Looking at 'Unlocking Formative Assessment'

My latest purchase was, admittedly, a mistake. I had found Shirley Clarke was a name that came up in a lot of the references for books I've been reading, and decided to consult Amazon to see if some of her titles were available. The first one that I stumbled upon was called 'Unlocking Formative Assessment'. However, what I failed to notice was the rest of the title... 'Practical strategies for enhancing pupils' learning in the primary classroom'. When the book arrived, I definitely had a hand-to-forehead moment. However, I decided to give the book a chance and read it anyways; my thinking was that the strategies, though aimed at primary teaching, could surely be translated towards secondary teaching. In that regard, I was not wrong; the text does easily lend itself to use at the secondary level, even though much of the examples and references are primary.

It is important to note that the copy I read was published in 2001; this means that it's missing much of the updated information/research behind formative assessment, and was written at a time when teachers were just beginning to take an interested in using formative assessment in their daily practice. However, it provides many sound arguments and ideas, which I will outline below. 

The start of the text provides an interesting metaphor about the difference between summertime and formative assessment, which I feel is worth sharing here: 

If we think about our children as plants...summative assessment of the plants is the process of simply measuring them. The measurements might be interesting to compare and analyse, but, in themselves, they do not affect the growth of the plants. Formative assessment, on the other hand, is the garden equivalent of feeding and watering the plants - directly affecting their growth.         (2)

I like this metaphor, because it provides a really simplistic and relatable way to consider the different types of assessment; it really emphasises the power of formative assessment over summative. 

I found that the text, while mostly reinforcing what I already know about formative assessment, did provide me with a few challenging questions. First of all, Clarke spends a whole chapter on planning, making it very clear that the clarity of the learning intentions is of utmost importance. Now, while this isn't a new concept for me, the way that she presented her argument did cause me to consider how I might incorporate a question on the availability/usefulness of learning intentions in lessons into my own thesis study. If I want to know how students perceive and use feedback in lessons, surely this must link to their understanding of a) the learning intentions, b) their ability to achieve these intentions and c) the teachers ability to mark their work against such intentions. 

In terms of my own practice, she also made me question my use of learning intentions; I usually start my lessons by asking students to record the learning intention (or lesson objective) in their books next to the date; in this sense, the LO acts as a title more than anything. Clarke suggests that this isn't always the most useful way of sharing intentions, which I had never thought of before. I will definitely have a look at when and where I introduce my learning intentions, so that they become more explicitly linked to the activity. 

The text has also convinced me that I need to make use of student input more often, when creating success criteria. Using a question like 'How will we know we've achieved the lesson objective' or 'What will success look like?' would provide an excellent starter activity (21). 

Clarke reinforces what much of the literature says about grades being detrimental as well. She states that 'marking is often directly responsible for regression in many pupils' and that it tends to 'demoralise and overwhelm pupils' (53). I've always been a firm believer in the fact that grades are useless if you're trying to improve progress, so it's always nice to see the idea reinforced. 

I questioned my own practice again when Clarke mentioned how, when assessing work,  teachers often assess criteria that aren't explicitly part of the learning intention, causing confusion among students.  For example, let's imagine that I had a lesson on analysing how writers use adjectives and adverbs to create detailed descriptions. During the lesson, I had students write a paragraph where they analysed a passage for it's use of adjectives and adverbs, but in my feedback I picked apart their use of spelling, punctuation and grammar. When the students receive this feedback, the focus is no longer on whether or not they had analysed language, but instead on surface features. This type of marking suggests that we expect students 'to apply all the criteria they have been taught for every piece of writing' making all assessments 'a test' instead of a slow building of skills (54). In future, I will definitely try to mark against the learning intentions of that lesson, not drawing a huge amount of attention to other features. 

Allowing time for reflection and feedback is also a key part of effective marking, as stated in the text. Again, this is nothing new to me, but Clarke does provide a number of useful techniques for allowing students time and prompts to begin the reflection process which might be useful for teachers new to formative assessment. 

Overall, I think the text provides valuable insight and information, but for someone who has read more recent work on formative assessment, it seems a bit basic and repetative. Nevertheless, it is a useful book, and one that provides a good starting point if you're new to the topic of formative assessment and it's practical uses. 

My response to 'What Makes Great Teaching'

I'm sure many teachers have seen, or at least heard about, the recent publication by Robert Coe et al. (2014) entitled 'What makes great teaching? Review of the underpinning research'. I first heard about it during one of my Masters of Education sessions at the University of Cambridge's Faculty of Education. I was interested enough to download the document, and I'm going to type up my thoughts alongside reading it. As such, the writing that follows is a direct response to the review

To begin, the purpose of the review was to establish 'What makes 'great teaching'?; 'What kinds of frameworks or tools could help us capture it?'; and 'How could this promote better learning?' (2). What initially drew me to the review was its claims about being able to define 'great teaching'. I'm skeptical of anything that can be used to classify what is and isn't 'great teaching'. In fact, I feel that the word 'great' itself is already problematic, because it suggests a hierarchy of 'greatness', or 'right' versus 'wrong'. A better word might be 'effective', which the review appears to slip into using in the first paragraph, where they 'define effective teaching as that which leads to improved student achievement using outcomes that matter to their future success' (emphasis added by myself) (2).

Already I take issue with their definition. I'm not sure that we should define effective teachers on the achievement of their students, because this presents a multitude of issues. First of all, it relies on external results, of which teachers and students have little control. It also doesn't take into account the variety of learners that are out there, nor the situation or placement of schools, their students, and the learning environments. Besides, achievement can fluctuate wildly within classrooms and groups, from year to year, so I'm not sure how you could come to a consensus for any given teacher, given the wide variety of success they're likely to see regarding student achievement. I know a lot of teachers who get their students to 'get the results', but I'd hardly define them as 'great' teachers. Personally, I think it's much more complex than a measure of achievement, though I'd be hard pressed to offer a viable alternative. I'd like to find a way to link it more to 'learning', but until we find a way to better judge how well students learn (other than through external assessments), then we're stuck.

