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Looking strategically (Reference No. 0855)

Sue Bewley

Assess to Learn Project

School Support Services

The University of Waikato

Hamilton

New Zealand.

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Glamorgan, 14-17 September 2005

ABSTRACT:

This paper is grounded in the professional development practices of the Waikato Assess to Learn Project providers and participants.

Improving student achievement is the key focus in the current Assess to Learn Programme. Improved student outcomes result from deliberate strategic teaching. This paper looks at how one school has developed and used rubrics to gather data and improve student achievement in oral language and develop skills of student self and peer assessment. It also looks at the relationship between shifts in teacher practiceand improved student achievement.

Introduction

At the beginning of 2003 I visited a rural, full primary school (years one to eight) to meet the principal and three teachers. This school, at least the principal of the school at that time, had requested whole school, in-depth professional development in the Assess to Learn project. This extended over a period of two years.

At the end of 2004 I met with the three teachers for a group interview. The interview came about at the end of the two years of working within the school in the Assess to Learn project. The teachers were the same three teachers as at the beginning of 2003,however the principal was the third one in the two year period and he had taken up his position near the end of the first year of the project.

At this meeting where I interviewed the three teachers, reflections, classroom practice, hugs and pizza bread were shared. This was a somewhat different environment to the one I had encountered at the beginning of the project. The resistance to change that we sometimes encounter had been evident then, however during the two year period the teachers saw the benefits of working as a learning community where learning loops were created, between teachers and students. They had opted to participate in a group interview rather than on an individual basis, which in itself was an indicator of how willing they now were to share their knowledge, beliefs and practices. This culture had been developing during the project through data sharing and interpretation and collaborative planning for student needs.

The Action

This school developed and used rubrics to gather data and improve student achievement in oral language and develop skills of student self and peer assessment.

Why was the action taken?

At the beginning of 2004 after one year of being involved with the Assess to learn professional development project the school set the following twostudent achievement targets;

  • all students would show progress on their initial oral language assessments
  • all children will be able to self assess and peer assess.

The ultimate long term goal is that the students will be able to report orally about their learning to their parents and families.

I asked the staff to consider two key questions.

  1. How will we know when the students have achieved these targets i.e. measure them?
  2. What are they going to do to enhance this achievement?

This led them to discuss and plan what teacher learning needed to take place in order to enhance student learning?

They decided that they needed to

  • improve their knowledge of oral language learning and progression
  • explore oral language assessment tools
  • develop an oral language rubric as a tool for assessment, teaching and learning.
  • become assessment literate in self and peer assessment
  • establish formative assessment practices in the classroom
  • teach students the skills and strategies of self and peer assessment.

What action did they take?

They planned as a whole school team for the first time for term one of the year (school terms are usually ten weeks long). This was important to these teachers who had identified ‘school wide planning and assessment’ as areas that they wanted to improve on through the Assess to Learn professional development project.

They viewed and discussed the New Zealand Curriculum Exemplars oral language matrix and the exemplars on the video to develop their own tool for oral language which they have called a rubric. This development was guided by the New Zealand Curriculum Exemplars along with their knowledge of the students at the school and what they want them to know, do and be. Identifying the long term goals for students helps to establish the learning that they need to do now. (Stoll, Fink & Earl, 2003).

The New Zealand Curriculum Exemplars are a national assessment tool that have been developed as a part of the National Assessment Strategy to help answer the questions ‘What do we mean by quality work?’ and ‘What might student progress look like?’ “They signal important things in students’ work for teachers to watch for, collect information about, and act on to support growth in student learning” (Chamberlain, M. March 2003).

