Transcript Title Slide

Assessment for learning:
putting it into practice
Dylan Wiliam, Educational Testing Service
Workshop at NSDC 37th annual conference,
Philadelphia, PA December 2005
Overview of presentation
• Why raising achievement is important
• Why investing in teachers is the answer
• Why assessment for learning should be
the focus
• Why teacher learning communities
should be the mechanism
Raising achievement matters
• For individuals
– Increased lifetime salary
– Improved health
• For society
– Lower criminal justice costs
– Lower health-care costs
– Increased economic growth
Where’s the solution?
• Structure
– Small high schools
– K-8 schools
• Alignment
– Curriculum reform
– Textbook replacement
• Governance
– Charter schools
– Vouchers
• Technology
It’s the classroom
• Variability at the classroom level is up to 4
times greater than at school level
• It’s not class size
• It’s not the between-class grouping
strategy
• It’s not the within-class grouping strategy
• It’s the teacher
Teacher quality
• A labor force issue with 2 solutions
– Replace existing teachers with better ones?
• No evidence that more pay brings in better teachers
• No evidence that there are better teachers out there
deterred by certification requirements
– Improve the effectiveness of existing teachers
• The “love the one you’re with” strategy
• It can be done
• We know how to do it, but at scale? Quickly?
Sustainably?
Functions of assessment
• For evaluating institutions
• For describing individuals
• For supporting learning
– Monitoring learning
• Whether learning is taking place
– Diagnosing (informing) learning
• What is not being learnt
– Forming learning
• What to do about it
Effects of formative assessment
• Several major reviews of the research
–
–
–
–
Natriello (1987)
Crooks (1988)
Black & Wiliam (1998)
Nyquist (2003)
• All find consistent, substantial effects
Kinds of feedback (Nyquist, 2003)
• Weaker feedback only
– Knowledge of results (KoR)
• Feedback only
– KoR + clear goals or knowledge of correct results (KCR)
• Weak formative assessment
– KCR+ explanation (KCR+e)
• Moderate formative assessment
– (KCR+e) + specific actions for gap reduction
• Strong formative assessment
– (KCR+e) + activity
Effect of formative assessment (HE)
N
Effect
Weaker feedback only
31
0.16
Feedback only
48
0.23
Weaker formative assessment
49
0.30
Moderate formative assessment
41
0.33
Strong formative assessment
16
0.51
Effects of feedback
• Kluger & DeNisi (1996)
• Review of 3000 research reports
• Excluding those:
–
–
–
–
–
without adequate controls
with poor design
with fewer than 10 participants
where performance was not measured
without details of effect sizes
• left 131 reports, 607 effect sizes, involving 12652
individuals
• Average effect size 0.4, but
– Effect sizes very variable
– 40% of effect sizes were negative
Kinds of feedback: Israel
• 264 low and high ability grade 6 students in 12 classes in 4 schools;
analysis of 132 students at top and bottom of each class
• Same teaching, same aims, same teachers, same classwork
• Three kinds of feedback: scores, comments, scores+comments
Feedback
scores
Gain
none
Attitude
top
+ve
bottom -ve
comments
30%
all
[Butler(1988) Br. J. Educ. Psychol., 58 1-14]
+ve
Responses
Feedback
scores
Gain
none
Attitude
top
+ve
bottom -ve
comments
30%
all
+ve
What do you think happened for the students given both
scores and comments?
A: Gain: 30%; Attitude: all +ve
B: Gain: 30%; Attitude: top +ve, bottom -ve
C: Gain: 0%; Attitude: all +ve
D: Gain: 0%; Attitude: top +ve, bottom -ve
E: Something else
[Butler(1988) Br. J. Educ. Psychol., 58 1-14]
Formative assessment
• Classroom assessment is not
(necessarily) formative assessment
• Formative assessment is not
(necessarily) classroom assessment
Types of formative assessment
• Long-cycle
– Focus: between units
– Length: four weeks to one year
• Medium-cycle
– Focus: within units
– Length: one day to two weeks
• Short-cycle
– Focus: within lessons
– Length: five seconds to one hour
Formative assessment
Assessment for learning is any assessment for which the first
priority in its design and practice is to serve the purpose of
promoting pupils’ learning. It thus differs from assessment designed
primarily to serve the purposes of accountability, or of ranking, or
of certifying competence. An assessment activity can help learning
if it provides information to be used as feedback, by teachers, and
by their pupils, in assessing themselves and each other, to modify
the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged.
