The Landscape of Assessment

Getting things going and pinning things down

Schema and definitions are supposed to help us clarify a dynamic process. With the use of charts I try to represent the dynamic interplay that goes on when we are learning and teaching. Maps and images, once grasped, may be more easily remembered. Getting active education to feel active on the page is not necessarily so easy!  Research confirms just how much is going on in a classroom at any one time, as if we teachers didn't know that. How then do we get a handle on it all? Setting up assessment so that both our students and we as teachers know where they stand, and how well they are learning, requires a framework. The framework needs to be based on relevant skills and how we actually learn.

Overview of  the dynamic between the metacognitive, the formative, and the implementation of skills 

An overview of metacognition, formative learning, and assessment and the activation of skills

Since the late 20c two other types of assessment besides Assessment of Learning (AoL) have been identified in learning. These are typically known as  (AfL) Assessment for Learning and (AaL) Assessment as Learning. Each assessment mode is formally distinctive but also needs to be seen as fluid and interpenetrating between realms. These diagrams  attempt to show the dynamic of how we assess learning in ways that are different according to the function and context, but also how the movement between the realms of metacognition, learning formatively over time, and the activating of skills, all weave together. Each realm mutually influences the others in an evolving process. This might make it easier to see how active formative assessment is really bonded with process based education and why comment and reflection are the engines of both student and teacher development.

The Six Major Skill Areas 

Mastering the skills

This may be the dominant preoccupation for many of us as teachers. Are we supporting our students sufficiently in achieving the skills they need for the challenges they face and the 21c world they must navigate? All the major skills can be identified under the key six categories identified by the NCCA and an enormous number are developed through interaction with others. Self awareness grows in relation to the other. Students come alive when they feel growing competency that is tangible, experienced through their own bodies and reflected back to them. I deliberately represent skills at the earth or soil level since this idea of evolving tool use, activation through our bodies, movement and operation is fundamental to how we know ourselves in the world. I can tie my shoe laces, I can carve, I can write, I can code. Seamus Heaney's poem Digging evokes the contrasts of digging with a spade and writing poetry with a fat squat pen. Both are tools and both require skill. Being Heaney, neither one is elevated over the other.

The metacognitive and formative realms of learning and evaluating are treated in greater depth below. The chart represents the metacognitive (AaL) by contrast with the skills at the sky level,the aerial perspective which offers altitude and overview to learning and is guided by key questions. The formative learning and assessment (AfL) is seen as the middle realm influenced by and influencing the other two realms. The physical is helpful as a metaphor but is also essential for a kinaesthetic knowing and too often abstracted out of classroom learning. Many skills are activated through the limbs, known through the body, and so grow in muscularity and tone. The metacognitive can be seen as how the mind frames strategic questions, adapts, and directs while growing in self awareness. The formative middle realms work in time and represent the duration of the course we are studying. This path we tread together is  book-ended by the projected goal at the end and the criteria at the beginning which is rooted in how we have assessed and diagnosed learning needs.

Assessment as Learning: metacognitive
How do I know what I know?

Functions of the Metacognitive

When our students reflect on what they have learnt and how they learn, questions are activated. These kinds of questions open the door into a much larger awareness of our personal and individual ways of learning and how we can evaluate our strengths and challenges. As we discover the strategies that work for us, the subjects that kindle our interest, and how we can recall and synthesise information, autonomy and self direction become increasingly possible.

For teachers and students the key metacognitive question is 'What do I understand about how I learn?'  Moving easily into this realm gives us altitude and perspective on how we learn. Insight, Eureka experiences, and an enhanced self knowing increase the joy and motivation to learn. We find our way into new experience and we gain leverage to operate, influence, and actively participate in the world.

The awareness that comes at this level redounds to other levels of learning as the chart overview attempts to show. Process is not linear but interactive and cross-fertilising. So reflective practice, the activity at the heart of awareness, shows us how through all the modes and means of learning available to us, we move between the activity of thinking and doing in the implementation of skills. Reflective practice is fundamental.

Formative assessment is anchored
by Criteria Setting and the Goal

Assessment for Learning: formative

How am I doing? Where are my strengths?
Where are my challenges?
Where do I need to develop?

Involving our students directly in choosing the project, in assessing methods that can be practiced and developed, and in understanding why we do the things we do, immediately increases engagement and meaning. Formative learning or Assessment for Learning happens over time and helps the student to see how they are doing through cumulative and qualitative feedback that comes out of shared learning criteria. This requires clear planning so that the goals, students' needs, the learning criteria and the skills are shared and made explicit. The teacher offers leadership without being overtly directive.

Here is an example of launching a play project using this method

Poster for a production
with Fifteen year olds

1. Meeting, mobilising, and framing the context
The project is introduced by framing the context. The teacher meets and mobilises the students, engaging their enthusiasm for how much their participation will shape the venture. Warming  up, stretching and short games prepare the ground here and get them active from the start.

2. Envisioning the goal/theme
Together we survey the task at hand and the imagined learning outcomes. In this case putting on a play and what we are going to be doing to get it underway. We aim to engage our students as much as possible in sensing how their participation will shape the venture. So envisioning the goal and how we get there, conjuring with them imagined challenges and why we are taking this on, can all serve to map the territory and provide opportunities for humour and a sense of security which will enhance confidence in participating. Our voices, our expression, artistic envisioning, timelines, schedules, a script, and individual journals will be used throughout the process, the latter serving as a regular record and as part of the final evaluation.

