Assessment for Learning

Recently, Mark Woloshen (Vice Principal at Sands Secondary in Delta) led an enlightening and thought provoking coffee house-style discussion on assessment for learning (AFL).

Click to view the Introductory Presentation

Discussion Highlights:

• The five strategies of AFL (outlined below) generated lots of questions and the discussion that followed focussed on implementation.
• How to inform students and parents of a change in assessment practice--informing both was considered essential.
• If we switch to a more of learning focussed assessment method, how do we prepare percentages for report cards and defend grades to parents?
• Cumulative marking system complements AFL - allows teachers to update student demonstration of knowledge as necessary
• FIve Key Strategies of Formative Assessment (Leahy, Lyon, Thompson, & Wiliam, 1995):
  1. Clarifying, sharing, and understanding learning intentions and criteria for success
  2. Engineering effective classroom discussions, activities, and learning tasks that elicit evidence of learning
  3. Providing feedback that move learning forward
  4. Activating learners as instructional resources for one another
  5. Activating learners as owners of their learning
• Grade book example (from Wiliam, 2011 Pg 126) that assesses student demonstration of course-related key ideas, competencies, skills, etc. as opposed to assignment scores:

Quotes:

• The collecting of marks to fill up records is given greater priority than the analysis of pupi's work to discern learning needs; (Black & Wiliam, 2001)
• The only teachers who think they are successful are those that have low expectations for their students. (Wiliam, 2011)
• If your students are going home at the end of the day less tired than you are, the division of labour in your classroom requires some attention. (Wiliam, 2011)
• As soon as students get a grade, the learning stops. Students should be given them as infrequently as possible. (Wiliam, 2011)
• Driver's test example: the assessor, does not know--or care--that they failed the first, or previous attempts. If student drivers meet the standards on the test this time, they pass and receive their license. (O'Connor, 2002)
• Marks and grades are meaningful when--and only when--they are based on quality assessment. (O'Connor, 2002)
• Their is no point in providing students with feedback unless you allow time, in class, to work on the feedback to improve their work. (Wiliam, 2011)

Research Results:

• Attention to the use of assessment to inform instruction, particularly at the classroom level, in many cases effectively doubled the speed of student learning." (Wiliam, 2011)
• Students receiving constructive feedback, (consisting of specific comments on errors, suggestions on how to improve, and at least one positive remark) learned twice as fast as the control group (received scores only). (Elawar & Corno, 1985)
• Students who received feedback as scores-only made no learning progress from one lesson to the next; students who were given only comments scored 30% higher on the second lesson than on the first. Giving scores alongside the comments completely washed out the beneficial effects of the comments: If teachers are providing careful diagnostic comments and then putting a score or a grade on the work, they are wasting their time.
• Give the students just enough to get them unstuck--promotes better learning (Day & Cordon, 1993)
• A 1994 study in Portugal that involved student self-assessment nearly doubled the rate of the self-assessing learners compared to an equally large control group.

Dylan Wiliam Interview:

Other Resources:
Exploring Alternate Assessments. Blog post on year end summative assessments. A great conversation starter for your next staff or department meeting.

What About Final Exams? Blog post discussing how and why to fill the assessment void left by defunct provincial exams. The reader's comments make for great reading, too!

Photo by Matthew C. Wright / flickr.com