Such assessment becomes ‘formative assessment’ when the
evidence is actually used to adapt the teaching work to meet
learning needs.
Black et al., 2002
Feedback and formative
assessment
• “Feedback is information about the gap between
the actual level and the reference level of a
system parameter which is used to alter the gap in
some way” (Ramaprasad, 1983 p. 4)
• Three key instructional processes
– Establishing where learners are in their learning
– Establishing where they are going
– Establishing how to get there
Five key strategies…
• Clarifying and understanding learning
intentions and criteria for success
• Engineering effective classroom discussions
that elicit evidence of learning
• Providing feedback that moves learners
forward
• Activating students as instructional resources
for each other
• Activating students as the owners of their own
learning
…and one big idea
• Use evidence about learning to adapt
instruction to meet student needs
Keeping Learning on Track (KLT)
•
A pilot guides a plane or boat toward its
destination by taking constant readings and
making careful adjustments in response to
wind, currents, weather, etc.
A KLT teacher does the same:
•
–
–
–
Plans a carefully chosen route ahead of time (in
essence building the track)
Takes readings along the way
Changes course as conditions dictate
Keeping learning on track
• Teaching as engineering learning environments
• Key features:
– Create student engagement
– Well-regulated
•
•
•
•
Long feedback cycles vs. variable feedback cycles
Quality control vs. quality assurance in learning
Teaching vs. learning
Regulation of activity vs. regulation of learning
KLT processes
• Before the lesson
– Planning regulation into the learning environment
– Planning for evoking information
• During the lesson
– ‘Negotiating the swiftly-flowing river’
– ‘Moments of contingency’
– Tightness of regulation (goals vs. horizons)
• After the lesson
– Structured reflection (e.g., lesson study)
Practical techniques:
Questioning
• Improving teacher questioning
–
–
–
–
Generating questions with colleagues
Closed v open
Low-order v high-order
Appropriate wait-time
• Getting away from I-R-E
–
–
–
–
Basketball rather than serial table-tennis
‘No hands up’ (except to ask a question)
Class polls to review current attitudes towards an issue
‘Hot Seat’ questioning
• All-student response systems
– ABCD cards
– Mini white-boards
– Exit passes
Kinds of questions: Israel
Which fraction is the smallest?
a)
1
2
1
1
, b) , c) , d) .
6
3
3
2
Success rate 88%
Which fraction is the largest?
a)
4
3
5
7
, b) , c) , d) .
5
4
8
10
Success rate 46%; 39% chose (b)
[Vinner, PME conference, Lahti, Finland, 1997]
Questioning in math: discussion
Look at the following sequence:
3, 7, 11, 15, 19, ….
Which is the best rule to describe the sequence?
A.
B.
C.
D.
n+4
3+n
4n - 1
4n + 3
Questioning in math: diagnosis
In which of these triangles is a2 + b2 = c2 ?
A
b
a
B
a
c
C
b
a
b
D
c
b
c
E
c
a
a
c
b
F
b
c
a
Questioning in science: discussion
Ice-cubes are added to a glass of water.
What happens to the level of the water as
the ice-cubes melt?
A. The level of the water drops
B. The level of the water stays the same
C. The level of the water increases
D. You need more information to be sure
Questioning in science: diagnosis
The ball sitting on the table is not moving.
It is not moving because:
A. no forces are pushing or pulling on the ball.
B. gravity is pulling down, but the table is in the way.
C. the table pushes up with the same force that gravity pulls down
D. gravity is holding it onto the table.
E. there is a force inside the ball keeping it from rolling off the table
Wilson & Draney, 2004
Questioning in English: discussion
• Macbeth: mad or bad?
Questioning in English: diagnosis
Where is the verb in this sentence?
The dog ran across the road
A B
A B
C
C
D
Questioning in English: diagnosis
Where does the subject end and the
predicate begin in this sentence?
The dog ran across the road
A B C
D
D
Questioning in English:
diagnosis
Which of these is a good thesis statement?
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
H.
The typical TV show has 9 violent incidents
There is a lot of violence on TV
The amount of violence on TV should be reduced
Some programs are more violent than others
Violence is included in programs to boost ratings
Violence on TV is interesting
I don’t like the violence on TV
The essay I am going to write is about violence on TV
Questioning in history: discussion
In which year did World War II begin?
