MA Education

Learning & AssessmentMonday 27th February 2017

Last time…

• Surface and Deep Learning• Learning Theorists• Fight vs Flight - why is this relevant to our

classrooms?• Gardner - Multiple intelligences• Claxton - the 4 Rs

In pairs, what can you remember..?

Learning Outcomes

Be able to…

• Explain why we assess and the potential barriers to effective assessment.

• Evaluate the different types of assessment and consider the different roles they have in our educational contexts.

• Research and create effective assessments, with clear success criteria, that take account of different starting points and address multiple intelligences.

3 rules to spark learning…

3 rules to spark learning…

3 rules to spark learning…

How do we make our students

Cultivators of Curiosity?

What does Guy Claxton say?

‘We want our learners to have competence, confidence and self-esteem so that they can become better learners and better young adults both within the school and when they leave’.

‘Good learners stick with things when they are difficult, they ask questions and they say if they don't understand something. They are good at sharing with other people, and they like to sit down and think things through.’

Resilience – this is the emotional aspects of learning and being able to persist when things get difficult, managing distractions, noticing and persevering.

Resourcefulness – the cognitive aspects of learning and being able to deploy a variety of learning strategies such as questioning, making learning links, imagining, reasoning and capitalizing on all the tools available to help us with our learning.

Reflectiveness – this is the strategic aspect of learning. To be able to think about learning and about how we may develop as learners. Within this aspect we focus on planning where we are going with our learning, what we will need and the action we will take to get there. We will also look at revising and being flexible in our approach to learning and getting to know ourselves as a learner – how we learn best and being able to talk about the learning process.

Reciprocity – this is the social aspect of learning. It focuses on interdependence knowing when it’s best to learn on our own or with others. Collaboration, empathy and listening and imitation are all aspects covered in learning about reciprocity.

What is this thing called Assessment?

“Weighing the pig doesn’t fatten it”Black and Wiliam (1998)

(Derek) Rowntree (1987: 1) says of assessment:

if we wish to discover the truth about an educational system, we must look to its assessment procedures.' In addition, ‘assessment is important because students cannot avoid it’.

(David) Boud (1995: P35) says:

'Students can, with difficulty, escape from the effects of poor teaching, they cannot (by definition if they want to graduate) escape the effects of poor assessment'.

Assessment

• What will effective assessment produce?

• What goes into good assessment?

• What are the barriers to good assessment?

Why Assess ?• To match learning experiences to the learner’s needs• To seek to measure progress• To generate effective ‘feedback’ to learners• To enable relative and absolute judgements• To ‘build-in’ a competitive dimension into the learning

environment for students• To measure competencies across a wide range of skill-sets• To rank student performance• To discover future potential of the learner

Why Assess ?

• Assessment without purpose• Unclear assessment focus/objectives• Overuse (too frequent in the learning cycle)• Inappropriate and unreliable assessment methods• Demotivating for less successful learners• Potential for ‘Unhealthy’ levels of competition to develop in the learning

environment

As Long (2000: 47) notes, “assessment is…a major part of the educational process, and without it, teaching would be a rather unfocused activity. The fact remains, however, that a great deal of testing is implemented with only limited justification”.

Can you identify any potential constraints/difficulties relating to assessment?

Types of Assessment

Diagnostic

Used to diagnose the level of learning that has been achieved by students.

Generally used at the beginning of a course to determine the level at which teaching or support may be required.

Can be used at the end of a lecture, or a series of lectures, to see if students have comprehended the information conveyed.

Diagnostic assessment does not provide a tool to enhance student learning unless it has an element of feedback within it, unless it becomes formative.

Types of Assessment

Formative

This occurs during a course, and provides feedback to students to help them improve their performance

The feedback need not necessarily be derived from the tutor, but can be from students' peers or external agents. Involving students in peer assessment aids students in understanding and using the assessment criteria (Bradford, 2003).

'Giving feedback on another student's work, or being required to determine and defend one's own, not only increases a student's sense of responsibility and control over the subject matter, it often reveals the extent of one's misunderstandings more vividly than any other method' (Ramsden, 1992).

Types of Assessment

Summative

May or may not include feedback

The main difference between this form of assessment and that which is purely formative is that grades are awarded.

The grade will indicate performance against the standards set for the assessment task, and can either be part of in-course assessment, or assessment at the end of a course or module.

Boud (2000:160) says that assessment activities 'have to encompass formative assessment for learning and summative for certification'. Brown et al., (1997) provide a list of weak practice in assessment. This of course can also act as a checklist against which assessment programmes can be evaluated.

What can we assess ?• Factual InformationKnowledge

• ‘How’ to do thingsSkills

• The Ability to use informationUnderstanding

Fleming and Chambers (1983) found that nearly 80 per cent of all questions in school tests dealt only with factual information. It seems that this penchant for factual information is due to ‘the ease of using simple knowledge-based assessments, since tests which incorporate children’s use of skills and understanding tend to be time-consuming to design and implement’ (Long, 2000: 47).

What can we assess?• Factual InformationKnowledge

• ‘How’ to do thingsSkills

• The Ability to use informationUnderstanding

Anything missing?APTITUDE

 Aptitude assesses the potential for future attainment

You are an Ofsted inspector…

What you expect to see / hear / experience in:

1. An outstanding school’s approach to assessment?

2. The approach to assessment of a school that Requires Improvement?

Your own research

Create questionnaires for…

1. Senior leaders2. Teachers3. Students

…in order to gather information on a school’s approach to assessment and to help you consider how to improve.

Assessment in our own context

• What does the research say makes the greatest difference to learning? (Hattie 2003; 2009; 2012)

• How well do students “know how well they are performing and what they need to do to improve”? (Attfield)

Homework…1). Your reflections:

3 rules to spark learningWhy we assessBarriers to assessmentTypes of assessment‘Outstanding’ assessment

2). Creating an assessment task

Working with another member of your Department, write or adapt an assessment that takes into account Multiple Intelligences, including clear success criteria.

Reflect on how this collaborative approach strengthened the clarity of the work.

All material to be posted to your blog