Upon reading further, I am pleased to see the authors acknowledge some of the arguments that I make above. They acknowledge that

A number of factors will influence students’ achievements, for example, pre-existing student characteristics (both of individual students and collectively), characteristics of the school and of the teacher (some of which may be alterable, others not), and of the context. In practice, the attribution of an ‘effect’ to an individual teacher or school is generally determined by what cannot be explained by factors that are judged to be outside the control of that individual (Raudenbush, 2004).  (9)

They then move on to define the 'six components of great teaching', which include 'content knowledge', 'quality of instruction', the 'classroom climate', 'classroom management', 'teacher beliefs' and 'professional behaviours' (2-3). To begin with, I understand why they'd place subject knowledge first, as you certainly wouldn't want someone with no knowledge of mathematics teaching your child Maths; however, it's also been proven in various studies that outstanding subject knowledge doesn't necessarily make for a 'great' teacher. As for the next five, I must admit that I don't take issue with their placement in the review, since much of what they entail links to a lot of the reading I've been conducting over the past year.

I find it interesting that the review proposes to use a 'formative teacher evaluation system - based on continuous assessment and feedback rather than a high-stakes test', since this is the way we currently grade the achievement of our students (3). Surely if we're assessing effective teaching in a formative way, one which uses 'different sources' and 'a variety of methods' we should assesses effective learning in the same way! But I digress...

The review goes on to say that teachers are assessed using classroom observations, value-added models (which link to student achievement) and student ratings, suggesting that principal judgement, teacher self-analysis and analysis of classroom artefacts were of marginal use (4). I can't help but thing back to some of the readings I've recently done on providing effective feedback to students; I think that work could be done on training teachers how to become better at self-assessing themselves - I think we're missing a trick here if we continue to allow others (usually outsiders) to assess us. The literature suggests that students make much better progress if they are trained in peer and self-assessment, so surely the same could be said for teachers themselves.

In fact, it appears that the review addresses part of this issue itself, when it refers to how teacher feedback could be used effectively; the authors suggest that the 'observation/feedback routine should be structured explicitly as a continuous professional learning opportunity that enables them to work on improving student outcomes' (5), which sound a lot like how formative assessment should be used in lessons to aid pupil progress. 

In fact, the six principles of teacher feedback that they outline have many similarities to some of the suggestions in the literature on how to make feedback to students more effective:

Sustained professional learning is most likely to result when:
1. the focus is kept clearly on improving student outcomes;
2. feedback is related to clear, specific and challenging goals for the recipient;
3. attention is on the learning rather than to the person or to comparisons with others;
4. teachers are encouraged to be continual independent learners;
5. feedback is mediated by a mentor in an environment of trust and support;
6. an environment of professional learning and support is promoted by theschool’s leadership. (5)

Admittedly, I can't argue much with these six principles. In fact, I would tend to agree that if schools adopted these strategies, they'd be more likely to see an improvement in teaching, because they're exactly the sort of things that, if teachers used them in their classrooms with students, would see an improvement in learning. 

The authors go on to explain that a focus on learning would be ideal, but acknowledge, as I have previously done above, that measuring learning is much harder. They describe how an evaluation of the 'necessary conditions for such learning to occur' could be a step forward. 

For example, we might argue that teachers need to feel trusted and valued, that their experiences and perspectives are acknowledged, that the culture of the schools in which they work should promote critical questioning and innovative approaches, with space and encouragement for discussion and sharing of ideas (8). 

I would agree that such an environment would undoubtedly encourage better, more effective teachers; I'd like to work in such a school environment, at any rate. 

The authors then go on to suggest that, while it's hard to rate teacher effectiveness using the three criteria that they have selected (and I agree with this point), it's still beneficial to use their methods as a starting point. They go on to suggest that they 'also stress the role of feedback from and discussion about the results of an assessment in professional learning, and the role of a clearly specified framework of performance indicators to focus teachers’ attention and effort on things that are important (10-11). Again, a lot of what they are proposing here isn't that far off from the things researchers propose about effective feedback to students. It makes sense that they should be similar, since, at the end of the day, we're all human and we're all (or should be) lifelong learners. 

Another comforting statement is seeing that they 'acknowledge that quality teaching is multidimensional: a profile of multiple, independent strengths and weaknesses may be more useful – and a better fit to reality – than a single, unidimensional measure' (11). This addresses one of the concerns that I had earlier, and is therefore good to see. I was initially concerned that the review would attempt to provide some kind of 'checklist' of skills, traits or teaching styles that made up 'effective' teaching. However, the authors go on to suggest that they hope to present examples of behaviours, approaches and practice that 'meet our criteria of being implementable and linked to gains in student outcomes' instead of  'a checklist of desirable behaviours' (13). 

What follows is a series of summaries about theories, techniques, strategies or routines that have been found, through other studies, to have had a positive impact on student achievement. Admittedly, this was not what I was expecting from the review, although I'm not sure why that is. I think I went in with a negative idea of what the review was going to imply, which perhaps clouded my judgement. I'm not going to go through these strategies here, but if you're interesting in knowing what they are, I'd suggest you access the review yourself as they do provide an interesting 'tool kit' of ideas. 

The next, more interesting part, is when the authors summarise 'bad practice'. They rationalise doing so by saying that sometimes it's good to challenge people's perceptions in a 'constructive way' (22). It is this section of the review that the media seems to have picked up on, because the first example that the authors give is on praise, which appeared in the news following the publication of the review. As I recall, it was widely reported in the press that praise was a bad thing, and that teachers shouldn't give praise any more. 

