Enhancing Reflective Practice Through Alternative Assessment

Rural educators are asked to meet multiple and sometimes conflicting demands: to raise academic standards, teach basic skills, teach students to be good citizens, and prepare students for jobs. Alternative assessment strategies, grounded in reflective practice, have the possibility to enliven instruction and improve students ' knowledge, reasoning, and commu-nication skills. The following article suggests that alternative assessment is consistent with the development ofthe knowl-edge and dispositions associated with critical democratic citizenship. A rubric and alternative assessment example is provided for teachers to incorporate this strategy into their classroom instruction. The subject of this article is, at first glance, both fo-cused and practical: the use of rubrics to assess the work of middle level students. After all, as former social studies teachers in a rural school (Dwight High School, Dwight, Illinois; student population 454 to 315 from the early to late 1980s), we realize the potential benefits that the use of rubrics hold for teachers who are attempting to improve the quality of learning in their classrooms while facing the reality of quite limited resources to achieve this goal