Assessment validity

Over the past few weeks I have been part of several interesting discussions on the topic of cultural validity in assessment. There is so much to talk about here but I will offer just a short few thoughts now and aim to follow up with greater insight as I construct my own understanding over next few weeks.

The experience that prompted me to write this post occurred yesterday at my school. I was helping out with the assessment of some prospective students that have applied to join our school. I was asked to conduct a reading diagnostic with a student who happened to come from China. The goal of this task is to ascertain a broad range of the student's literacy and language development. This information is useful to handover to classroom teachers so that the can develop a profile of their new students as efficiently as possible. This particular diagnostic hails from North America and, as such, contains several references to North American culture and life in general. I was asked whether this particular student demonstrated comprehension of the reading material at a D level. My response was that she could read this text with fluency and was able to answer the related comprehension. This was true, she could read it with comprehension, however I explained to her the context of the details. In the story a skunk causes an array of animals to run away. I know that this is because skunks use their odour as a defensive weapon against potential threats. The reason that I know this is that I've grown up with several cultural influences via the media and in print that have allowed me to establish this in my own mind. For a 6 year old girl from rural China this is not relevant or significant for her life. I don't believe that its fair to judge a child's ability to comprehend something on content that is completely foreign to them.

Benign as the intention may be, the data gained is not useful. Had I not explained the relevance of the skunk to the story, the student would not have got the question correct and could possibly have been labelled something that she is not. I wonder how often this happens - particularly in international schools. If we take diagnostic reading programs, for example. Although teachers may have an educated, research-based opinion on what an appropriate process is to learn how to read, if the measure that is being used to assess achievement within the process is faulty then the process itself is invalid.

To quote Guillermo Solano-Flores (pg. 3):

"Tests are cultural artifacts. They are part of a complex set of  culturally established instructional and accountability practices; they are created with the intent to meet certain social needs or to comply with the mandates and legislation established in a society; they are written in the language used by those who develop them; their content is a reflection of the skills, competencies, forms of knowledge, and communication styles valued by a society - or the influential groups of that society; and they assume among test-takes full familiarity with the contexts used to frame problems, the ways in which questions are worded, and the expected ways to answer those questions."



Assessing the Cultural Validity of Assessment Practices: An introduction. In: Cultural Validity in Assessment: Addressing Linguistic and Cultural Diversity. 2011. Routledge, NY, USA.

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Documentation

Over our recent break here in Korea our Early Years Coordinator at BHA attended a workshop with Fiona Zinn that explored the documentation of student learning. Our Early Years program is inspired by the Reggio approach and considers documenting student learning to be a key pillar of this. Laura returned from the workshop full of ideas that she wants to implement with the team and today she shared some of these with the specialist teachers about how we can develop the framework of our portfolios.

We consider the use of portfolios to be an important element of our assessed curriculum. They provide students and parents with valuable information on progress, feedback and an opportunity for reflection. As the IB states in Making the PYP Happen...'a portfolio is a celebration of an active mind at work. It provides a picture of each student’s progress and development over a period of time both as individual and group learners. It enables students to reflect with teachers, parents and peers in order to identify their strengths and growth as well as areas for improvement, and then to set individual goals and establish teaching and learning plans.' (pg. 50)

To develop our approach to portfolios, Laura spoke about framing them around three areas:

(1) The voice of the teacher - this could come in an explanation of the task that the students engaged in. It could also discuss the type of play that occurred during the task. This section might have more 'teacher talk' as the purpose is unpacked.

(2) The voice of the student - this section could include photos or videos of the students. An opportunity to record a reflection would also be represented here. The opportunities are vast in this section as they allow for student input into the documentation. What ownership does the student have over the learning in the sample? How are they reflected in the work?

(3) Analysis of learning - this section highlights  the skills, knowledge and conceptual understandings that are addressed in the learning experience. How are the students achieving this?

I think this is a nice framework to reference when we think about developing portfolio pieces. There is plenty of scope for creativity in the way that this is interpreted, however, the focus is firmly on the student and the learning. Laura also lead the discussion around aspects such as graphics, colours and fonts. Her explanation here was that the colour should come from the students themselves instead of from things such as banners, borders and zany fonts. We also discussed the use of images as a form of communication, especially considering that 90% of our student and parent population do not understand English easily yet.