Unfortunately, I think (surprise, surprise) that the media has quoted out of context. I've read much of the same literature as the authors of the review, and know that many researchers do suggest that praise has little to no effect on achievement. However, I think this statement needs clarification. They don't mean that all praise should be stopped; instead, they mean that praise for the sake of praise - saying 'Good job' or 'Well done' - isn't effective. 

Further reading of the review has led me to believe that there is a massive gap in the research when it comes to observations of teachers, and, more specifically, how to make these observations more effective in terms of a) assessing teacher quality and b) providing feedback to move teachers forward. This is an area that I'd be interested in studying further, if I wasn't already tied down to my thesis research project. 

Overall, I think that the review is actually a pretty interesting piece of writing, which could have many positive effects if used correctly within schools. It is less of a tool of judgement, and more a suggestion of steps and procedures that schools should take to promote effective teaching in their schools. It's too bad that the media didn't lock on to the positive elements of the review, and instead tried to find something controversial, or negative, to share with the wider public. 

Review of 'Assessment as Learning'

Definitely a text worth reading if you'd
like to brush up on your knowledge about
how assessment practices can (and should)
be changed to create better teachers and
learners. 

As mentioned in my previous post, the latest text that I've read is Lorna M. Earl's 'Assessment as Learning: Using Classroom Assessment to Maximise Student Learning' (2013). Of all the texts I've read over the past few months, I feel like Earl's stance, her fundamental beliefs and viewpoints, is one that most closely matches my own. It almost felt like I was, in a way, reading the opinion of a close friend, someone who shared a deep felt belief in the same things that I do. Overall, I agreed with most of what Earl was saying in the text; on the whole, she provides a well judged argument about how teachers should, across the globe, try to make assessment part of the learning process (hence the title 'Assessment as Learning), instead of just the 'end goal' (assessment of learning). That being said, I feel it would have been more beneficial if Earl had coupled her strong, research based arguments with some practical suggestions for ways to improve. However, right from the beginning she does acknowledge that this element is lacking from her text. She says that the goal of the text isn't to provide 'detailed directions for implementing classroom assessment strategies' (8). The text, therefore, is more about providing a starting point for educators and leaders to begin having conversations about teaching, assessment and the links between the two. She aims to provide 'insight into the powerful influence that classroom assessment can have on students' learning' (8).

First of all, Earl starts the text by describing what she means by assessment as learning; it is learning that 'goes even deeper [than checking on what learning has been achieved]...and draws on the role of personal monitoring and challenging of ideas that are embedded in the learning process and the role of both students and teachers in fostering this self-regulation process' (4). Assessment as learning should emphasise the role of the student in creating and assessing their own learning, when they 'personally monitor what they are learning and use the feedback from this monitoring to make adjustments, adaptations and even major changes' (4). This links to ideas of metacognition, and suggests that we need to help students identify how they learn and what they learn themselves, which is no small feat.

Again, Earl is very straightforward in addressing this fact. She states that assessment as learning is not a 'superficial change'; it certainly isn't something that teachers can just adopt on a whim. It requires a 'fundamental shift in thinking about teaching and about assessment and about the relationship between them' (5). I can certainly agree with this statement, and have seen the reality of teachers who think they've made changes to their assessment practice, without fully understanding the reasoning behind it; these teachers make surface changes to their practice, but usually the impact on their students is minimal. Earl writes that changing the assessment environment requires 'more than tinkering with practice' and I completely agree (5); it requires a full-scale change of attitude and approach, which isn't something that you can just do overnight. It requires information, scaffolding of what success looks like, and practice.

Earl succinctly summarises her point by saying that 'It seems so easy, even commonplace, to change the language and not the concepts, to believe that the work is done, when it has barely started' (8). I've seen the effects of these types of changes throughout my teaching career, with the 'implementation' of different strategies, policies, etc. How many times can any given teacher remember sitting through a meeting, being told the benefits of one reform or another and then being told that this is the 'new way forward', the new cure for what ails education? I've only been teaching seven years, and I've seen many different 'fads' come and go in education, many of which seem to be the 'language-not-concept' changes that Earl talks about here. If we truly want to change our practice, we need to better understand what it is we're being asked to do, which often means understanding the reasoning behind different policies,  strategies, practices and initiatives. I think part of this is what Earl is trying to accomplish in her text.

It is to this end that I think Earl and I agree most; she states that 'changing practices will not be enough' and that we, as teachers, need to better engage in 'discussions and reflections' about our beliefs (9). According to Earl, '[e]mbedding changes into routine practices without this discussion is unlikely to have much influence' (9). Ever since starting my Masters degree I've felt this way; it wasn't until I started to read the research and reasoning behind formative assessment that I truly began to understand its uses. Prior to that, I was (and I am slightly embarrassed to admit this, but I think it reflects how many teachers may have felt/feel) sceptical about the new assessment policy adopted by my school. I felt that it was childish, patronising and a waste of my time. I was angry about the proposed changes, and felt like it was just another example of 'the powers that be' dictating how I taught; I saw it as a control measure by the school, and not as something that would necessarily benefit the students.

Fortunately, I am now able to see how ridiculous my initial way of thinking was. I now recognise that assessment for learning, or formative assessment, is one of the most important factors in increasing student achievement. I now strive, on a lesson by lesson basis, to better incorporate formative assessment into my lessons. It's an ongoing process; I'm nowhere near as good at it as I want to be, and it's something I am dedicated to learning more about. It's something I see myself continuously reading and research up on; I can't see myself stopping because the desire to continue learning has been instilled in me now. However, I don't think that I'd have had such a drastic change of heart if I hadn't had access to the research and reasoning behind effective assessment practices. This makes me think that the average teacher might still be where I was two years ago; going through the motions of making changes to how they assess students, but not really buying into the process because they don't understand it.

