Transcript AAIA Annual Conference 2010AfL – A mid

AAIA Annual Conference 2010
AfL – A mid-life crisis?
Gordon Stobart
Emeritus Professor of Education, Institute of
Education, University of London
Professor of Education, University of Bristol
[email protected]
Assessment for Learning
Assessment for Learning is the process of
seeking and interpreting evidence for use by
learners and their teachers
to decide where the learners are in their learning,
where they need to go and
how best to get there.
Assessment Reform Group (2002)
Quality AfL keeps learning principles central – the
spirit – ‘high organisation based on ideas’.
AfL: Taking stock after 10+ years
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Wide international recognition
Importance of informal classroom assessment
Focus on learners and learning
Embedded in policy – UK and beyond – with
varying degrees of fidelity
• England’s policy appropriation problematic
Where’s Nelly? How will assessment
policy change?
DEFINING LEARNING
‘A significant change in capability or understanding’
This excludes: the acquisition of further information when it does not contribute to
such changes.
Michael Eraut
Deep Learning Approach
Surface Learning Approach
An intention to develop personal
understanding
An intention to be able to
reproduce content as required
Active interaction with content,
particularly relating new ideas to
previous knowledge and
experience
Passive acceptance of ideas and
information
Linking ideas together using
integrating principles
Lack of recognition of guiding
principles and patterns
Relating evidence to conclusions
Focusing learning on assessment
requirements
Wynne Harlen & Mary James
Developing assessment for lifelong
learning – its double duty
Assessment activities ‘have to focus on the
immediate task and on implications for
equipping students for lifelong learning in an
unknown future...they must attend to both
the process and substantive content domain’
(Boud, 2002).
Aligning assessment and learning
What forms of classroom assessment will help effective
classroom learning?
i. Builds on what we know – assessment that finds out
where learners are in their learning (questioning,
dialogue, analysis of what is known, of mistakes and
misconceptions)
ii. Makes meaning - ‘makes sense’- makes clear the
learning intentions, recognises success (modelling;
exemplars)
iii. Is active and social – learners take part in their own
assessment; importance of classroom interaction
(feedback); development of autonomous learners.
Two English lessons: activities
Letter Year 8 Lesson A: pre-twentieth century short story
Teacher models criteria to be used for peer assessment by
asking pupils to correct technical errors in text prepared by
teacher
Pupils correct text
Teacher checks answers with whole class
Pupils correct each others’ work
Spirit Year 8 Lesson B: pre-twentieth century poem
Class draw up list of criteria guided by teacher
Teacher and classroom assistant perform poem
Pupils asked to critique performance
Pupils rehearse performance
Pupils peer assess poems based on criteria
Pupils perform poems based on criteria
Spirit or letter? Learning intentions and
success criteria
The school policy is that every lesson has a measurable
outcome and that these should be measurable within
the lesson by both the teacher and the student.
Lesson on Richard III with Y9. The students watched a
scene from a film version of the play, the teacher then
explained the key events.
The learning outcomes were:
I will be able to identify the key events in the meeting
between Richard and Lady Anne (level 4)
I will be able to identify the techniques Richard uses to
persuade Lady Anne (level 5)
I will be able to identify how Richard uses emotive
vocabulary to persuade Lady Anne (level 6) (McKeown)
Spirit or letter? The AfL Strategy
Good assessment for learning makes:
• an accurate assessment – knowing what the standards are,
judging pupils’ work correctly, and making accurate
assessments linked to National Curriculum levels;
• a reliable assessment – ensuring that judgements are
consistent and based on a range of evidence;
School self-evaluation – most developed phase enhancing:
• A shared understanding of AfL continues to become ever
more insightful
• All staff and pupils reflect critically about the ways of
working and ‘think outside the box’ if necessary i.e. flex &
change through learning from others to take intelligent
informed risks
...and APP?
• The main purpose of APP is to standardise
teachers’ assessment – the ‘periodic’ use of
assessment. A legitimate summative purpose
• Its AfL claims are more problematic:
‘The pilot is underpinned by robust
assessment for learning, with teachers
rigorously monitoring all pupils’ progress in
reading, writing and mathematics throughout
the year, using APP assessment criteria’ (AfL
Strategy)
Signs of a mid-life crisis?
When processes become ritualised (learning objectives)
When the quantitative replaces the qualitative (where
the learners are in their learning = tracking)
When practices are used but not understood (feedback)
When learner autonomy becomes procedural autonomy
rather than personal autonomy
Back to fundamentals : The role of learning
intentions and success criteria (1)
Clear learning intentions
- the teacher is clear about what is being learned
(progression in learning)
- what we will be learning rather than what we will be
doing
- ‘tuning in’ – setting the scene (why we are learning
this), explaining the situation, linking to what is
known, unfamiliar words & phrases explained
- cognitive challenge: a problem to be solved: ‘The
teacher presents the pupils with a situation which they
cannot tackle with their existing cognitive structure ‘
(Standards Site)
Back to fundamentals: Learning intentions
and success criteria (2)
Negotiate. AfL is best served when there is
dialogue about what is being learned, why it’s
being learned and what successful learning
would look like.
Apply the Goldilocks principle. Learning
intentions have to be not too general, not too
detailed (‘criteria compliance’) but ‘just right’.
Adjust the timing. Beginning every lesson with
them is dulling & unproductive. Role of
‘cognitive challenge’, surprises and problem
solving?
...and how best to get there.
Feedback
‘Provides information which allows the learner to close the gap
between current and desired performance’
It is most effective when:
• It is effectively timed;
•It is clearly linked to the learning intention;
• The learner understands the success criteria/standard;
• It focuses on the TASK rather than the learner (self/ego);
• It gives cues at appropriate levels on how to bridge the
gap: the task/process/self-regulation loop;
•It offers strategies rather than solutions;
• It challenges, requires action, and is achievable.
Failing the Double Duty: Grades rather than
knowledge or skills
In the process of qualification…the pupil is concerned not with
mastery, but with being certified as having mastered. The
knowledge that he gains, he gains not for its own sake and not
for constant use in a real life situation – but for the once-forall purpose of reproducing it in an examination.
The Diploma Disease Ronald Dore 1997
Hanson’s fabricating process of tests
Because tests act as gatekeepers to many educational and
training programs…the likelihood that someone will be
able to do something, as determined by the tests,
becomes more important than one’s actually doing it.
Strengthening assessment’s double duty
How can we improve test dependability?
1. Make explicit the purpose and learning demand.
It is the aims of the course, rather than its content,
that should determine the purpose and form of its
assessment.
Learning demand taxonomies – Bloom, SOLO
2. Keep it as authentic as possible
Produce a ‘systemically valid’ test:
One that induces in the education system curricular
and instructional changes that foster the
development of the cognitive skills that the test is
designed to measure.
(Frederiksen and Collins 1989, p.27)
Dependability: The one- handed clock
Learning for Life
Focus on the double duty of assessment, in
which assessment activities ‘have to focus on
the immediate task and on implications for
equipping students for lifelong learning in an
unknown future...they must attend to both
the process and substantive content domain’
(Boud,2002).