This was a great opening discussion and one that I look forward to continuing with the team as we unpack our beliefs and understandings regarding documentation. I'm hopeful that the rest of the Junior School will be inspired by the work of this group.

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Why don't we do what we do?

When I was in Primary School I remember (on more than one occasion) being inundated with information that turned out to be completely irrelevant and useless to the task at hand. My teacher was looking for an opportunity to allow the class to engage in critical analysis and debate over what was relevant in our learning. Many of us simply took what we were given and tried to make the most of it but some figured out what was going on. It was an effective way to help us consider that not all information we receive is to be believed and that we need to think for ourselves in order to prioritise and seek relevance. I believe that sometimes schools fall into the same trap that my peers and I did all those years ago. The current trend of results-by-testing is influencing the world of education and the information being delivered to schools, in many cases, lacks relevancy.

PISA, ISA, TIMSS and other similar assessments are widely considered the best 'progressive' measures of 'how a school is doing'. In the absence of alternative measures, schools bend their philosophies to allow these sorts of tests. The often argued strengths of these assessments is that they bring an element of comparison between schools. They can be used as a measure to see how your school matches with world or regional trends. Certainly in my experience, through working in international IB schools around the world, it is primary parents who find this information most interesting and useful as it helps them to keep track of whether their children will be able to cognitively assimilate into their home environment should they move back. Other suggested benefits range from teacher accountability, predicted future success and student motivation.

However, is this accurate?

Perhaps. It is fairly easy to construct thoughtful discourse, based on current research, to counter the arguments on motivation, feedback and the effects of autonomy on productive output. I would like to discuss the comparison reason. This is one that I find being given more frequently, as if it serves as some sort of justification to allow this sort of assessment practice to take place despite it not aligning with school goals or strategic vision.

Governments in many countries use the sort of data that PISA et al. provide as a basis for reform. If their curricula are designed around these models of statistical analysis then there's every chance that the best way to elicit data from their students is through the use of subject specific standardised achievement tests. Some national curricula fit this model. Some used to and are changing. Some are quite the opposite. Yet an overwhelming majority, regardless of their policies on education, use these tests to track their progress against each other. They're also used, as mentioned before, by many international schools (that are by and large devoid of government regulations and restrictions) to see how they stack up against each other.

The basis of the PYP is a theoretical and experiential belief in qualitative research. The early initiators of the ISCP (which later became the PYP) looked to theorists such as Bruner, Gardner, Vykotsky and Piaget, those that aligned with their perspectives, experiences and beliefs as educators. For schools that follow a true PYP approach, these tests are foreign. The time spent preparing for them is wasted and the data that they receive back from them can be easily misconstrued. Some schools look at the setup: criterion referenced (heaven forbid that a school is using norm-referenced tests); will provide us with feedback on our students' performance; helps us to validate our curriculum - tick, tick, tick, let's do it. If we look closer, however, we see that there are not as many common threads as first thought:

(1) Criterion referencing is usually generated for specific grades, whereas the PYP supports the notion of non-linear phases of learning. The method isn't aligned to beliefs about learning and there is a clear gap in the planning-teaching-assessing cycle.*NOTE* I accept that there are PYP schools that organise their curricula into grade level expectations.

(2) These sorts of large-scale assessments are graded externally and can take a long time from being written for the results to be returned. There is little value in receiving feedback on a performance completed three months prior.

(3) Assessment beliefs in the PYP are built around the notion that skills and knowledge learned in context lead to the construction of conceptual understandings. These are what teachers make evaluations on. There is little hope for a standardised assessment to offer any sort of authenticity or context when it is being administered in many different places around the world. PYP teachers construct contextual scenarios for their assessments, based in real-life problems and issues. Yet they then receive data based on cookie cutter assessments given completely out of context, and, in some cases, that only judge one's ability to memorize than to think critically. Then they're expected to respond to it.