Earl writes, and I wholeheartedly agree, that 'fundamental changes can occur when teachers themselves believe that the changes are worth making' (18). Again, the change that occurred within my own beliefs proves this; I am now committed to making fundamental changes to the way that I teach (and learn) because I believe that they are worth making, for myself and for the students.

The balance of assessment, as found on page 32 of Earl's
text. 

Anyways, I should probably get back to the topic at hand: assessment as learning. Earl spends a whole chapter defining the three different types of assessment (assessment for, as and of learning). I'm not going to go into detail about what assessment for and of learning are, as I think most people are already aware of their definitions (if you've been reading my blog for awhile, you should be, at any rate!). Instead, I am going to focus on assessment as learning, since it's the title of the book and also most likely the concept that people will be unfamiliar with. That being said, it is important to note that Earl says all three types of assessment have their time, place and uses; instead, she suggests that a balance between the three should be sought.

Essentially, assessment as learning is an extension of assessment for learning; it emphasises the role of the student as a contributor and critical connector between assessment and learning (28). Students should become empowered to 'ask reflective questions and consider a range of strategies for learning and for acting' (28). Obviously, this isn't something that is going to come easy to students, nor teachers for that matter. It will take training. It might even fail in the first few attempts, but I'm a strong believer that failure is the greatest step towards progress. By allowing students the opportunity to critically reflect on their work and their progress, making judgements and alterations along the way, they will inevitably become better learners (29).

This therefore encourages greater metacognition among staff and students, and suggests that 'learning is not a passive process' (39). Earl says '[a]ssessment as learning is the metacognitive process where learners are responsible for their learning and for determining how to move forward' (52). She also says that teachers need to 'have a sense of what it is that pupils are thinking' in order to better teach them. This links back to some of the readings I've been doing on making thinking visible. In order to promote better learners, teachers therefore need to be able to present and model 'external, structured opportunities for students to assess themselves' (52).

This links into the primary research I've done so far, where students that I interviewed implied their discomfort with self-assessment; they suggested that they are not given enough training, or even opportunities, to self-assess themselves. Until they become more proficient at doing this, they'll never be able to unlock their own potential. Teachers owe it to their students, and themselves, to become better equipped at teaching students how to be critical of their own work, with an aim for improvement, not comparison to others.

However, as I've mentioned earlier, and as the students in my own brief study suggest, being able to self-monitor is not something that comes easily (53). Earl quotes Earl & Katz (2006) to define the following steps that teachers should take to encourage independent learners:

* model and teach the skills of self-assessment

* guide students in setting goals and monitoring their progress towards them

* provide exemplars and models of good practice

* work with students to develop clear success criteria 

* guide sudents in developing internal feedback 

* provide regular and challenging opportunities to practice

* monitor students' metacognitive processes

* create environments where it is safe for students to take chances and where support is readily available 

                                                                                               (cited in Earl, 2013, page 53)

Motivation is another topic that Earl discusses, and one that I again feel less familiar with. She states that '[u]nderstanding how motivation works provides the key to keeping learning at the forefront and building pattern of learning that are automatic and last a lifetime' (44). On a personal level, I can see what she means; I am now motivated to continue reading and researching effective teaching, learning and feedback strategies because I enjoy the effect it has had on my teaching, the learning of my students, and my own self-esteem. This ties in with the motivating influences of success and competence; I am motivated because I see the success my improved understanding has on my own practice and I feel greater competence in my ability to teach effectively. As such, I think motivation isn't just about being able to motivate students; it's about motivating teachers to be able to make the necessary changes to their practice as well.

Earl goes on to say that motivation can be used as part of assessment when it stimulates 'the intrinsic interest of students' and provides them 'with the direction and confidence that they need to take the risk' (78). She also suggests that when 'students feel ownership and have choice in their learning, they are more likely to invest time and energy in it' (78). I know that in my own classroom, I am often reluctant to give the students a choice during lessons; they often complete tasks that I determine. This has given me pause, and made me consider ways in which I can add student choice to my lessons in a way that will motivate them to succeed while also reaching the learning goals that I have set out.

One thing that I am trying very hard to incorporate into my own classroom is the idea that mistakes and failure are a positive thing. I always use positive language when discussing mistakes and errors; in my first lesson of the year, I make it very clear that 'mistakes are my favourite thing' and try to reinforce this in all of my lessons. I was pleased to read that Earl also sees the value of mistakes. She writes that:

Motivation is enhanced when errors and mistakes are treated like a normal part of learning, with timely feedback and a chance to rethink and redo the work and when assessment is designed to provide students with access to their progress and allows them to stay engaged with the task (79).

I think that more teachers need to celebrate mistakes instead of seeing them as 'bad'. It's been my personal experience that using positive language about mistakes and failure has been immensely helpful, especially with students who have poor self-esteem. Take, for example, one of my lower achieving Year 8 students. During a recent writing task, he was quite vocal about how he wasn't able to complete the task because he was (his words) 'too stupid' and that he didn't understand, so he wasn't going to try.

When I approached him, I noticed that he hadn't made any attempt to write anything. I referred to the writing frame on the board and asked him to simply start by copying what was there, filling in the blanks when he got to them. Again, he reiterated that he was 'too stupid' to even attempt the task and that he knew he was going to 'mess it up' anyways. It was at this point that I flashed him a gigantic smile and said, with as much excitement as I could muster, 'That's awesome! I love mistakes! I'd love it if you tried and made a huge, whopping mistake, because then I could come and show you how to make it better. Right now, I can't help you make it better because there's no mistake for me to see. Make a mistake, and I'll come back and help you!'

