Assessment - Problems with the accepted model

Who comes first? That's what it's about, right?

If there's one thing teachers should be doing to improve their teaching, it's in the area of assessment. This isn't just my opinion: Hattie's huge book 'Visible Learning', which evaluated hundreds of pieces of research in education of all types for their effectiveness, concluded that improving assessment resulted in the most impressive gains. It's important we put this in to action: this means that this week, we should cut our time spent on planning by a couple of hours, and use that time to make more accurate assessment of the children, and ensure the building blocks are in place so that assessment really works how it should. This will involve making what seem like shortcuts in planning: simpler activities, off-the-shelf teaching sequences, fewer bespoke resources. But the research tells us this is the right thing to do. Are we really prepared to do that? Let's put research in to action!

A renewed focus on assessment means it has to be the right kind of assessment, different and better than what's gone before. I don't mean doing more of the same thing (more detailed marking, more careful moderating of written work, even more detailed level descriptors).

We need to stop focusing on every-more granular detail in assessment and instead re-configure our big picture of how assessment fits conceptually in to the process of teaching.

There's a problem with the traditional model of assessment. By 'traditional model', I mean: we teach a lesson, mark the work that's been produced, and then modify the planning for the next lesson based on the children's next steps. Here are the main problems, along with some solutions:

1. The modifications to the teaching are always one lesson behind when the children need it. If we wait until the next lesson to act on our assessment of the children's needs, we've already wasted most of the lesson teaching stuff pitched at the wrong level!

Solution: We need to be dynamically re-calibrating our teaching during the lesson to meet the children's needs. This means assessment is a continuous process, or perhaps more realistically, done a few times during the lesson, and then the teaching changes course to meet the needs of the children. 

2. Our assessment of the children will always be imperfect. We'll never know with pinpoint accuracy exactly what the children have learnt: all communication is imperfect and we'll always be plagued by misunderstandings of the children's actual thinking processes. This is a huge problem: if our assessment is inaccurate, the planning and the teaching will be even less accurate: this really limits the effectiveness of our traditional model.

Solution: Think about your own learning: could we really expect someone else to understand what the limits to our own knowledge are? Even if we make a conscious effort to communicate this to someone, would they really understand? Now think of the student: wouldn't it not be better to use the student's own assessment of themselves as a guide to their next learning steps? We can't expect students to immediately be as self-reflective and self-aware as most adults have learnt to be: we need to support them in learning these skills and put some building blocks in place to allow this to happen. I'll come to this later. I'll add here that self-assessment will also involve peer-assessment for what should be obvious reasons: we are supporting children in the process of learning how to self-assess: they are going to need to talk about this with their peers, contrast their experiences, and bounce ideas off of peers.

3. The teacher is attempting to modify the teaching for all the children. Even with perfect assessment information, the children's learning is often compromised when we attempt to provide a one-size fits all learning opportunity. We must teach to the highest ability in the class, and then ensure there are opportunities for all other levels to access some learning. However, there are times when children would be better working on different problems, or at least in different ways:

Solution: Some of the time, we would be better providing a choice of activities for children to do. The best way to do this for the children to act on their own self-assessment: this means children choosing what activities they do based on their own assessment of their needs.

It's easy to see how this could all be achieved in a creative writing class:

The context: Children have had a number of lessons on writing a story: firstly, a big idea to capture interest; then being immersed in a exemplary story book; analysis of what made it a good story; followed by structured discussion and playing with ideas on how to write a story based on the same theme. They have produced a first draft. The next lesson could be as follows:

1. The teacher reminds children of elements of good peer-assessment, and of good story writing.

2. Children self-asses and then peer-assess (or peer-moderate) their work. This produces lots of paired discussion on elements of good writing: examples are: the best use of story-writing devices such as suspense; the best use of speech to develop a character; an enticing opening that slowly reveals information, etc.

3. In the second half of the lesson, 4 groups are set up, each with activities to develop different elements of good writing. Children choose which group to go to, depending on their view of their own weaknesses in their work. Children spend time collaborating on structured practice, followed by discussion, followed by independent editing their work. During this group time, the teacher is providing some teaching input by re-framing conversations back to the objectives.

4. In the plenary, all groups come together as a whole class, and a selection of children present how they've improved their work by showing the 'before' and 'after' on the visualiser. The teacher should have some input here to clarify and re-frame discussion on what specifically is good and why. All children get a taste of how to improve their work by improving all the elements which the groups were focusing on, not just the group which they chose to attend. This helps the class stay together on the same learning journey, and helps children develop additional skills in being self-reflective on the strengths and weaknesses in their writing.

Final thoughts

For this kind of learning process to work, in most contexts there's one key barrier: Are children really able to self-assess and be reflective in the same way as we are? As teachers, it goes without saying that we approach our own learning with a growth mindset, we have the language of how to talk about learning, and we are clear about the objectives of what we are doing. For children, we need to put these building blocks in place. This is the most difficult and most important task for great assessment to take place and I'll write about this next.

Further reading:

https://www.shirleyclarke-education.org/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Outstanding-Formative-Assessment-Culture-Practice/dp/1471829472