Assessment and learning Dylan Wiliam King’s College London

Why are employers unhappy? Things are getting better:  average IQ has increased (Flynn effect)  school achievement has increased But:  needs of work have increased more  link between IQ and exam results is weakening (can’t use exam results as proxies for ‘intelligence’)  teaching to the test has narrowed the curriculum (can’t generalise to things that weren’t tested)

Time Scores Lake Wobegon All the women are strong, all the men are good- looking, and all the children are above average X

Improvements are limited Scores on national curriculum tests in mathematics and English for 11-year olds are increasing Scores on other, comparable, tests have remained constant So, improvement is limited to those things that are actually tested

Improvements are transient Proportion of 11 year olds achieving level 4 in mathematics has increased steadily over the last five years According to Ofsted, 25% of those who achieved level 4 at the end of year 6 fail to achieve the same level at the end of year 7. So, achievement has improved at age 11, but not at age 12.

Effects on students High-stakes tests  increase the link between success and self- esteem  decrease motivation for low-attainers  send the message that only what is tested is important  encourage the development of shallow learning  encourage a performance orientation rather than a mastery orientation to learning

...the model that says ‘learn while you are at school the skills that you will apply during your lifetime’ is no longer tenable. These skills will be obsolete by the time you get into the workplace and need them, except for one skill – the skill of being able to learn. It is the skill of being able, not to give the right answer to questions about what you were taught in school, but to make the right response to situations that are outside the scope of what you were taught in school. We need to produce people who know how to act when they are faced with situations for which they were not specifically prepared.(Papert, 1998) The only 21st century skill

Successful education The test of successful education is not the amount of knowledge that a pupil takes away from school, but his appetite to know and his capacity to learn. If the school sends out children with the desire for knowledge and some idea how to acquire it, it will have done its work. Too many leave school with the appetite killed and the mind loaded with undigested lumps of information. The good school- master (sic) is known by the number of valuable subjects which he declines to teach. Sir Richard Livingstone, President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 1941

How do students make sense of this? Attribution (Dweck, 1986)  Personalization (internal v external)  Permanence (stable v unstable)  Essential that students attribute both failures and success to internal, unstable causes (it’s down to you, and you can do something about it) Views of ‘ability’  fixed (IQ)  incremental (untapped potential)  Essential that teachers inculcate in their students a view that ‘ability’ is incremental rather than fixed (by working, you’re getting smarter)

Predicting success Source: Autumn package (2001), DfES

Target-setting in schools Targets  Government sets targets for LEAs  LEAs set targets for schools  Schools set targets for teachers But  These targets are useless for teaching Levels are too coarse GCSE grades are not criterion-referenced  Targets for students must be ‘bottom up’ Schools need coherent assessment systems that support summative and formative functions of assessment

What do students & teachers need? Students need to know:  where they are in their learning  where they are going  how to get there Teachers need to know  where students are in their learning  what to do about it When assessment supports all these, it is formative

Formative and summative Fine-scaled data that supports formative uses can be aggregated to serve a summative function Aggregate summative data cannot be dis- aggregated to identify learning needs Assessment for formative purposes should be the foundation of all assessment in schools

Classroom assessment Rich questioning Feedback to support learners Sharing criteria with learners Peer- and self-assessment

Questioning Coherence of discourse  Hot-seat questioning  Three-part questions  ‘No hands up’ (except to ask a question)  Netball rather than ping-pong Kinds of questions  Balance of closed v open  Balance of low-order v high-order  Increased wait-time for higher-order questions Brainstorming what students know/believe already Training students to pose questions

Feedback Comment-only marking  Comments to cause thinking  What happens as a result? 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)

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 and marking schemes

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  Smiley faces End-of-lesson students’ review

Formative assessment Assessment for learning is not the same as formative assessment  Assessment for learning is a description of purpose  Formative assessment is a description of function  Frequent feedback is not necessarily formative  Feedback that causes improvement is not necessarily formative Assessment is formative only if the information fed back to the learner is used by the learner in making improvements To be formative, assessment must include a recipe for future action

Changing the focus From quality control to quality assurance Assuring the quality of learning while it is happening, rather than after it is finished Regulating learning, rather than regulating activity When this happens, attainment rises