He then picked up his pen and proceeded to make very few mistakes after all. When I came back to him to give him some feedback, I was able to point out the successes of his piece of writing, for there were many, and provide him with targeted feedback on how to improve. He later went on to write even more, with little to no reliance on me or the other students around him. Because I had encouraged him to make mistakes, instead of worrying about the negative consequences of an 'imperfect' response, he became motivated to take risks and write something that he had previously found too challenging. I had been able to communicate my standards to him (that making mistakes is a good thing), direct his learning (through use of the writing frame) and then provide him with timely and concrete feedback to move his learning forward (85). I think that this example proves that 'when assessment is integrated into the learning process, students and teachers can work together with a shared expectation of finding what makes sense' (86).

Moving on, Earl discusses how learning targets should be used in classrooms. She describes how 'learning is easier when both the teacher and the student have a clear image of where they are headed' and that 'the big picture' should be clear to all involved (89). She states that '[i]f they are going to take responsibility for their learning, they need to know what the grade scheme is and how the piece they are working with fits' (90). These ideas are not new to me, nor should they be for anyone who's done any reading on formative assessment. In my own classroom, I try to include differentiated 'success criteria' to any tasks that I ask my students to complete. I've found that this helps them to a) choose which level they want to work at and b) structures their work so that they have a clear idea of what it means to succeed. It also means that I cannot go into lessons without planning very carefully what it is I want and expect from my students.

Success criteria, rubrics, exemplars and models are all ways to encourage assessment as learning within classrooms. These allow students to:

benefit from seeing how it looks when it's done and from the process that an expert [the teacher, or other students] went through to get there. Having an image of where they are going, how long it takes to get there, and what the stages looks like both motivates and provides targets that they can visualise and strive for along the way (103). 

She goes on to state that 'nothing is as powerful as multiple images of what it looks like when the experts do it' (113). As such, teachers should provide students with multiple examples of successful work, so that they can see how learning can take many different forms; there is rarely only one example of what success looks like, since people interpret and create things in different ways.

Earl also makes reference to a sort of feedback loops, which is an idea that comes up often in the literature. She writes that teachers should use assessment to:

provide feedback to students about their conceptions and misconceptions; students [should] use use their feedback from teachers to adjust their understandings, rethink their ideas, and put their new conceptions forward, leading to another round of feedback and another extension of learning (102).

In my own practice, I've certainly tried to establish this type of environment in my own classroom, but I'd be the first to admit that it took (or takes, as it's ongoing) practice and effort. I've had to change the way I teach on a daily basis. That isn't to say that it's taken a lot of effort; in fact, I'd argue that while it might take more effort at the start, in terms of adapting lesson plans, etc., it's actually saved me work in the end, because my students are able to  make better progress, quicker.

I think the main message of the text is that teachers are learners too. We should strive to examine the ways in which we teach, and adapt these to better suit the needs of our students. In my opinion, the best teachers are the ones who are critical of their own practice, and actively seek ways to make their teaching better. Better teaching shouldn't be about meeting external targets either; it should be about creating better learners. I think that if we tackle the issue of improving learning, then the external targets will be met as a positive side effect.

Teachers should, therefore, adapt their practice so that they too become 'self-regulated learners who address their tacit knowledge and beliefs about assessment and teaching'; failure to do so will result in 'superficial implementations' that will not move learning forward (122). Earl states that learning about learning should be an 'ongoing professional responsibility to do the job well' and I am inclined to agree (123). Teachers should come together to share ideas, research and better practice about what makes good teaching, learning and assessment. It isn't until all teachers truly understand what makes good practice, which I think involves knowing the research behind it, that we will be able to make lasting changes in the profession.

Link to a good read

I've just finished reading Lorna M. Earl's text 'Assessment as Learning: Using Classroom Assessment to Maximise Student Learning (2013), which I will discuss in my next post. Immediately after finishing, I started to look up some of the references (for use in my Thesis literature review) and stumbled upon the following link, which anyone should be able to access. It's an article by W. James Popham about formative assessment; I think it would make good reading for anyone who is seeking some clarification on what formative assessment is. It's quite accessible and interesting, so give it a read! 

Formative Assessment - A process, not a test. (Popham)

Research plans so far

While preparing for the next steps in my thesis study, I thought it might be good if I posted what I've got planned so far for those people who might be interested. I'd welcome any thoughts or criticism, so don't be afraid to comment or engage me in some critical discussion. 

Reviewing 'Embedded Formative Assessment'

Hello again! As part of my literature review for my Thesis, not to mention my own personal development, I have read Dylan Wiliam's 2011 text 'Embedded Formative Assessment'. For my own selfish reasons, and to show that I've engaged with (and hopefully understood) the text, I am going to go through some of the key points below.

Wiliam's text is largely cited as a must read for
all teachers and leaders. 

The first point that I found interesting was Wiliam's statement that the 'greatest impact on learning is the daily lived experiences of students in classroom, and that is determined much more by how teachers teach than by what they teach' (emphasis in original) (13). As I progress throughout my Masters study, this is something that I'm increasingly becoming aware of; however, I don't think I fully understood the impact of different teaching methods, routines or styles before I began reading up on 'effective' teaching and learning.

I like to think that I was a fairly 'typical' teacher prior to starting my Masters, in that I taught what I thought were decent lessons and did the best I could by my students. However, I now realise that my practice wasn't as good as it could have been, purely because I didn't know what good practice actually looked like. It used to be rare for me to actually observe good practice in action because, as a 'regular' classroom teacher with no wider responsibility within the school, I never got to watch other teachers teach.