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
1919
1937
1938
1939
1941
Questioning in History
Why are historians concerned with bias
when analyzing sources?
A. People can never be trusted to tell the truth
B. People deliberately leave out important details
C. People are only able to provide meaningful
information if they experienced an event firsthand
D. People interpret the same event in different ways,
according to their experience
E. People are unaware of the motivations for their actions
F. People get confused about sequences of events
Hinge Questions
• A hinge question is based on the important concept in a
lesson that is critical for students to understand before you
move on in the lesson.
• The question should fall about midway during the lesson.
• Every student must respond to the question within two
minutes.
• You must be able to collect and interpret the responses from
all students in 30 seconds
Practical techniques: feedback
•
•
•
•
Comment-only grading
Focused grading
Explicit reference to rubrics
Suggestions on how to improve
– ‘Strategy cards’ ideas for improvement
– Not giving complete solutions
• Re-timing assessment
– (eg two-thirds-of-the-way-through-aunit test)
Practical techniques: sharing
learning expectations
• Explaining learning objectives at start of
lesson/unit
• Criteria in students’ language
• Posters of key words to talk about learning
– eg describe, explain, evaluate
• Planning/writing frames
• Annotated examples of different standards
to ‘flesh out’ assessment rubrics (e.g. lab
reports)
• Opportunities for students to design their
own tests
Practical techniques:
peer and self-assessment
• Students assessing their own/peers’ work
– with scoring guides, rubrics or exemplars
– two stars and a wish
• Training students to pose questions
• Identifying group weaknesses
• Self-assessment of understanding
–
–
–
–
Red/green discs
Traffic lights
Smiley faces
Post-it notes
• End-of-lesson students’ review
Concept cards
• On the colored index cards, write a
sentence or two or give an example to
explain each of the following five ideas (if
you’re not sure, ask a question instead):
–
–
–
–
–
Questioning
Feedback
Sharing criteria
Self-assessment
Peer-assessment
yellow
orange
green
red
blue
Professional development must be
• Consistent with what we know about adult
learning, incorporating
– choice
– respect for prior experience
– recognition of varied learning styles and
motivation
• Sustained
• Contextualized
• Consistent with research on expertise
Expertise (Berliner, 1994)
1 Experts excel mainly in their own domain
2 Experts often develop automaticity for the repetitive
operations that are needed to accomplish their goals
3 Experts are more sensitive to the task demands and social
situation when solving problems.
4 Experts are more opportunistic and flexible in their teaching
than novices
5 Experts represent problems in qualitatively different ways than
novices.
6 Experts have fast and accurate pattern recognition
capabilities. Novices cannot always make sense of what they
experience.
7 Experts perceive meaningful patterns in the domain in which
they are experienced.
8 Experts begin to solve problems slower, but bring richer and
more personal sources of information to bear on the problem
that they are trying to solve.
Berliner, 1994
Countdown
25
3
1
9
4
Target number: 127
Klein & Klein (1981)
Six video extracts of a person delivering cardio-pulmonary
resuscitation (CPR)
5 of the video extracts are students
1 of the video extracts is an expert
Videos shown to three groups
Students, experts, instructors
Success rate in identifying expert:
Experts:
90%
Students:
50%
Instructors:
30%
Chess (Newell & Simon, 1973)
Positioning
Expertise
Low
Middle High
Random positioning 4
Actual position
4
3.5
3
8
16
A model for teacher learning
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Ideas
Evidence
Small steps
Flexibility
Choice
Accountability
Support
Why Teacher Learning
Communities?
•
•
•
•
•
Teacher as local expert
Sustained over time
Supportive forum for learning
Embedded in day-to-day reality
Domain-specific
A four-part model
•
•
•
•
Initial workshops
TLC meetings
Peer observations
Training for leaders
Learning Log
Please use at least three of the following sentences
to share your thoughts on today’s sessions. Please
write your responses on the lined NCR paper.
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Today I learned…
I was surprised by…
The most useful thing I will take from these sessions is…
I was interested in…
What I liked most about today was…
One thing I’m not sure about is…
The main thing I want to find out more about is…
After these sessions, I feel…
I might have got more from today if…
Please feel free to add any additional comments that
you think we should know.
NSDC Evaluation