"When the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative; when the guests taste the soup, that’s summative". Robert Stake
The Australian Curriculum Studies Association's (ACSA) 2014 Symposium focused on assessment. Keynote speaker Stephen Dobson asserted that we need to establish safeguards against an over reliance on testing. This advice is backed by the research of Black and Wiliam (2010) who state that: "teachers' feedback to pupils seems to serve social and managerial functions, often at the expense of the learning function". Tests like NAPLAN and the HSC (in NSW) are deemed to be high stakes assessments of student learning, but are they measuring what we really value in students?
Assessment in our schools has become increasingly analytical (think marking rubrics) and consequently, more compartmentalised and narrow. How do we assess a deep thinking student with creative answers who doesn't necessarily follow the rubric we've given them?
Almost every presenter at the ACSA symposium stressed that assessment needs to be more in tune with the continua of learning - more holistic and less analytical. Teachers are professionals and experts at what they do. Our tacit knowledge of students' strengths and weaknesses needs to be trusted.
In their presentation 'Stop Marking, Start Learning' , Haesler and Paterson highlighted the concerning statistics on student disengagement by the time they reach year 12. Part of the reason for this great 'turning off' is due to students receiving (way too many times through the course of the year) a mark with an accompanying narrative about performance. These 'marks' and teacher feedback are not leading to deeper learning or improvement. This process simply reinforces the pass/fail perception of tasks and abruptly enforces a "full stop" to student learning .
This is not to say that teachers should not be accountable for student learning and that collecting evidence of student learning is not necessary. As Debra Bateman argued, a curriculum policy designed with integrity demands this.
We could, however, make assessment a whole lot better. Students need to experience feedback as information about their performance, not as a pass or failure.
As a profession, we have to be careful not to penalise our deep and creative thinkers.
As a profession, we have to be careful not to penalise our deep and creative thinkers.
Black and Wiliam's (2010) philosophy on assessment is holding sway with both academics and classroom practitioners. They assert that: " feedback to any pupil should be about the particular qualities of his or her work, with advice on what he or she can do to improve, and should avoid comparisons with other pupils."
A powerful way of delivering this advice is by means of peer-assessment. Students, especially, adolescents, value the opinions of their peers and research has shown that peer feedback has a far greater impact upon student learning than teacher correction (Boscolo & Ascorti, 2004). Student to student feedback provides an intermediate check of the performance against the criteria,
accompanied by feedback on strengths, weaknesses and/or tips for improvement.There can also be learning benefits for the peer assessor, arising from seeing
other examples or approaches, and from internalisation of criteria and
standards.
Incorporating multimedia in assessment design can also be of great benefit and lead to a more authentic kind of assessment. Rather than testing science students on their literacy and reading skills in a science test, for example, the incorporation of audio or video can remove much of the 'reading load' in an assessment and assist visual learners.
Digital platforms such as blogs, wikis and Google Docs support knowledge construction by allowing students to reflect upon what they have learned (the metacognitive), they involve everyone in the learning process (social), they provide a real purpose (a real audience - their peers) and evidence of their learning is produced (assessment).
Digital platforms such as blogs, wikis and Google Docs support knowledge construction by allowing students to reflect upon what they have learned (the metacognitive), they involve everyone in the learning process (social), they provide a real purpose (a real audience - their peers) and evidence of their learning is produced (assessment).
ASSESSMENT = ENGAGEMENT + RELATIONSHIPS+ AUTONOMY+ PURPOSE+ MASTERY
Here's to a lot more tasting by cooks....something that will ultimately improve the broth.
Black, P & Wiliam,D (1998). Assessment and Classroom Learning.Assessment in education:Principles, Policy and Practice, 5:1, 7-74.
Boscolo, P., & Ascorti, K. (2004). Effects of collaborative revision on children’s ability to write understandable narrative texts. In L. Allal, L. Chanquoy, & P. Largy (Eds.), Revision: Cognitive and instructional processes. In Rijlaarsdam, G. (Ed.). Studies in writing, Vol. 13 (pp. 157-170), Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer.
