1. Assessment for Learning
Mary James
Cambridge University

2. Assessment for Learning: in the spotlight
DfES Personalised Learning – first of 5 components
KS3 Strategy
QCA - website

3. Assessment for Learning...
…is a process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners and their teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go, and how best to get there.
(Assessment Reform Group, 2002)

4. What research says about AfL
A review of research showed:
raises standards (1 to 2 grades in GCSE)
there is room for improvement in our current practice
how to improve Assessment for Learning

5. Four key aspects of AfL Eliciting information Appropriate feedback
Ensuring learners understand quality
Peer and self-assessment

6. Practical strategies: questioning
Improving teacher questioning
closed v open
low-order v high-order
Generating questions with colleagues
‘Hot Seat’ questioning
extended interaction with one student to scaffold learning
other students learn vicariously
‘No hands up’ (except to ask a question)
Brainstorming what students know already
Increased wait time
Training students to pose questions
Class polls to review current attitudes towards an issue

7. Practical strategies: feedback
Comment-only marking
Focused marking
Explicit reference to criteria
Suggestions on how to improve
‘Strategy cards’ ideas for improvement
Not giving complete solutions
Re-timing assessment
(eg two-thirds-of-the-way-through-a-topic test)

8. Feedback and AfL
Feedback contributes to Assessment for Learning only if the information fed back to the learner is actually used by the learner in making improvements.

9. Practical strategies: sharing criteria with learners
Explaining learning objectives at start of lesson/unit
Criteria in students’ language
Posters of key words to talk about learning
eg describe, explain, evaluate
Planning/writing frames
Annotated examples of different standards to ‘flesh out’ assessment criteria
Opportunities for students to design their own tests

10. Practical strategies: peer and self-assessment
Students assessing their own/peers’ work
with marking schemes
with criteria
with exemplars
Identifying group weaknesses
Self-assessment of confidence and uncertainty
Traffic lights
End-of-lesson students’ review

11. What do teachers need to do?
Seek & interpret evidence of existing learning & performance (especially through questioning)
Provide feedback to help learners understand the strengths and weaknesses in their current performance, the standards aimed for, and how they might improve
Provide opportunities for learners to improve their work
Develop learners’ own capacity to understand standards and to self-assess using criteria and exemplars
These elements need to be planned as part of teaching

12. Challenges Convincing staff: teachers and support staff
Convincing pupils
Convincing parents

13. What we still don’t know
What implications implementation of AfL has for teachers’ professional development
How knowledge that teachers create about what works can be disseminated to others
What conditions in schools enable this to happen
The ESRC TLRP Learning How to Learn Project is researching these questions

14. Scale X This school now About you Scale Y
Teachers’ Assessment Practices
Scale Y
How important are these assessment practices for creating opportunities for students to learn?
Never true
Rarely true
Often true
Mostly true
Not important
Limited importance
Important
Crucial
Bad practice
I provide guidance to help my students assess their own work

15. Factors for [reported] classroom assessment practices
Making learning explicit
Promoting learning autonomy
Performance orientation

21. Cluster % N 1
17% 93 2
16% 87 3
20%
110 4
21%
115 5
19%
108
n = 558

22. Is teacher learning a key for change?
How are classroom AfL practices influenced by teacher learning practices?
Which teacher learning practices are most strongly related to AfL practices?
How do teachers and managers construe the relationship between teacher learning and the promotion of AfL?
These questions are the research questions that are the focus of the ‘Learning how to learn’ project

23. Dimensions of teacher learning
Inquiry: using and responding to different sources of evidence; carrying out joint research and evaluation with colleagues
Building social capital: learning, working, supporting and talking with one another
Critical and responsive learning: through reflection, self-evaluation, experimentation and responding to feedback.
These questions are the research questions that are the focus of the ‘Learning how to learn’ project

24. Multiple regression analyses
Dependent variables: classroom assessment practice factors
Independent variables: teachers’ learning practice factors.
Separate models were tested for teachers(n.558) and managers (n.480)
We wanted to find out how much variance in each of the classroom assessment practices were accounted for by teacher learning variables.
These questions are the research questions that are the focus of the ‘Learning how to learn’ project

25. Results for managers
All teacher learning variables are significantly related to ‘Making learning explicit
‘Inquiry’ is the only teacher learning variable related to ‘Promoting learning autonomy’.
‘Building social capital’ and ‘Critical and responsive learning’ have weak but significant negative relationships to ‘performance orientation’
These questions are the research questions that are the focus of the ‘Learning how to learn’ project

26. Tentative conclusions
AfL practices are underpinned most strongly by teachers learning in the context of their classrooms.
Emphasis on building social capital without a clear classroom focus does not appear to be strongly related to change in classroom practice.
Both individual and social processes of teacher learning are important conditions for the promotion of AfL in classrooms.
These questions are the research questions that are the focus of the ‘Learning how to learn’ project

27. A deputy head explains:
“Well it won’t just happen. … some of these questions imply that it’s a sort of finished business. ‘We know about that now. You just do rich questioning, do the self and peer-assessment, do whatever it might be, feedback without marks and that’s all sorted.’ Well it isn’t, and that’s actually at the heart of it. It’s a development of permanent reflection and refinement and there’s no end if you like. You can’t reach the stage where you can say ‘Ok, done that, got there, sorted, I’ve done my learning and now I’m teaching ok’, the profession should never be like that anyway and no profession should actually. For one thing the external circumstances are changing, but also, what we understand about learning is changing all the time. It’s what we understand professionally: we as a collective profession of teachers; or what we as individuals understand; or what we with that particular group of students understand. It keeps changing, it’s quite a dynamic process. And I know that approaches which work with one class may need to be subtly changed in order to work with another class. So if you like, what you’re learning is judgement and you’re learning more about how to judge within a set of principles – what works and what doesn’t work.”

28. Information and support at web site: www.learntolearn.ac.uk
An Introduction to the Work of the Learning how to Learn Project
Workshop Materials for Schools
Assessment for Learning in Action
The Level 2 Toolbox