Winter 2005

The Assessment agenda

Tracking progress over time

In education, the proportion of resources allocated to assessment is large. Teacher time spent on ‘correction’, assessment of student work and provision of feedback to the learner is considerable. JAN MCCLURE outlines how one school monitors the progress of individuals learners.

Given the resources allocated to the assessment process it is critical that these resources make a contribution to student learning. We could ask: To what extent do the assessment and reporting processes of the school contribute to student learning? What type of assessment will best influence the progress of each student?

A whole school approach

Five years ago, staff at Ballarat and Clarendon College embarked on a lengthy and significant discussion to determine the essential learning outcomes for students in years 5–9. Schools facilitate many important learning outcomes for young people, but what are the really essential areas for which we are accountable? We are talking about basic literacy and numeracy skills, the capacity to reason, the capacity to self-monitor and maintain appropriate levels of physical fitness, independent learning, etc.

The curriculum framework skeleton that resulted from the discussion is represented in the diagram below.

For Ballarat and Clarendon College, we believe that the progress of the individual learner is the most critical point of focus in the assessment process, not the level of achievement. Our core business is learning. We are responsible for, and should be accountable for, effective progress or learning for each individual student.

To assess student progress and whether the ‘teaching’ has been effective, the teacher must know:

1. What does a typical learning sequence in an area identified as essential learning for a student look like?
2. Learning is not linear but, over time, a learner develops in a roughly linear way.
3. Do the assessment tools supply accurate information about the level of achievement of the learner?
4. Does each learner have accurate information about their level of achievement and rate of progress? Is the learner able to set achievable learning goals and are they sufficiently aware of real progress to remain motivated?
5. What are the learning intentions for this lesson/sequence of lessons?
6. Which context will best facilitate this learning, keeping in mind the starting points of the learners?

The answers to these questions contribute to a model of learning that should drive decisions about learning.

Improving the teaching— improving the learning

Over the last three or four years, staff at Ballarat and Clarendon College have engaged in whole school strategic professional development, resulting in the mapping of learning paths for students in the identified Essential Learning Outcomes (ELOs) areas of the years 5–9 curriculum.

In the box below is an example of a learning continuum or progress map.

Robert Slavin (1996) proposes a ‘model of effective instruction’ based of the work of John Carroll (1989). The components are:

1. Quality of instruction: the degree to which information skills are presented so that students can easily learn them.
2. Appropriate levels of instruction: the degree to which the teacher makes sure that students have the necessary skills and knowledge to learn a new lesson.
3. Incentive: the degree to which the teacher makes sure that students are motivated to learn the lesson.
4. Time: the degree to which students are given enough time to learn.

According to Slavin, ‘The focus elements of this model have one important characteristic: All four must be adequate for instruction to be effective’.

The implications of this model of effective instruction are significant for teachers and for schools.

• The teachers and students must be clear about the learning objectives.
• To design the teaching sequence, the teacher must be clear about what the learner already knows.
• In order to decide whether the learner has made progress, (ie that the teaching has been effective) the teacher must know the likely learning path.
• The assessment tools must be designed such that the information provided about the learning is accurate and is closely related to the intended learning.
• The incentive for the learner is likely to be enhanced when they can see clearly the connection between effort and achievement and can set achievable learning goals.

Assessment and the Thinking curriculum

Learning continua enable both the teacher and the learner to improve the effectiveness of the instruction. The following example of the ELOs for Thinking illustrates how the details of a learning continuum can facilitate assessment for learning.

Assessing Argument and Conclusion

Following are some examples of assessment of student work against levels of the continuum (shown in table, below) in ELO 3 of the Thinking curriculum.

Level 5 Determines patterns; uses supporting evidence; uses complex arguments; some measure of reliability.

The sandstone was most likely the most resistant rock to weathering as 2 of 3 weathering tests had least effect on this type of rock. Physical testing of water had no to little effect on the sandstone, although all others deteriorated. The hammer, while it removed a moderately-sized portion of the rock, as opposed to the siltstone. The siltstone had profound disintegration in the hydrochloric acid test, and a larger degradation than sandstone in the water test. Also, biological weathering has a lesser effect in nature than chemical or physical weathering. Sandstone also had the least largest disintegration in the acid test, and it was all plaster, not sand and silt in the other rocks.

Level 3 Determines patterns of results; uses basic argument and little supporting evidence.

The Conglomerate was the most resistant to weathering. Even though the rock with everything in it was the strongest rock against weathering in all of the other tests. All of the other tests were weakening the rock up to the final test. After the final test, it was the one that was the most intact. The rock with everything in it was in theory the strongest, as it had the most substances compacted in it, but this made it weaker as well. It had the strength of all three substances compacted in it, but it also had each of the individual traits of those substances. Eg: the sandstone helped to degrade the rock dramatically in the acid.

Level 2 Misinterprets results/data; only superficially acknowledges results; evidence is lacking.

The sedimentary rocks, which contained sand in them, proved to be much more resistant to the effects of weathering. This was because the cement molecule, which was the plaster, has a larger surface area to hold on to the sand. My hypothesis was correct because the hydrochloric acid decreased the weight of all of the sedimentary rocks. The acid had a greater effect on the mixed material as well as the clay material. This may have been because the plaster, which worked to keep the bits together, was able to use the smaller pieces of material such as sand to connect better to make the rock stronger.

In support of learning continua

We are responsible for the progress of individual learners in each of the essential areas of the curriculum. Learning continua enable us to track progress over time in a way that our previous methods of assessment did not. Additional benefits are that students can set achievable learning goals; and learning is more easily recognised as a continuous process—the continua enabling students and teachers to bridge the discontinuities of different grades, teachers and ‘subjects’.

The use of developmental continua also generates important questions for school organisation. For example: How should students be grouped for learning? How can the learning continuum be used to ‘integrate’ learning in the various curriculum areas?

The whole school process of curriculum reconstruction has renewed focus and brought greater clarity about learning, which has, in turn, generated coherence around curriculum, assessment and school organisation.

Learning is a continuous process and school organisation, processes and procedures should not create discontinuities for the learner.

It is the professional responsibility of the school and the individual teacher to know both the level of achievement and the progress of the individual learner at any point in time. Learning continua facilitate learning for students and teachers.

References

Carrol, J B (1989). ‘The Carrol Model: A 25year retrospective & prospective view’, in Educational Researcher, 18 (1), 26–31.

Forster, M & Masters, G (1996). ACER Assessment Resource Kit, ACER, Vic.

Slavin, R E (1996). Education for All: Contexts of Learning, Swets & Zeitlinger, BV, Lisse.

Jan McClure is deputy principal at Ballarat and Clarendon College, Ballarat.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au