The teachers then took their rubric and observed the students in classroom based oral language situations assessing them against the progress indicators on the rubric. These indicators have been organised according to the national curriculum levels and so the data could have both qualitative and quantitative uses based onwhat they saw the students could do and also the curriculum level within which they were achieving. It was interesting to notice at this stage that the teachers placed most of the importance on the quantitative use and proudly reported to their principal the number of children within each level. They saw this data gathering as meeting an accountability purpose. “That’s all the boss wanted from us” is quoted from one of the teachers at the end of year interview. This notion of the purpose of rubrics as being to slot students into a category is unfortunately still popular according to Lorna Earl who advocates the purpose which is concerned with helping students to learn (Earl, L. 2003).

As their professional learning advanced the teachers began to use the progress indicators and the data they had collected to establish the learning intentions for their students. They shared these learning intentions with the students and involved them in construction of the achievement criteria that would guide their learning and assessment in oral language. This was done through teacher and student modelling, discussion and exploring examples of the intended learning e.g. news readers on television. They could also have used the oral language video from the New Zealand Curriculum Exemplarsto show students what the learning looked like. Sharing of the learning intentions was done both visually and verbally in two of the three classrooms and in the other classroom the learning intentions and criteria were recorded in student workbooks, where they were used for individual student goal setting.

Having developed the practice of sharing the learning intentions with the students and involving them in their learning through some co-construction of achievement criteria the teachers wanted to involve students even more in their learning through self and peer assessment practices. Self and peer assessment is most effective when students are clear about the criteria for learning and ideally have been generated by both the teachers and the students.So self assessment is essential to learning and provides the time and environment for students to process and learn through reflection and making improvements (Black & Wiliam, 1998(b); Davies, A 2000; Davis, A, 2004; Sadler, 1989; Weeden, Winter, Broadfoot, 2002)

Through professional reading and discussion among the teachers, supported by myself as assessment adviser, the teachers developed their understanding of self and peer assessment and what it might look like. From this discussion they developed some progress indicators of self and peer assessment (Appendix A).Development of theirunderstanding of the formative purpose of self and peer assessment was evident in the conversations the teachers were having with their students.

What was discovered?

I wantedto find out how the rubrics have been used by the teachers and if the use has served or is serving to answer the questions asked of them about achieving and measuring the oral language and self and peer assessment targets. I was also interested to find out about the impacts of the action on student achievement and teacher practice in relation to the outcomes of the Assess to Learn (AtoL) project. I gathered this information through a semi-structured group interview with the three teachers.

Assess to Learn Project Outcomes

  1. to improve student learning and achievement.
  2. to shift teachers’ assessment knowledge and practice.
  3. to develop coherence between assessment processes, practices and systems so

that they promote better learning.

  1. to develop schools as learning communities to encourage cultures of continuous

improvement.

I came to the conclusion that the use of the school developed rubrics, originally intended for an assessment purpose, had also become teaching and learning tools and their use had impacted on student achievement and teacher practice.

“Blurring the distinction between instruction and assessment through the use of rubrics had a powerful effect on teaching, and in turn, on your students learning” (Andrade, 2000, p.6).

This was the essence of the conversation in the group interview with the teachers from which I have drawn my conclusion. The impactson student achievement of using the rubrics have been identified by the teachers as follows

  • the students are using learning language and talking about learning more often. This has been noticed both in the classrooms and the school playground.
  • the students are demonstrating increased confidence and participation in oral situations.
  • the students see the purpose of their oral language learning.
  • the students are able to self and peer assess orally now that they have the language.
  • the students have better relationships with each other.
  • the students are transferring their oral language learning to written language
  • the learning is more learner-centred.

The impacts on teacher practice of using the rubrics were found to be;

  • the teachers were using more effective questioning to encourage students to think and make their thinking visible through talk.
  • the teachers are more focussed on the intended learning which is more specific.
  • the teachers are sharing the learning intentions and constructing the achievement criteria with the students.
  • the teachers are involving the students in planning and goal setting.
  • the teachers are more interested in what their students know and can do, rather than just fitting them into a curriculum level i.e. assessment for improvement as more of a focus rather than assessment for accountability.
  • teacher feedback is more focussed and specific.
  • planning has been made easier

The next steps.

