judgment made by the teacher of the standard of achievement reached by each student at the end of each stage of the programme. Assessment tasks should reflect the objectives and assessment criteria of the programme. They must be carefully chosen to measure the achievement level expected for the relevant age group.

The forms of assessment and reporting to parents and students will vary from one school to another. The flexibility of the MYP offers schools the opportunity to design their schemes of work according to their needs, and/or the constraints of their own national curriculum, while working towards the attainment of the MYP objectives.

Formative and summative assessment should:

• allow both the student and teacher to assess what the student can do, and how he/she can use knowledge, concepts and skills
• measure the application of knowledge, concepts and skills rather than the mere recall of facts
• reflect achievement against the criteria for the subject
• involve student participation and reflection; for example, students should know the assessment criteria for a given task and, on occasion, help devise an assessment grid (rubric) to measure various aspects of their performance
• provide students with an opportunity to analyse their own learning and to recognize what areas need improvement
• be based on agreed standards of performance for a particular year group, with expectations set by teams of classroom teachers and clearly communicated to students and parents
• be informative for students, parents and teachers, and provide direction for future instruction
• provide equal opportunities for all students regardless of gender, culture and special needs.

Depending on circumstances, students will reach the objectives at different times and in different ways. The MYP provides schools with final (year 5) objectives for each subject, and schools are free to organize both teaching and assessment according to their needs.

Assessment tasks

In general, MYP teachers are free to devise the context and challenge of the assessment tasks and units of work they use. The tasks set, however, should stem from learning activities and ideally will be learning experiences themselves. Tasks can be designed to allow the assessment of different objectives against relevant criteria.

For schools that are sending samples for moderation, please note that there are prescribed minimum task requirements, and schools will need to ensure that these task types are completed at the relevant time (see “Technology: moderation”).

Students may experience various levels of support in their units of work, since peer-conferencing, formative teacher assessment, editing and correcting are all essential learning tools.

In technology, all evidence for a unit of work will be organized into a design folder. The unit of work set will follow the design cycle. Throughout the five-year course the complexity of the units of work will range from simple, guided projects during the early years of the course to more complex, open-ended challenges where students design products/solutions largely independently.

Using the assessment criteria

The assessment criteria published in this guide correspond to the objectives of this subject group. The achievement levels described have been written with year 5 final assessment in mind. In years 1–4, schools may wish to adapt the relative importance, focus and expected achievement levels for each criterion according to the progression of learning organized by them. Schools may add other criteria and report on these internally to parents and students.

The “best fit” approach

The descriptors for each criterion are hierarchical. When assessing a student’s work, teachers should read the descriptors (starting with level 0) until they reach a descriptor that describes an achievement level that the work being assessed has not attained. The work is therefore best described by the preceding descriptor that corresponds to a markband.

Care should be taken to apply criteria only to pieces of work for which they are appropriate. Where it is not clearly evident which level descriptor should apply, teachers must use their judgment to select the descriptor that best matches the student’s work.

If the work is a good example of achievement in a markband, the teacher should give it the higher achievement level in the band. If the work is a poor example of achievement in that band, the teacher should give it the lower achievement level in the band.

General principles

Only whole numbers should be recorded; partial levels, fractions and decimals are not acceptable.

The levels attributed to the descriptors must not be considered as marks or percentages, nor should it be assumed that there are arithmetical relationships between descriptors. For example, a level 4 performance is not necessarily twice as good as a level 2 performance.

Teachers should not think in terms of a pass/fail boundary for each criterion, or make comparisons with, or conversions to, the MYP 1–7 grade scale, but should concentrate on identifying the appropriate descriptor for each assessment criterion.

The highest descriptors do not imply faultless performance, but should be achievable by students aged 16. Teachers should therefore not hesitate to use the highest and lowest levels if they are appropriate descriptors for the work being assessed.

A student who attains a high achievement level for one criterion will not necessarily reach high achievement levels for the other criteria. Conversely, a student who attains a low achievement level for one criterion will not necessarily attain low achievement levels for the other criteria.

Teachers should not assume that the results of a group of students being assessed will follow any particular distribution plan.

For schools that request IBO-validated grades, the assessment results (criterion levels totals) submitted to IBCA must be based only on the criteria and achievement levels listed in this guide. The teacher’s final assessment of each student as recorded on IBIS should be the total of the achievement levels that best reflect the student’s abilities at the completion of the programme.

Please note that the assessment criteria in this guide are for first use in final assessment in the year 2007. For final assessment in 2006, please use the assessment criteria as published in the previous MYP Technology guide (1998, 2000).

The following assessment criteria have been established by the IBO for technology in the MYP. The final assessment required for IBO-validated grades and certification at the end of the MYP must be based on these assessment criteria.

For each assessment criterion, a number of band descriptors are defined. These describe a range of achievement levels with the lowest represented as 0.

The criteria are equally weighted. The descriptors concentrate on positive achievement, although failure to achieve may be included in the description for the lower levels.

Assessment Rubrics for each stage of MYP Technology

The MYP 4-5 part of the rubric is taken directly from the IBO. The ISHCMC Technology Department has created the other criteria based on the published interim objectives for MYP1 and MYP 3

IBO Definitions;

analyse: To identify parts and relationships, and interpret information to reach a conclusion.

