Learning and Assessment: Written assignment part 2

I am going to reflect on various aspects covered in this session and discuss how I will use them in my teaching practice. I will explain why we assess and the potential barriers to effective assessment. I will evaluate the different types of assessment and consider the different roles they have in our educational contexts. I will work collaboratively in researching and creating an effective assessment, with clear success criteria that takes into account different starting points and addresses multiple intelligences.

Three rules to spark learning

The three rules that encourage learning include curiosity, trial and error and reflection. These three rules were taken from Ramsey Musallam who produced a video discussing these on TED. He specifically emphasises the importance of rule number one which is curiousity in which he states the importance of students asking questions on the topic of discussion and that it is important to that as an educator to cultivate curiosity in perplexing and confusing students into thinking about a proposed scenario relevant to the topic and get them questioning as to why certain things happen this way in order to 'spark their imagination' and encourage passion to the subject as Albert Einstein quotes, 'I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious'. However not all students are as curious as others. Rule number two is trial and error. A particular good example to demonstrate the use of trial and error in science would be to gather a range of partcicular equipment and place them onto tables that have been specifically allocated to groups and get the students on each table to solve the proposed problem using the equipment given through a process of trial and error. These could be differentiated scenarios with different equipment based on student capability. An important part of trial and error is building student resilience as referenced by the quote by Samuel Beckett (1989) 'Ever tried, ever failed, no matter. Try again, fail again, fail better'. However, some students are better at this than others which relates to the fight or flight principle. Those who fight are resilient and will try to overcome their failure by improving. There are others which present an obstacle in that they fear failure and don't necessarily know how to be resilient and its therefore teaching students to be resilient. The third rule would be reflection in which students reflect on areas that they are not so confident on based on class content discussion or assessment feedback in order to improve on next time whether it be in class discussion or assessment. Again I would say some students are better at reflecting and being self critical on their work more than others.  There is an evident link to Claxton's four R's within these three rules in building resilient learners as discussed in rule number two. Resourcefulness and reflective news would be evident in rule number three and reciprocity would be evident in all three rules.

Why we assess

It's important that we don't fall into the trap of  putting too much of the weighting on assessment as a measure of student progress. As some students may have made more progress than others, so what we assess and how we assess is very important. This is evident in that David Boud states '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. So it is important that we as an educational system know what to assess and how to assess correctly.

From the Ken Robinson video, 'Changing Education Paradigms', he states that assessment procedures in schools are wrong, this is important to acknowledge as stated by Derek Rowntree 'if we wish to discover the truth about an educational system, we must look to its assessment procedures' and 'assessment is important because students cannot avoid it.' All students must complete a set of exam papers for subjects in which they are given a grade, however, not all agree that this is the correct way to assess students progress. Some students are academic and some are more suited to work based apprenticeships. Students are judged and put into tiers. Some agree that this is stifling creativity in students and producing factory batch students based on how well they know the curriculum.

So why do we assess? There are many reasons. We assess to match learning experiences to the learner's needs i.e. in the form of questionnaires to ensure that we are assessing students based on what they have been taught, to seek to measure progress i.e how well they are performing using grades, to generate effective feedback to learners so that the student can reflect and improve, to enable relative and absolute judgements, to build in a competitive dimension into the learning environment for students which can improve motivation for some students, to measure competencies across a wide range of skills-sets, to rank student performance and to discover the future potential of the learner.

However,  there are difficulties with assessment, such as, assessment without purpose, so for example within schools is a academic calendar of assessment dates when assessments must be completed and recorded on the school system, However, the assessment date may fall on a date in which you as a teacher have not completed the teaching for and so when the student comes to complete the paper they have not been taught all the relevant material so it becomes an informative assessment. Sometimes the assessment objectives in lesson are unclear so students are not sure on what they will be assessed on in the exam. In schools students sometimes have too many assessments which can actually encroach on their learning within lessons and the learning becomes very staggered because teaching has to stop in order for an assessment to be performed and then the student needs to reflect on their feedback. Some students are assessed with methods that are inappropriate and unreliable for example linking to Ken Robinsons video in that some students are not academic and are more 'hands on skills based' for work in the trade industry so by academically assessing them is inappropriate and produces an unreliable picture of the potential of that student and peer assessment can prove unreliable as the student doesn't really understand what the student has written in response to the question. The form of assessment does not always assess all the multiple intelligences of an individual. Sometimes assessment can be demotivating for less successful students which can lead to problems with engagement and attendance to lessons which can lead to unhealthy forms of competition within the learning environment.  As Long (2000) states, '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 limited justification'. So are we assessing too much??

Types of Assessment

There are many different methods we use to assess students, these can be diagnostic, formative and summative. But as stated previously there are difficulties with these are they can sometimes be inappropriate and unreliable.

Diagnostic assessments are used to diagnose the level of learning that has been achieved by students i.e entry level tests/learning style assessments. Generally used at the start of the academic year to determine what level of teaching or support may be required. These can be used at the end of a lecture of series of lectures for example plenaries to see if students have understood the lesson. However, in order for this type of assessment to be an effective student learning tool there needs to be an element of feedback.

Formative assessments are given throughout the course and provide feedback to students to help them improve their performance. The feedback can be from the teacher, their peers or external agents. There are pros and cons to peer assessment. The pros being that peer assessment can benefit students in their understanding and in using the assessment criteria, however, not all peers understand the mark scheme and correlate it correctly to what the student has written based on their lack of knowledge and comprehension of the question. Hattie (2003) tabulated the most effective influence to student learning was feedback.

Summative assessments may or may not include feedback. The main difference between this form of assessment compared to the others is that grades are awarded. The grade will indicate performance against the standards set for the assessment task. This form of assessment can be given throughout the academic year or at the end of a course or module.

So what can we assess?? The areas we assess are knowledge, which deals with factual information , skills which deals with 'how' we do things and understanding which is the ability to use information. However, not all assessments have an equal proportion of these areas. Fleming and Chambers (1963) found that nearly 80% of all questions in school tests dealt only with factual information. The reasoning for this was that 'the ease of using simple knowledge-based assessments, since tests which incorporate children's use of skills and understanding tend to be too time consuming to design and implement (Long, 2000). An area that is missing that should be assessed is aptitude which assesses the potential for future attainment i.e. How are you clever? Not how clever are you?. However, aptitude is difficult to teach and difficult to give feedback on.

If I was an Ofsted inspector I would expect a schools approach to outstanding assessment to be outstanding in teaching and learning in terms of assessment meeting all student needs and incorporating all levels of assessment, outstanding management and leadership in terms of setting the assessments and setting intervention and support for underperforming students and outstanding behavioural outcomes in that all students are making progress and are engaged in lessons. In terms of approach to a school that requires improvement assessment methodologies in terms of teaching and learning and assessment feedback are lacking, poor leadership and management in terms of organising assessments and intervention and support for underperforming student, and poor behavioural outcomes i.e poor attendance and lack of engagement within lessons.

References

Attfied., R . National College for School Leadership. Improving the quality of teaching. Thinkpiece Improving the quality of teaching Level 2. Pg 8.

Taylor., M. Learning and Assessment. Presentation notes. Date 27 February 2017.