(4) Many of these tests collect information on Language, Mathematics and Science. Sometimes Social Studies too but the first three are generally always in there. These are valuable disciplines but there are many others as well that also offer a great deal of opportunity for cognitive stimulation. Are these not important? The PYP maintains a very strong stance in the importance of a holistic education. By subscribing to these assessments a school is valuing certain types of skills, knowledge and understanding as being more important than others.

Research that quotes data received from these sorts of tests should not be used to make decisions about the future directions of these programs. I'm not anti-data. If we are able to collect relevant and accurate data about successes that other schools and/or countries have, in ways that support our beliefs behind teaching, learning and assessment, and it can be made available so that others can learn from it, then we should. My questioning lies in our ability measure achievement qualitatively rather than the current obsession with quantitative measures. Why don't we collect and use data based on the types of assessment practices that we believe in?

A new renaissance

Last week I found this article via twitter that gathered the opinions of a variety of people (including one of the Muppets). They were all asked what the one tangible idea about education they felt was worth spreading. Their answers were interesting to read and ranged from removing homework, to differentiation, to teacher training to university graduation.

The university opinion stuck in my mind for a couple of reasons - (i) I believe that this has a 'tail wags the dog' effect on education where many reform movements get stifled by the time they reach the stage of higher education because of the requirements to enter places such as Universities. If students need to be ranked in order to get into these places then society has generally fallen back on the only way they know how to do this - through summative testing. There seems to be a slow push towards a more formative approach over the past 10 years (give or take) with some education systems placing greater emphasis on the year (or in some cases years) long work of students. Some higher education institutions also now place greater value on 'non-academic' (for use of a better word at 6am in the morning!) entrance qualifications, such as service programs. Others are moving away from exam-based entrance results, preferring to observe a larger snapshot of student work through alternative reporting tools, such as portfolios. This is generally a positive move in my opinion.
(ii) I read a post just this morning on a friends blog where she talked about a university revolution - where universities face transformations over the next 20 years. You can read more about it here.

Have a read through the list of ideas here and see which ones interest you the most. Whichever you choose, it appears that we are approaching or are already in a renaissance period of education, where interest is renewed and many ideas are generated. These periods can be confusing for education practitioners due to the large amounts of new information available to them. They have to decide where they lie in terms of these new perspectives and practices. But it is not only teachers - and this is what makes it so difficult. If there is an Art renaissance then the artists themselves are redefining what art means and the consumers do just that - consume. This has an affect on the period at the time but doesn't really impact on those people's (the consumers) day to day lives. But in education our students aren't merely consumers - they are active builders of the renaissance. What happens every day can affect them for their entire life. They have years to experience the development of Impressionism but they only get one year of Grade Five. So we have to remind ourselves that we're not only going through these changes ourselves, but that our actions also impact the lives of many students, parents, friends - and everyone has an opinion.

So renaissance periods can be difficult times. But they're also very exciting.

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The Seeds of Growth

This is an article that I recently contributed to our school newsletter:

The Seeds of Growth: Why creativity is essential in education.

We live in a world that is changing faster than ever before and facing challenges that are unprecedented. These sorts of challenges require innovative ideas and approaches. As such, many governments, companies and people are interested in innovation. The difficulty with innovation is that it cannot be just turned on like a switch. Innovation is a process that involves three parts:

• Imagination - The power to bring to mind the things that aren’t here in the present.
• Creativity - Applied imagination. The process of putting your imagination to work and having original ideas that have value.
• Innovation - Putting original ideas into practice. [1] [8] 

Education, in a nutshell, has three main roles: 

Economic: To provide the skills required to earn a living and be economically productive; 

Cultural: To deepen understanding of the world; 

Individual: To develop individual talents and sensibilities. [8] 

If these roles are examined through the lens of creativity then it becomes difficult to separate them.

