What Are We Assessing in Social Studies?

What did I previously think?

I assumed that good writing tended to reflect students' ability in other areas--almost like a form of halo effect. This applies to me more as an English teacher who appreciates linguistic ability, I think. I truly believe that the limits of one's language is related to the limits of one's perception; I think there is a correlation between academic ability and language ability even if it doesn't apply to all. I still think that, though, but I used to be more rigid with the thought. Therefore, I would tend to pay less attention to answers that did not follow the expected format because I did not expect much from them. Ironically, limiting my own perception.

What changed?

As I started my inquiry on how people think, I realised that student responses appeared to follow a pattern. In my inquiry process, I learned that people have different ways of thinking (e.g., autistic visual thinkers, aphantasia, feeling before thought). It clicked when fellow student-teachers shared their experience during SS tutorials about how students don't know how to express themselves. Then, I imagined extreme examples of each profile and how different profiles contrasted each other on the same dimensions of writing ability and cognitive ability. The most interesting ones were how a non-native English speaker could possibly criticise an image source correctly from first principles while a fluent template-user can still come to a more shallow synthesis. Then I slotted myself in as another student profile as the type who would parse the true meaning and skip all the formalities because they don't matter in getting to the heart of the answer.

Why is this significant?

I learned that this also ties in with assessing holistically and sparing no effort to read every students' response properly even when the language doesn't look promising. It's about fairness to all students especially disadvantaged ones, whom I should know as an SS teacher, tend to come from families that speak their mother tongue rather than English.

How will it influence my future teaching?

I will remember that evidence of skill applied is more important than the signposts that claim them. So I'll read section by section and award grades for each after I've read the whole thing.