© Curriculum Foundation1 Embedding Assessment Practices There are three key questions: How does all this fit with our wider aims explored in Unit 1? How.

© Curriculum Foundation 1

Embedding Assessment Practices

There are three key questions:

• How does all this fit with our wider aims explored in Unit 1?• How does it help learning?• How will we be able to show how many levels of progress have

been made?


In the Bridging Unit and Unit 1, we looked at out wider aspirations for learners, many of which we described as “competencies” – combinations of knowledge, skills and attitudes that enable learning “to be applied with confidence in a range of situations”.

This is, of course, what we have been looking at in terms of subject assessment.

We attain our wider aspirations through the way in which we approach the subjects – they are the ‘content’ of the curriculum.

And, of course, our aspiration as teachers is to promote our pupils’ learning.

To assist this, assessment must be more than attributing a number or a level.

Assessment must help us guide learning. This is at the heart of teacher assessment.


All of this Unit has been about teacher assessments. These are usually carried out for formative reasons. That is, they are used to help the teacher guide learning, give support where it is needed and plan the next steps in learning.

These sorts of formative assessment are sometimes referred to as “Assessment for Learning”.

The assessment specialist Dr Mark Zelman points out that when a cook tastes the soup, that’s formative. When the guests taste the soup, that’s summative.


Teacher assessment is most effective where is it used to give guidance to the student about how they can improve.

This is where a qualitative approach is more effective than a quantitative one. (Being given 7 out of 10 for your scotch egg in cookery – remember this actually happened - doesn’t really help you make a better one next time.)

This formative assessment needs to become embedded in practice.


Do you recognise this man? It’s Dylan Wiliam – a member of the ‘Expert Panel’ whose report laid the basis for the new national curriculum (even if it did not develop quite as they expected!). He is author of “Embedded formative assessment”. He also refers to “Assessment for Learning”.

Wiliam suggests that:“The evidence that formative assessment is a powerful lever for improving outcomes for learners has been steadily accumulating over the last quarter of a century. Over that time, at least 15 substantial reviews* of research, synthesizing several thousand research studies, have documented the impact of classroom assessment practices on students.

The general finding is that across a range of different school subjects, in different countries, and for learners of different ages, the use of formative assessment appears to be associated with considerable improvements in the rate of learning. ”

* the references are at the end of the unit


Wiliam also refers to “Assessment for Learning”, pointing out that:

“The term ‘assessment for learning’ is often mistakenly attributed to Rick Stiggins (2002), although Stiggins himself has always attributed the term to authors in the United Kingdom. In fact, the earliest use of this term in this sense appears to be a paper given at the annual conference of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (James, 1992) while three years later, the phrase was used as the title of a book (Sutton, 1995). However, the first use of the term “assessment for learning” in contrast to the term “assessment of learning” appears to be Gipps & Stobart (1997), where these two terms are the titles of the second and first chapters respectively. The distinction was brought to a wider audience by the Assessment Reform Group in 1999 in a guide for policymakers (Broadfoot, Daugherty, Gardner, Gipps, Harlen, James & Stobart, 1999).

There is more at:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=

B3HRvFsZHoo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3HRvFsZHoo




You may recall the 2002 Strategy document that made Assessment for Learning (AfL) almost ‘official’ in England.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/forteachers/curriculum_in_action/assessment_for_learning.shtml

The significant feature of AfL, as opposed to other forms of formative assessment, was the involvement of the students – or their “meta-cognitive awareness” of the own learning.

There is a link to a classroom example below.












Prof Lorna Earl of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education also values the role of the student, but has a slightly different take of ‘Assessment AS Learning’ in which she argues that we need to:

“reinforce the role of formative assessment by emphasising the role of the student, not only as a contributor to assessment and learning programmes, but as the central critical connection between them. Students as active, engaged and critical assessors can make sense of information, relate it to prior knowledge and master the skills involved. This is the regulatory process of meta-cognition.

Assessment as learning is the ultimate goal where students are their own best assessors”

© Curriculum Foundation

But what about the third question of this section: How will we be able to show how many levels of progress have been made?

The answer, of course, is that we shall no longer be able to do so. If there are no levels, there can be no levels of progress.

But does that worry you? Is the only use of assessment to provide evidence to Ofsted?

Are we not better concentrating on using assessment professionally to promote our pupils’ learning, rather than attempting to measure their learning for external accountability?

Isn’t this what we all come into the profession for?


So that’s it – except for the homework!

Keep the focus on the new national curriculum. Take your subject or year group and check the ways that skills are specified at the beginning of the programme.

Look at the ‘subject content’ or ‘statutory requirement’ section and plan some learning experiences by which you can help your pupils explore this ‘content’ through the skills.

Yes, you’re right! That is curriculum design homework and not assessment homework!

But it is only when we see how the two come together in learning that we can see how to disentangle them in assessment.

Please feel free to share your thoughts on the website.

That really is it – apart from some quotes and the answers to

the picture quiz.

See you next time in Unit 3 which will look at the classroom

practicalities of what the new curriculum is asking for.


“Learners need endless feedback more than they need endless

teaching”

Grant WigginsLess Teaching and More Feedback

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept12/vol70/num01/toc.aspx





“We look for employees who can think for themselves, work in teams, communicate well, and solve problems. It’s not

what they know, it’s what they can do.”

Indra K. NooyiChief Executive Officer, PepsiCo

Do you recognise this person? She’s not in education but is

the head of a huge international organisation.

This is what she said about what they look for in

employees.


.

In case you did not spot them – here are the names!

Benjamin Bloom

Mark Zelman Lorna Earle Laura Greenstein

Dylan WiliamSheila

Valencia ED Hirsch

Indra NooyiAndreas

Schleicher Brian Male Anon

Mick Waters


The case for formative assessmentThe evidence that formative assessment is a powerful lever for improving outcomes for learners has been steadily accumulating over the last quarter of a century. Over that time, at least 15 substantial reviews of research, synthesizing several thousand research studies, have documented the impact of classroom assessment practices on students:

(Fuchs & Fuchs 1986; Natriello, 1987; Crooks, 1988; Bangert-Drowns, Kulik, Kulik & Morgan, 1991; Dempster, 1991, 1992; Elshout-Mohr, 1994; Kluger & DeNisi, 1996; Black & Wiliam, 1998; Nyquist, 2003; Brookhart, 2004; Allal & Lopez, 2005; Köller, 2005; Brookhart, 2007; Wiliam, 2007; Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Shute, 2008).

Here are the references for Dylan

William


The research indicates that improving learning through assessment depends on five, deceptively simple, key factors: • the provision of effective feedback to pupils;• the active involvement of pupils in their own

learning;• adjusting teaching to take account of the results

of assessment;• a recognition of the profound influence

assessment has on the motivation and self-esteem of pupils, both of which are crucial influences on learning;

• the need for pupils to be able to assess themselves and understand how to improve.

Black, P. & Wiliam, D. 1999. Assessment for Learning: Beyond the Black Box, Assessment Reform Group, University of Cambridge, School of Education

And a final thought …..

© Curriculum Foundation1 Embedding Assessment Practices There are three key questions: How does all this fit with our wider aims explored in Unit 1? How.

Documents

term assessment

use of formative assessment

formative assessment

sorts of formative assessment

heart of teacher assessment

rate of learning

pupils learning

terms of subject assessment