Over the past two years, my school has undergone some really positive changes to remedy this, including the use of Lesson Study. I think that's a massive step forward, and I've really enjoyed the process. I'm also taking part in a Deep Coaching programme, which again allows me to watch other teachers in action. Both of these programmes have allowed me to see different types of 'effective' teaching in action; it's unbelievably helpful to observe how things are done in other classes, especially if you're trying to understand what good practice is (or looks like).

Anyways, how does this link to Wiliam? Well, I think that most teachers will find things like Lesson Study and Deep Coaching helpful, but I sometimes feel that more needs to be done to show teachers the research behind good practice. It's one thing to see it in action, but it's another thing to understand the reasoning behind choosing to use that good practice. I don't think I'd have made the professional progress I've made based on Lesson Study and Deep Coaching alone. It would be like showing a student a really good piece of work, but failing to show them the process behind what makes it good. I'm a firm believer that greater sharing of how and why things work is one of the best ways to make permanent changes.

Another point linking to this, which seems pretty self evident but is worth repeating again, is that if you improve teacher quality than your results will, almost by default, improve. Wiliam words it in a rather tricky way though, by saying that 'the most effective teachers generate learning in their students at four times the rate of the least effective teachers' (20). While I don't doubt that this is true, it presents a rather troublesome issue; how do you establish who your 'least effective teachers' are and, more importantly, how do you make them 'better'?

Wiliam addresses this issue himself, by saying that 'we need to have better ways of identifying in advance who will be good teachers' but admits that this 'turns out to be surprisingly difficult, because many of the things that people assume will make a good teacher don't '(23). In fact, given our current political climate, I have doubts about how such identifying features would be established, or even agreed upon, within the teaching community; there's always going to be debate about what makes a good teacher, and it's extremely tricky to define. Some would argue that effectiveness can be based on the results of pupils, but I know many teachers who would find such a definition unfair. Others might say it's personality traits, teaching styles that are used, or a whole other plethora of factors. The truth is, I think it would be incredibly hard to set a basic standard of 'good enough for teaching' and 'not good enough for teaching'. Teaching has always been one of those professions that you have to do before you can evaluate your success.

Similarly, you can't just 'remove' the teachers who are deemed 'least effective'. That wouldn't go down well with the unions, and frankly it's a bit unfair. Everyone should be given the opportunity to change and adapt; we all have the capacity to grow, after all. Besides, Wiliam states that even if we did 'raise the bar' of entry into the profession, or sacked the teachers who didn't meet new standards and replaced them with ones that did, it would still take thirty years for the change to affect results (25)! Shocking to think about, really.

William himself admits it's unsteady ground, and ends his first chapter by saying that instead of being highly selective, or purging the 'least effective' teachers out of the profession, we should instead 'invest in those teachers already working in our schools' (26). This is an idea that I can get on board with.

Chapter two moves on to an area that I am much more comfortable with; formative assessment. Wiliam (and myself, for that matter) believes that 'attention to minute-by-minute and day-to-day formative assessment is likely to have the biggest impact on student outcomes' (27). However, he recognises that getting teachers to change their outlook and use of feedback isn't something that can happen over night. He also admit that many teachers may be reluctant to take on board new initiatives regarding assessment, because (and it's true, in some regards) teachers are often 'bombarded with innovations, none [of which have] time to take root', due to ever changing governments, leaders, policies, etc. (29). Perhaps then, as I have mentioned previously, more teachers should be made aware of the research behind the benefits of formative assessment; this would allow them to see that it's not some passing fad, that it does have benefits that will work in the long term, and it isn't (or maybe I should say 'shouldn't) going to disappear with the next change of government.

Formative assessment has, in fact, been around since the 1960s. It was first coined in 1967 by 'Michael Scriven to describe the role that evaluation could play in 'the ongoing improvement of curriculum'' (Scriven, 1967, quoted in Wiliam, 2011, 33). Bloom, a name that most teachers these days will recognise, also referred to it in 1969 when he said that 'we see much more effective use of formative evaluation if it is separated from the grading process and used primarily as an aid to teaching' (Bloom, 1969, quoted in Wiliam, 2011, 33). He then goes through and gives some more detailed information about the evolution of formative assessment, which I'll gloss over at this point (because, frankly, I don't want to bore you). The important bit, obviously, is when he makes reference to his work with Paul Black in the 90s - if you haven't heard about their massive meta-analysis of studies on assessment, then you really must check it out - where he summarises to say that 'the research suggested that attention to the use of assessment to inform instruction, particularly at the classroom level, in many cases effectively doubled the speed of students learning' (36). You can't really argue with those kinds of results, surely?

In the end, he summaries his best definition of formative assessment as assessment which:

'functions formatively to the extent that evidence about student achievement is elicited, interpreted, and used by teachers learners or their peers to make decisions about the next steps in the instruction that are likely to be better or better founded, than the decisions they would have made in the absence of that evidence' (43).

As you can see, formative assessment is now widely recognised as being most effective when it is used by both teachers and students. It also means that any assessment can become formative, so long as it helps to improve 'the instructional decisions that are made by teachers, learners or their peers' (45). This is how I think of formative assessment; in my experience, it's most effective when it's used by myself to gauge student understanding, make changes to my lessons, and then by the students to help help them make take the necessary steps to move their learning forward. If this cycle can be done within a given lesson, then even better!

In order for this type of learning to happen - learning in which students and teachers use formative assessment to gauge levels of learning/progress -  the criteria necessary for success must be clear. To put it simpler, students must understand what they are meant to be doing (51). This is where clear learning intentions and success criteria come in.

