Learning how to learnthrough Assessment for Learning

Learning in school

The analogy that might make the student’s view more comprehensible to adults is to imagine oneself on a ship sailing across an unknown sea, to an unknown destination. An adult would be desperate to know where he [sic] is going. But a child only knows he is going to school...The chart is neither available nor understandable to him... Very quickly, the daily life on board ship becomes all important ... The daily chores, the demands, the inspections, become the reality, not the voyage, nor the destination.

(Mary Alice White, 1971)

Learners

Learners need to know:

• where they are in their learning

• where they are going

• how to get there

This can be achieved through Assessment for Learning

Assessment for Learning...

…is a process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners and their teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go, and how best to get there.

(Assessment Reform Group, 2001)

Learning how to learn...

…is achieved when learners make sense of where they are in their learning, where they are going, and how to improve;

in other words, when they become autonomous learners, and engage in Assessment for Learning for themselves.

What research says aboutAssessment for Learning

Reviews of research provide firm evidence that Assessment for Learning practices improve learning and raise achievement

• Natriello (1987)

• Crooks (1988)

• Black and Wiliam (1998)

Black and Wiliam’s three questions

Is there evidence that improving the quality of Assessment for Learning in classrooms raises standards?

Is there evidence that there is room for improvement in our current practice?

Is there evidence about how to improve Assessment for Learning?

Substantial effects

About 50 studies, ranging over ages, subjects and countries, compared improvements in achievements for students in ‘intervention’ groups with students in ‘control’ groups. ‘Assessment for learning’ innovations typically produced effect sizes of between 0.4 and 0.7 – larger than those found for other educational innovations.

An effect size of 0.4 would mean the average student would attain the level currently attained by the top 35%.

An effect size of 0.7 would improve performances of students in GCSE by between one and two grades (and possibly three grades for the lowest attainers).

An effect size of 0.7 would raise England from the middle of 41 countries in international league tables for mathematics, to being one of the top 5.

What does this mean?

Four key aspects of Assessment for Learning

Eliciting informationAppropriate feedbackEnsuring learners understand qualityPeer and self-assessment

Kinds of questions: Israel

Which fraction is the smallest?

a) 16

, b) 23

, c) 13

, d) 12

.

Success rate 88%

Which fraction is the largest?

Success rate 46%; 39% chose (b)

a) 45

, b) 34

, c) 58

, d) 7

10.

[Vinner, PME conference, Lahti, Finland, 1997]

Effects of feedback (1)

Kluger & DeNisi (1996) undertook a comprehensive review of research reports related to feedback

Excluding those: without adequate controls with poor design with fewer than 10 participants where performance was not measured without details of effect sizes

left 131 reports, 607 effect sizes, involving 12652 individuals

Average effect size 0.4, but 40% of effect sizes were negative

Effects of feedback (2)

132 low and high ability year 7 pupils in 12 classes in 4 schools

Same teaching, same aims, same teachers, same classwork

Three kinds of feedback: marks, comments, marks+comments

Feedback Gain Interest

marks none top +vebottom -ve

[Butler(1988) Br. J. Educ. Psychol., 58 1-14]

comments 30% all +ve

marks pluscomments none top +ve

bottom -ve

Quality of feedback: scaffolding

Day & Cordón, 1993 2 Y4 classes

experimental group 1 given solution when stuck experimental group 2 given ‘scaffolded’ response

Group 2 outperformed group 1

Feedback and Assessment for Learning

Assessment for Learning requires learners to know where they are in their learning where they want to be, and that how to get there

Feedback contributes to Assessment for Learning only if the information fed back to the learner is actually used by the learner in making improvements.