At the time of the interview the teachers had not collected post observational data. As planned theywould do this in November 2004 using the rubrics in the same way as they did at the beginning of the year. The senior students will also be given a copy each of the rubric to make a summative self assessment about their oral language learning as they did in March. Their teacher commented that they really didn’t know what to do at that stage and that it will be interesting to see how they get on this time.

These findings, along with the information from the group interview will be used to show achievement in the target areas and also to plan for learning next year. The rubrics as they have been developed and used will also be reviewed and further development may take place where the rubrics could show gradations of quality of achievement of the learning criteria. This would make analysis of data for statistical representation easier. It would also see the tool as more fitting to the definition of a rubric according to Andrade

“Although the format of an instructional rubric can vary, all rubrics have two features in common; (1) a list of criteria or ‘what counts’ and (2) gradations of quality, with descriptions of strong, middling and problematic student work” (2000, p. 22).

The possibility of creating rubrics with students is also a further development which could be considered.

The teachers are feeling more confident to apply this professional learning and improved practice to other areas of the curriculum more consciously as evidenced in these comments made by two of the teachers.

“I just love it, now I know what I am doing. That’s a really good place to be”

“We will develop it, it’s a learning process”

Conclusion

From the interview information it would seem that improved student outcomes has been an outcome of deliberate strategic teaching such as the development and use of rubrics in oral language and self and peer assessment. Further information using the rubrics as a tool for collecting post data to compare with the findings in March was to be gathered.

The interview information also shows that the use of these rubrics has impacted on teacher practice.

This school action which was put in place for the purpose of achieving and measuring student achievement in targets areas of oral language and self and per assessmenthas therefore, I believe, met its purpose and more. It has also contributed to teachers making shifts in their assessment knowledge, practices and beliefs. Coherence between classroom practices and school systems is developing through the more community focussed learning of the teachers. As a critical group they are planning and reflecting on their own professional development in relation to student learning. Their exploration of the key questions ‘what do we want our students to learn?’ and ‘how will we know when they have learned it?’ has driven their work as a professional learning community. (Costa & Kallick, 1993; DuFour, 2004). The creation of learning loops where improved teacher practice is impacting on student achievement and student learning is impacting on teacher practice can have profound consequences for sustaining improved teaching and leaning.

References.

Andrade, H. (1999) Using rubrics to promote thinking and learning.

Chamberlain, M (March 2003) The New Zealand Curriculum Exemplars. Ministry of Education letter to all New Zealand schools.

Costa,AL. Kallick, B (1993) Through the LensofaCriticalFriend, Educational
Leadership, Volume 51, no. 2 (October 1993), 49-51

Davies, A (2000) Making Classroom Assessment Work. Courtenay, BC: Connections Publishing.

Davis, A (2004) Raising achievement in writing-the integration of formative assessment principles in the writing lesson. Reading Forum, New Zealand No. 3 2004.

DuFour, R. (2004) What is a Professional Learning Community? Educational Leadership Ma Vol 61, No. 8, May 2004

Earl, L. (2003) Assessment as Learning Using Classroom Assessment To Maximise Student Learning. Corwin Press, Inc. Thousand oaks, California.

Larter, S. (1991) Benchmarks: One board’s response to the testing problem. FWTAO Newsletter, August/September 1991.

Linn, R. & Gronlund, N. (date unknown) Measuring Complex Achievement: Performance-based Asessments. Chapter 10. Measurement and Assessment in Teaching (7th edition).

Pickett, N. & Dodge, B. (2001). Rubrics for Web Lessons.

Sadler, R (1989) Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems. Instructional Science, 18,119-144.

Stoll, L.; Fink, D & Earl, L (2003). It’s About Learning (and it’s About Time) What’s in it for schools? Routledge Falmer, London and New York.

Weeden, P, Winter, J and Broadfoot, P(2002) Assessment: What’s in it for schools?RoutledgeFalmer, London. Chapter 4 How does self-assessment help pupils learn?

Looking strategically: Sue Bewley