Evaluate: To assess the implications and limitations; make judgments about the value of
ideas, works, solutions or methods in relation to selected criteria.

Design brief: The student’s response to the challenge, showing how they intend to solve the
problem they have been presented with. This will guide their investigation as
they work to develop a more detailed design specification.

Design Specification: A detailed description of the conditions, requirements and restrictions with
which a design must comply. This is a precise and accurate list of facts such as
conditions, dimensions, materials, process and methods that are important for
the designer and for the user. All appropriate solutions will need to comply
with the design specification.

Explain: To give a clear account including causes and reasons or mechanisms.

Describe: To give a detailed account.

Discuss: To give an account including, where possible, a range of arguments for and
against, the relative importance of various factors and comparisons of alternative
hypotheses

Criterion A: Investigate

Design brief: The student’s response to the challenge, showing how they intend to solve the problem they have been presented with. This will guide their investigation as they work to develop a more detailed design specification.

Design specification: A detailed description of the conditions, requirements and restrictions with which a design must comply. This is a precise and accurate list of facts such as conditions, dimensions, materials, process and methods that are important for the designer and for the user. All appropriate solutions will need to comply with the design specification.

Criterion B: Design

Students are expected to generate several feasible designs that meet the design specification and to evaluate these against the design specification.Students are then expected to select one design, justify their choice and evaluate this in detail against the design specification.

Criterion C: Plan

Students are expected to construct a plan to create their chosen product/solution that has a series of logical steps, and that makes effective use of resources and time.
Students are expected to evaluate the plan and justify any modifications to the design.

Criterion D: Create

Students are expected to document, with a series of photographs or a video and a dated record, the process of making their product/solution, including when and how they use tools, materials and techniques. Students are expected to follow their plan, to evaluate the plan and to justify any changes they make to the plan while they are creating the product/solution.

Students will sometimes embark upon a very ambitious project, or they may encounter unforeseen circumstances. In some circumstances a product/solution that is incomplete or does not function fully can still achieve one of the levels awarded for this criterion.

Appropriate quality: This is the best product/solution that the student can produce, taking into account the resources available, the skills and techniques they have used, their educational development, how the product/solution addresses the identified need, and aspects of safety and ergonomics.

Criterion E: Evaluate

Students are expected to evaluate the product/solution against the design specification in an objective manner based on testing, and to evaluate its impact on life, society and/or the environment. They are expected to explain how the product/solution could be improved as a result of these evaluations.

Students are expected to evaluate their own performance at each stage of the design cycle and to suggest ways in which their performance could be improved.

Product testing: A stage in the design process where versions of products (for example, prototypes) are tested against the need, applied to the context and presented to the end-user or target audience.

Criterion F: Attitudes in Technology:

This criterion refers to students’ attitudes when working in technology. It focuses on an overall assessment of two aspects:
- personal engagement (motivation, independence, general positive attitude)
- attitudes towards safety, cooperation and respect for others.

Arriving at a final grade

This section explains the process by which a student’s overall achievement level (in terms of the assessment criteria) is converted to a single grade.

1. Collecting the information

Teachers should choose units of work that provide open-ended challenges and enable assessment of students in all stages of the design cycle within a single unit of work.

For the purposes of final assessment, teachers must ensure that, for each student, they make several judgments against each criterion. This can be achieved by assessing at least two completed units of work and/or extended projects over the last two years of the programme. Technology has six criteria, therefore at least twelve judgments (two per criterion) must be made for each student in the final year for the purposes of final assessment.

Important: if more than one teacher is involved in one subject for a single year group the school must ensure internal standardization is used to provide a common system for the application of the assessment criteria to each student. In joint assessment, internal standardization is best achieved by:

• the use of common units of work
• shared marking between the teachers
• regular contact between the teachers.

In certain schools, students may be grouped according to ability within the same subject. In such cases, the teachers’ final assessment of student performance across all groups must be based on a consistent application of the assessment criteria to all students. A different standard should not be applied to different groups.

2. Making a final judgment for each criterion

When the judgments on the various units of work have been made, teachers will be in a position to establish a final profile of achievement for each student by determining the single most appropriate level for each criterion. Where the original judgments for a criterion differ for specific units of work, the teacher must decide which level best represents the student’s final standard of achievement. (Note: teachers should not average the levels gained in year 5 for any given criterion, but make a professional judgment as to which level best corresponds to a student’s general level of performance for each of the criteria towards the end of the programme.)

3. Determining the final criterion levels total

The final levels for each criterion must then be added together to give a final criterion levels total for technology for each student. As students have the opportunity to gain a maximum level of six (6) for each criterion, the maximum final criterion levels total for technology will be thirty-six (36). (This is the total that will be submitted to IBCA via IBIS.)

4. Determining the final grade for technology

Grade boundaries must be applied to the criterion levels totals to decide the final grade for each student.

All MYP subjects receive final grades in the range from 1 (lowest) to 7 (highest) on IBO documents. The general MYP grade descriptors describe the achievement required for the award of the subject grade. After using the conversion table to determine a student’s final technology grade, teachers should check the general grade descriptor table to ensure that the description equally reflects the student’s achievement.