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Learning how to learn : Learning how to learn through Assessment for Learning
Learning in school : 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 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
What research says aboutAssessment for Learning : 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 : 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 : 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.
What does this mean? : 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 : Four key aspects of Assessment for Learning Eliciting information
Appropriate feedback
Ensuring learners understand quality
Peer and self-assessment
Effects of feedback (1) : 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) : 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 +ve bottom -ve [Butler(1988) Br. J. Educ. Psychol., 58 1-14] comments 30% all +ve marks plus
comments none top +ve bottom -ve
Quality of feedback: scaffolding : 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 : 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.
Sharing criteria with learners : [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
Sharing criteria with learners : Sharing criteria with learners
Self-assessment: Portugal : [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 learn is vital forlifelong learning : ...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 : 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)
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