Economic - Business leaders constantly promote the desire to hire creative, innovate employees who can work in teams and communicate well. In 2008, and again in 2012, IBM conducted a survey of over 1000 CEOs around the world, asking them what were the keys to their future and prolonged success.  A summary of their answers shows that top performers: 

1. Hunger for and embrace change, rather than react to it.
2. Innovate beyond customer imagination to reach the technologically sophisticated.
3. Seek new ways to organise globally to tap worldwide talent. [5] [6] [10]

The economy is asking for graduates of education who are competent in these things. In a world where over-qualification is becoming more of an issue, businesses aim to recruit the best staff possible and they look closely for these attributes. Educating the population through an out-dated, industrialised model will not achieve the economic goals it sets out to. So, instead of educating our students with the same model as the past 100 years, we must approach it in new ways. This means that some of the things you see happening at school will look different to what parents may remember them to be like when they were younger [1] [8].

Cultural - The world is becoming more connected, complicated and challenging.  Finding ways to live together is becoming more interdependent and dynamic. As the world becomes smaller, the ability to collaborate and understand how others feel becomes more and more important. A major part of innovation and creative thinking is the aspect of collaboration and working in teams. This is not to say that new ideas are thought of exclusively with other people, but generally ideas and innovations are created and improved on through the critical feedback of others. Focussing on creativity in education means that students have opportunities to develop the key skills of collaboration. Without these skills, cultural education becomes more difficult to achieve [1] [8].

Individual - Education is also about helping people find their own course in life. It is about helping them find what has value and meaning for them. It is of course important to have some commonalities across all schooling systems - everyone needs to be able to read, write and add. However, it is also important to encourage human capacity amongst all of the students we teach. This means we need to breakdown the traditional ‘academic’ and ‘non-academic’ dichotomy and value the passions and expertise of all. Everyone has talents, inspirations and skills and education should allow these to flourish [3] [4] [7] [8] [11]. 

It was stated earlier that education must be approached in new ways. In PYP schools (and other similar programs) we follow a curriculum framework and philosophy of learning that actively encourages the development of essential attitudes, one of which is creativity. We allow elements of choice for our students in their learning. We assess them individually and as teams. We give them opportunities to play, explore and pursue personal inquiries. Creativity is about making connections and developing relationships. In PYP schools we have a transdisciplinary curriculum where students are encouraged to seek connections between what they are learning and how it relates to the world, themselves and to others [2]. We utilise new technologies that present fresh possibilities for creative work. We strive to create environments that encourage risk-taking.

As human beings we have an extraordinary power - the ability to imagine things outside of our current experiences and to express them in forms that other people can engage with and grasp. No other species on Earth has this ability. If you’re pursuing original thinking then there are a lot of wrong turns. Failure is not the right way to describe this - it is experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t. If you live in a culture where you’re frightened of failing then innovation and creativity starts to be inhibited. If fresh thinking and new ideas have less emphasis, and the focus shifts to ‘getting the right answer’, then people become frightened of making mistakes and being wrong. If you’re afraid to try something new then you’ll never come up with anything original. [1] [7] [8] [9]

As teachers, we endeavour to create conditions that provide our students with the freedom to be creative. Our aim is to give children the opportunity to allow their skills, knowledge and capabilities to shine.

REFERENCES:

[1] All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education (1999). National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education. 

[2] Boyer, EL. (1995). The Basic School: A Community of Learning. San Francisco, USA. The Carnegie Foundation for

the Advancement of Teaching.

[3] Edwards, C, Gandini, L and Forman, G. (1998). The Hundred Languages of Children. Greenwich, Connecticut,

USA. Ablex Publishing Corporation.

[4] Gardner, H. (1993). Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice. New York, USA. Basic Books.

[5] IBM CEO Case study compendium. Published by IBM Corporation. Available for download at:

http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/gbe03535usen/GBE03535USEN.PDF

[6] Leading Through Connections: Highlights of the Global Chief Executive Officer Study. (2012). Published by IBM Corporation. Available for download at: http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/gbe03486usen/GBE03486USEN.PDF

[7] McGrath, J. & Davies, D. (2012) The Future Will Not Be Multiple Choice. Published by Mind Shift. Available for download at: http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/02/video-the-future-will-not-be-multiple-choice/

[8] Robinson, K. (2001) Out of Our Minds: Learning to be creative. Capstone Publishing, Chichester, West Sussex, UK.