Wiliam states that 'all students [should] know what quality work looks like' (55). This will allow students greater chances of success, and will have a 'profound impact on achievement gaps' (55). I interpreted this to mean that modelling success, and what it looks like, (such as by providing scaffolding, exemplar responses, etc.) is key. He also suggests that success criteria, or learning intentions, should be created jointly with the students - what he calls 'co-construction' (59). This is something that I haven't tried yet, but it sounds interesting. My interpretation of the routine is that it means stating the objective (such as 'To identify and comment on the use of language and structure) and then getting the students to create criteria for what a successful response would need to include (in this instance, saying things like 'identifying the types of words used, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives').

That being said, there is a downside to being too clear. For example, if you provide criteria to your students that says 'you should include three adjectives', they are likely to include the three adjectives (which shows they can follow instructions), but they are less likely to have learnt anything from the process. As Wiliam states: 'The clearer you are about what you want, the more likely you are to get it, but the less likely it is to mean anything' (60). As such, there's a fine line between being clear and being specific. Sometimes by being too specific we remove all challenge, and do a disservice to our students abilities to judge/learn for themselves.

One thing Wiliam mentions, which came up in my pilot-before-the-pilot interview of students, was that students are 'much better at spotting errors and weaknesses in the work of others than they are in their own' work (66). When I asked students about how they felt about peer and self assessment, most were positive about their experiences with peer assessment and negative about assessing themselves. They felt that they weren't properly trained to assess their own work, and that often they were either too critical or too generous - regardless, they were rarely able to accurately evaluate their own work. I think this can be remedied by better training and increased use; it's a skill that I'm trying to build with my own classes, though with limited success so far (especially in the lower grades, such as year 7 or 8). However, even Wiliam admits later in the text (Chapter 7) that 'student's first attempts at self-assessment are usually neither insightful no useful' and that students should be encouraged to keep trying (152). As such, I'm going to keep trying to build with my own students.

Moving on, he spends Chapter 4 discussing how to get better responses from the students in terms of plenaries (or assessing what they've learnt after a lesson). Some routines/techniques are given at the end of the chapter which I found interesting, including something he calls the 'Exit Pass' (92). I've used this technique in a few lessons already, and found it quite useful for tying up the lesson and motivating some of the disengaged students; basically, they can't leave the room until they've provided me with the necessary work (their exit pass). Usually, this is an answer to a question (or two), which aims to summarise the key learnings of the lesson.

The fifth chapter is all about providing feedback that moves learners forward. In my original literature review, I found that the best feedback was that which was task or skill specific, and clearly instructed students on what they needed to do to improve. Poor feedback is ego-involving (praise for the sake of praise), too personal, or too general. According to Wiliam, 'much of the feedback that students get has little to no effect on their learning' and can actually be 'useless and, at worst, actually lower performance' (107). It is for these reasons that providing good feedback is key. I like to think that I've got this part of the feedback process down, but for the benefit of some people who might struggle with it, I will summarise his main points.

First of all, it's important to note that much of the literature says that giving grades is actually detrimental to learning. In my pilot-of-the-pilot interviews, the students echoed this sentiment, stating that they'd rather know what they needed to do to improve instead of seeing the grade; the grade only made them feel good (if they achieved a high grade) or bad (if they achieved a low grade). Interestingly, combining grades and comments has the same effect as only providing grades:

'giving scores alongside the comments completely washed out the beneficial effects of the comments; students who got high scores didn't need to read the comments, and students who got low scores didn't want to' (109).

As such, if you're putting grades and writing comments you're 'wasting [your] time' (109). I'm a huge believer that we should eliminate grades in all but the most summative of assessments. I rarely grade the work my students produce, and instead provide them with specific and targeted feedback on what they can do to improve. My mantra is, when they ask for a grade (and they often do, as they've grown up thinking grades are the only sign of success) that 'If you make the improvements that I've suggested, you can only go up'.

Let's take a moment to talk about praise; it's been in the news a lot recently, what with the recent Sutton Trust publication that suggests we shouldn't give praise anymore. Wiliam might agree; in the text he says that 'praise [is] not necessarily a good thing' (110). However, I think this has been taken out of context. Personally, I feel that praise for the sake of praise isn't effective; telling a student 'well done' or 'good job' isn't going to accomplish much beside stroking their ego. However, as a human being, I know that I value being told when I'm on the right track, which is why I think that giving 'two star and a wish' is a happy medium between praise and constructive feedback; it establishes specific skills that are being used correctly (so that students will, hopefully, continue to use these skills) and provides them with a stimulus for moving forward.

This leads on to the next point I want to make, which I feel further clarifies what effective feedback is: Wiliam writes that 'Feedback functions formatively only if the information fed back to the learner is used by the learner in improving performance' (120).  This suggests that a) it should 'provide a recipe for future action' (121) and b) that time should be given in order for the target to be reflected upon and used. In my opinion, not enough time is given to letting students work with their targets. Wiliam reinforces this idea by saying that if you can't provide learners with time to work with their feedback to improve their work, then you might as well not give the feedback at all (129). I've spent a lot of time devising ways to get students to 're-write' pieces of their work after getting feedback. At first, they tended to simply copy the work out again, making a few minor corrections. This annoyed me, because I had taken the time to provide the feedback, only to see students copying their work out again, not really accessing or working with the target. As Wiliam says: 'The first fundamental principle of effective classroom feedback is that the feedback should be more work for the recipient than the donor' (129). As a result, I devised a new feedback lesson which modelled the difference between 'copying' and 'adapting', and have seen much better use of targets since.