3. Focus and criteria
The teacher introduces the focus for this lesson and asks for suggestions. Criteria and learning outcomes are very closely related. We use criteria to guide the learning process towards the desired outcomes and to evaluate those outcomes subsequently. Ensuring active skills are well presented, we might also include a quality we are looking for. The focus might include: taking risks and experimenting with the parts we are reading, finding a sense of flow in the first few scenes, full class participation and sensitivity to others. The focus is where we set criteria according to what we diagnose are the needs. This can be done to great effect with the students.

4. Getting underway
Students take over before one third of our class time has gone.

5. Evaluation and Reflective practice
At the end of the lesson the teacher allows ten minutes or so to guide the evaluation of what has occurred and whether the criteria have been met. This can be noted in the journals as reflective practice and also in discussion. Training our students in this might require the teacher to structure the questions initially, based on the criteria. Three questions can go far and can encourage depth. Lots of questions can trigger glibness. The art of questioning is ensuring that we have enough variety and repetition in the right amounts to get our students familiar with the process, and evolving as thoughtful, keen observers and supportive of each other. The growing quality of the work sharpens the relevance for them of this process and is not merely an exercise.

 

Sample Reflective Practice Questions

What was our goal today?
What is our long term goal?
Did we see any interesting risks being taken?
What can taking a risk offer us ?
Did we meet our criteria?
Did the rehearsal flow easily or did we need to stop and start  a lot and if so why?
Did everyone offer focus as actor or as audience?
Why do actors need a good audience?
What is working well?
What needs strengthening?

Out of this a brief discussion can take place and the territory charted for next time. This process easily moves us towards the metacognitive. What is easy for me? What can I learn from him/her? What strategies will help me focus?  What do I appreciate about my fellow students? At the same time, we are building a cooperative body where step by  step we invest together in the project. Evaluation can develop from lesson to lesson as :

Peers evaluate each other 
The whole group evaluates the project 
Director/teacher evaluates the journals and takes in every week
    or every other week to comment on what has been noted down.

Process and Product

A play works towards an end product, as does most significant learning. The challenge in a play is to keep everyone actively engaged all the time. Enrolling the students in diagnosing, defining other supportive roles such as  as designing, set making, handling PR and understanding the role of an appreciative audience, builds a microcosm of a healthy society and can activate a large number of social and communicative skills, The gradual schooling of each person helps in finding a voice and activates an array of skills as the reflective practice slowly builds an awareness of how much is going on here, where the student is in control and responsible for his/her own learning. Playing a part beyond the one in which the students has been cast, learning to observe and critique skilfully, to understand and develop mastery of the  skills as the reflective practice grows, learning from mistakes and taking risks, can all add to the appreciation of hard work. Activated learning takes places at very deep levels as a sophisticated knowing and supportive appreciation of each other comes into play.  This is formative and takes time.

Active learning:  developing fencing skills  for a play project

                                     

The Eight Phases of a Lesson

The play lesson described above also activates the remaining four phases of the eight phase lesson.

More student talking less teacher talking
Student talking and participation increases as the teacher's decreases. Students may well need help to come into this gradually so that every voice is heard, each student takes a turn at facilitation, group work is high functioning and and universally productive.

Multi-faculty learning

Multi-faculty ways of learning increase as kinaesthetic, visual, and auditory modes are all drawn upon in the course of this lesson. The cognitive, the affective, and activity are also drawn upon.

Making

Students' creativity is engaged as they are asked to express, appreciate, observe and comment. The teacher having established the territory can recede, vocally at least.

Memorisation

Memorisation and recall  can be engaged at the beginning of the lesson. This can include reviewing what was achieved in the previous lesson and might include consulting the journals. Sleep, time and distance are great aids in digestion and reflective practice. 

Mapping

Foreshadowing and looking ahead builds context, strengthens group resolve and the sense that both the goal and working in time are held. The message to the students is Your input counts but I  can provide goal and framework.

In an earlier post we looked at: Meeting; Moving and Mobilising; Motivating;  and Multi sensory learning

The Role of the Teacher in Assessment for Learning

The framework the teacher offers is the plan. Over time this can come with the invitation for modifications and questions, as can generating the calendar together and looking at how to pace towards the final goal. Diagnosing needs and setting criteria bookends with reflective practice and evaluation every time. The teacher, in conjunction with the students, offers a search light to make explicit and give a sense of value and opportunity to what might be missed or undervalued. The importance attached to things that might be thrown away, such as the journal commentary, attention to changes, development, and hard work, are all fruits of allowing a reflective space for shared digestion and commentary. 

The fundamental task for the teacher in formative learning is to

• Articulate the goals, set the criteria and framework, and make explicit the activity and skill development that has deepened over time.
• Develop in role from initiator to facilitator to witness and back again where appropriate.
• Ensure the environment is safe so that risk taking and making mistakes are seen as a vital and creative part of learning.
• Develop modes of discussion and decision making that activate all the voices and skills of the group.
• Encourage each student to discover his/her own goals and the highest standard of his/her learning potential.
• Create modes of regular qualitative feedback through a variety of sources: individual and peer group as well as teachers.
• Keep records and summarise your observations.
• Keep your own reflective journal and cultivate practices that support fallow time and insight: the rewind, walking etc.

Questions for the teacher

• How can I apply this model to my own lessons?
• What are the challenges?
• What benefits do I see?