Monday 17 August 2015

Processes for assessing student learning are undergoing fundamental transformation.This presentation will consider three developments which can be expected to shape how student learning is assessed in the future. First is fundamental change in how assessment is conceptualised and approached, with a focus on monitoring learning. Second is growing interest in the assessment of a broader range of skills and attributes than those addressed in most current assessment efforts. Third is advances in technology which are opening the door to new ways of gathering information about student learning, including through records of real-time interactions in online learning environments. In ACER’s Centre for Assessment Reform and Innovation, these three developments are referred to as ‘new thinking’, ‘new metrics’ and ‘new technologies’. This presentation will explore ways in which these three developments, together with scientific advances in our understanding of learning itself, can be expected to transform school assessment processes over the next decade.

The theme of the 2015 Excellence in Professional Practice Conference (EPPC), held by ACER in May, was Improving assessments of student learning. A review of content and presentations for EPPC showed up some important trends and issues for further analysis and discussion. In a significant number of schools, the focus on assessment was well integrated into an overall school improvement plan or approach. In other schools, the school process overwhelmed the focus on assessment, and at times even overshadowed the focus of the study to be shared. One group of presentations focused on using existing instruments in ways that advanced the teachers’ understanding of the issue and students’ knowledge and learning needs. Another group of studies demonstrated creative, practice-driven teacher research, largely by individual teachers, that had resulted in key advances in assessment practice. Renowned education thinker Lawrence Stenhouse in 1975 defined research as ‘systematic inquiry made public’. This presentation will argue that the advances documented at EPPC meet this definition, by demonstrating knowledge production that is not merely for self-consumption. The presentation will suggest key issues for supporting teacher research, and explore key issues still in need of research and innovation in the field. There is a critical place for teacher research among the range of assessment, pedagogy and curriculum integrations which can be developed through a range of research methodologies. Practices for classrooms may well be dreamt up outside those classrooms — yet unless and until those practices are co-produced by teachers and students, they remain in a black hole, unpractised. There is thus a central and creative role for teachers in developing assessment practice, whether or not the innovations are supported by research. Indeed, the best research useful for teachers and their students around assessment may well identify the in-practice problems which are yet to be creatively addressed.

In countries such as India, impressive progress has been made in schooling. More than 95 per cent of children are now enrolled in school. But when we look at children’s learning, the situation is far from satisfactory. Available evidence suggests that in Grade 5, only about half of all enrolled children can read or do arithmetic expected at Grade 2 level. Faced with this crisis, how can assessment lead to effective instruction? ASER (Annual Status of Education Report) uses simple tools to assess the current level of children’s ability to read and to do arithmetic. Using this assessment, children are grouped for instruction by level rather than by grade. Appropriate methods and materials are used for each group to help children begin from where they are today and move to where they need to be. The ‘teaching-at-the-right-level’ approach has been found to be effective in many settings in India for building basic skills quickly. This ‘new thinking’ from India can provide large-scale solutions for the learning crisis faced in many parts of the developing world.

Internationally, the policy move towards standards-aligned instruction is gaining momentum. In Australia, standards have assumed unprecedented prominence in education policy relating both to classroom practice and to teacher preparation and career progression. The move is also evident in the United States, where the lure of standards to inform improvement is clear: significant investment has been committed to longitudinal research to examine at state and district levels the desirable conditions for implementing standards, their impact on developing college- and career-ready teachers, and in turn, the impact on teacher instruction and student outcomes. Moves such as this are occurring in the absence of a general theoretical position that connects assessment and standards to meaning making. This paper argues for the pedagogical utility of standards understood as enabling critical inquiry into teaching and learning. The notion of ‘intentional alignment’ of standards, curriculum and assessment is explored through two key questions: What do teachers bring to assessment? And: What is involved in a dialogic approach to assessment standards which values learners’ perspectives and their agency in improvement?