[Frederiksen & White, AERA conference, Chicago, 1997]

Sharing criteria with learners

3 teachers each teaching 4 Y8 science classes in two US schools

14 week experiment 7 two-week projects, scored 2-10 For a part of each week

Two of each teacher’s classes discusses their likes and dislikes about the teaching (control)

The other two classes discusses how their work will be assessed

All other teaching is the same

Score on basic skills test

Group Low Middle High

Likes anddislikes

4.6 5.9 6.6

Reflectiveassessment

6.7 7.2 7.4

Sharing criteria with learners

[Fontana & Fernandez, Br. J. Educ. Psychol. 64: 407-417]

Self-assessment: Portugal

50 teachers following a part-time Masters in Education programme for one evening a week over two years

25 teachers spent two terms (ie 20 weeks) developing and promoting pupil self-assessment in mathematics

Students taught by control group teachers gained 7.5 marks over the two terms

Students taught by teachers developing self-assessment (matched in age, qualifications and experience,using the same mathematics scheme for the same amount of time): 15 marks

Learning how to learnthrough Assessment for Learning

Practical strategies: questioning

Improving teacher questioning closed v open low-order v high-order Generating questions with colleagues

‘Hot Seat’ questioning extended interaction with one student to scaffold learning other students learn vicariously

‘No hands up’ (except to ask a question) Brainstorming what students know already Increased wait time Training students to pose questions Class polls to review current attitudes towards an issue

Practical strategies: feedback

Comment-only marking Focused marking Explicit reference to criteria Suggestions on how to improve

‘Strategy cards’ ideas for improvement Not giving complete solutions

Re-timing assessment (eg two-thirds-of-the-way-through-a-topic test)

Practical strategies: sharing criteriawith learners

Explaining learning objectives at start of lesson/unit Criteria in students’ language Posters of key words to talk about learning

eg describe, explain, evaluate

Planning/writing frames Annotated examples of different standards to ‘flesh out’

assessment criteria Opportunities for students to design their own tests

Practical strategies:peer and self-assessment

Students assessing their own/peers’ work with marking schemes with criteria with exemplars

Identifying group weaknesses Self-assessment of confidence and uncertainty

Traffic lights Smiley faces Post-it notes

End-of-lesson students’ review

What do teachers need to do?

Seek and interpret evidence of existing learning and performance (especially through questioning)

Provide feedback to help learners understand the strengths and weaknesses in their current performance, the standards aimed for, and how they might improve

Provide opportunities for learners to improve their work Develop learners’ own capacity to understand standards

and to self-assess using criteria and exemplars These elements need to be planned as part of teaching

What we still don’t know

Whether all these practices are equally important, and necessary, or whether some have higher ‘leverage’ than others

How these relate to other ideas and innovations (eg thinking skills)

Whether some work better in some contexts than others (different ages, subjects etc)

How knowledge that teachers create about what works can be disseminated to others

What conditions in schools enable this to happen

The Learning how to Learn Project

Aims Develop and extend recent work on AfL into a model of learning

how to learn for both teachers and pupils. Investigate what teachers can do to help pupils to learn how to

learn. Investigate what characterises the school in which teachers

successfully create and manage the knowledge and skills of learning how to learn.

Investigate how educational networks can support the creation, management and transfer of the knowledge and skills of learning how to learn.

Attempt to develop a generic model of innovation in teaching and learning that integrates work in classrooms, schools and networks

...the model that says ‘learn while you are at school the skills that you will apply during your lifetime’ is no longer tenable. These skills will be obsolete by the time you get into the workplace and need them, except for one skill – the skill of being able to learn. It is the skill of being able, not to give the right answer to questions about what you were taught in school, but to make the right response to situations that are outside the scope of what you were taught in school. We need to produce people who know how to act when they are faced with situations for which they were not specifically prepared. (Papert, 1998)

Learning how to learn is vital forlifelong learning

Successful education

The test of successful education is not the amount of knowledge that a pupil takes away from school, but his appetite to know and his capacity to learn. If the school sends out children with the desire for knowledge and some idea how to acquire it, it will have done its work. Too many leave school with the appetite killed and the mind loaded with undigested lumps of information. The good schoolmaster(sic) is known by the number of valuable subjects which he declines to teach. (Sir Richard Livingstone, President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 1941)