The final chapter is about 'activating students as owners of their own learning' (145). He states that in doing this, students can produce 'extraordinary improvements in their own achievement' (145). Much of the chapter is tied to ideas of metacognition, which I have tried to explore in some of the other texts I've read (see previous blogs). Essentially, it's all about being able to explore what you know (knowing what you know), what you can do, and what you know about your own abilities (148). He talks about motivation, and links this in with objectives and criteria, stating that 'students are more motivated to reach goals that are specific, are within reach, and offer some degree of challenge (Bandura, 1986; Schunk, 1991; quoted in Wiliam, 2011, 150).

In order to encourage motivation and metacognition, he re-states some of his five main points:

1. to share learning goals with students
2. to promote the belief that ability is incremental rather than fixed
3. to make it more difficult for students to compare themselves to each other
4. to provide feedback that contains a recipe for future action
5. transfer executive control of the learning from the teacher to students                       (152)

He then provides some routines/techniques to try to unlock student ownership over learning, including a decent plenary technique that I've since pledged to try. Ultimately though, he ends by saying that only learners can teach learners, and in this regard I think he's right. I really enjoy the process of learning how to become a better teacher, and I recognise that my best learning will come from the students themselves; it's through monitoring their use of my feedback, or their reaction to the routines/strategies that I use, that I can best help them.




                               

REG project: An update

Admittedly, the information I am going to share here is a bit dated; I conducted the questionnaire which I will analyse here three weeks ago. This is also when I happened to teach the associated lesson. As such, my ability to reflect on the lesson itself may be a bit hazy, and therefore slightly less trustworthy. However, I do think there are some things of value worth sharing and reflecting on.

To start, I distributed a questionnaire to my Year 11 history students; there were 8 females and 12 males you completed the questionnaire. The questions were as follows:

1) Are you male or female?

2) What do you think is meant by the term ‘independent learning?’

3) A resilient learner is someone who ‘keeps going during very hard times’. Choose 5 qualities that you think are the MOST important in becoming a resilient learner from the list below.   

[  ] Take a risk

[    [  ] Be determined
[  ] Have goals and ambitions
[  ] Learn from your mistakes
[  ] Positive relationships with other students
[  ] Be motivated and positive
[  ] Have self-belief
[  ] Be prepared to fail before succeeding
[  ] Be confident
[  ] Use your initiative and be inquisitive
[  ] Try everything before asking the teacher
[  ] Go the extra mile
[  ] Be happy and enthusiastic
[  ]Be focused and behave maturely
[  ] Other (please specify)

4) What could your teachers/other adults do to encourage you to be a more independent learner? 
5) How would you rate your own resiliency? Please mark your response on the scale below.


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I give up quickly                                                                                               I will try and find a way

I had hoped to gauge my students initial understanding of what it meant to be a reflective learner before incorporating reflective skills into subsequent lessons and then issuing the questionnaire again. Some of the results I found will be outlined below:

In terms of the responses to question two, the majority of females (4) tended to define it as 'learning on your own' or  (2) 'choosing to learn outside of school'. Males tended to agree, with 6 defining it as 'learning on your own' most often, while 4 described it as 'learning without the help of the teacher', which could be argued as being similar.

For question three, the most common responses to the qualities of a resilient learner for both males and females where 'being determined', learning 'from your mistakes' and being 'focused and mature'. Arguable, the first two show understanding of the concept, while the third suggests that students don't quite grasp what being resilient means; the last response of being 'focused and mature' is more ego-eccentric than the other two. Interestingly, 7 boys selected 'be prepared to fail first' compared to only 4 girls. This suggests that boys are more likely to take risks that girls, perhaps because they are less afraid of failure.

Few students (one male and female each) chose 'taking a risk', using 'your initiative and asking questions', and one male chose 'try everything'.

On the fourth question, two male students spoiled their response by writing that teachers should provide 'custard creams' to encourage independent learning. However, this element of not completing a questionnaire honestly is something that all researchers must take into account; it is usually inevitable that some people will spoil their response with silly answers.  On the whole, most boys did manage to write insightful ideas, including having 'more opportunity to work independently' and the use of 'revision based/research lessons'. Other ideas, which were not repeated like the previous two, include 'praise or rewards', teachers making 'the work interesting', and the use of independent 'worksheets'.

In contrast, the girls rarely had responses that repeated; the two ideas that came up twice were to have 'no seating plan' and for teachers to 'praise achievement' more. Other ideas suggested by the girls included 'structured lessons and tasks', the use of 'extra revision materials', 'doing work or research for future lessons', 'clarity of learning objectives', and for teachers to teach/model 'skills for independent learning'.

In terms of ranking their own resilience, all but one ranked themselves quite highly on the scale. This suggests that the female students are more willing to complete challenging tasks. In contrast, the males responses varied much more widely. For example, two students ranked their resiliency as quite low, 3 ranked themselves in the middle of the scale, and 7 ranked themselves quite highly. This suggests that the majority, but not all, of the boys feel quite confident with challenging tasks, but they may run the risk of being less resilient over time.

The results seen here have made me question why boys appear to be less resilient than girls when they are assessing themselves, but are able to identify that 'taking a risk' is a key part of being a resilient learner. It suggests that they know what it means to be resilient, but perhaps are less keen to do it themselves. These are questions that I will try to address in future lessons, by focusing on how the boys vs the girls adapt to challenging tasks.

In the lesson that followed the questionnaire, I attempted to teach a challenging topic on Hyperinflation in Germany. The technique that I used to try to teach visible, independent learning, was the 'Micro-Lab' resource (see post in past blog). Admittedly, the process did work in getting students to EACH talk and engage with what they had learnt; however, I did notice that the girls were more likely to talk for the full minute, without pause, than the boys. They also took the task more seriously, and were able to come together at the end to better formulate a group response.

I will be using a variety of different techniques over the next few months, to see which independent learning skills best benefit all students in the class, and will report my findings here.