[9] Stanford Breakfast Briefings - The Enterprise of the Future. Available for download at:

https://breakfastbriefings.stanford.edu/briefings/enterprise-future

[10] The Enterprise of the Future: Life Sciences Industry Edition (2008). Published by IBM corporation. Available for download at:

https://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/bus/pdf/gbe03080-usen-ceo-ls.pdf

[11] Vygotsky, L. (1999). Thought and Language. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The MIT Press.

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Quad Blogging action research

Quad Blogging is an activity which involves four classes communicating together by commenting on each other’s work. The process works by each class taking it in turns to comment on each other’s work. In advance, the teachers nominate one class to be the focus each week and students from the other three classes browse through the work providing quality comments as they go. Then the focus rotates to the next class and you carry on in that pattern. 


Over the past four weeks my class has been involved in a quad blogging action research project that has included students from Grades 3 - 5 from schools in Thailand, USA, Czech. Republic and Switzerland. Along with Maggie Hos-McGrane (the IT Team Leader in the Elementary school), who has been acting in a coaching role for me and my students, we have guided the students through the processes involved with the quad blog. During this time we have been observing, discussing and researching whether or not this experience can improve the writing skills of students, and offer new ideas and insights for teachers into the instruction of writing in (and out of!) their classrooms.

Quad Blogging Trailer from langwitches on Vimeo.


Some potential roadblocks that were suggested at the beginning of the project were that whether or not I would be able to incorporate blogging experiences into my daily language time in the classroom. Good blogging requires first  having to read the posts you are looking at before you decide either what to comment on, or whether or not this post might inspire or encourage you to write a post of your own. Luckily, I didn't find it difficult to dedicate time in my schedule to allow for reading of the blogs. I found that the skills required for quad blogging are transferrable to other forms of writing so didn't see this as an 'extra' thing to add onto the timetable. My students were enthusiastic about reading their peers' blogs because they had an authentic purpose and and also made personal connections throughout the quad blogging process.


The writing side of the experience related to the reading in the sense that many of my students wanted to leave comments on people's blogs that they'd viewed before, or if that person had written on their blog previously. By having a contextual purpose for their writing, they not only thought carefully about what they were writing (in terms of content), but they also showed great enthusiasm to write. Many students chose to comment on several other students' blogs as well as their designated buddy. 


We were also able to refer to two rubrics that highlighted some important aspects of both blogging and commenting. These rubrics allowed the students to self-extend their own writing by reflecting on whether or not they had included all elements that were required to be an 'expert blogger'. Several students also commented in their reflection that they felt that by having the rubric accessible to them (I posted it on the class blog), they were able to take their time and think about what certain things meant. This helped them to understand more about blogging. 


The students also reflected on some other things that they felt like the process helped to improve their writing: 

• "It allowed me to get some more feedback about my writing"
• "It helped me to learn new words"
• "I improved at writing because I had to make sure my spelling and grammar were aways correct because everyone was reading it"
• "I became much better at keeping a conversation going, which I wasn't good at before"
• " I was able to make some connections to my other writing. Like, when I write a story and in the story there is some information about something, it's like in blogging when I make a hyperlink to another blog post"
• "It helped me to read some other blog posts so I could see what good writing looked like"

Although at the start of this project I predicted that it would help my students to improve their writing skills, I never expected it to be this successful. The comments and conversations provided by my students showed to me the widespread impact that this has had on their writing. By providing a real purpose for the students, the volume of their writing increased dramatically. Perhaps not as much for the students in my class who were already prolific writers, but for those who are sometimes reluctant to write it gave them a great opportunity and purpose. It also incorporated several other useful skills, such as meta-cognition, time management and collaboration. By having this during the second half of the year, I was able to ensure that my students were tech-savvy enough to be able to self-monitor their own blogs, although I believe that this could also have been done during the first half of  the year as most students are familiar and capable with this sort of technology - it's part of their everyday life. 


Having the IT help was certainly beneficial. I'm reasonably competent with the technology we were using so this allowed Maggie to take on more of an observing role, which was great for the assessment process. She was able to capture the students on video going through the processes in real time and this helped to provide a great insight into their thoughts and understandings. She also went through each student's blog and took screen shots of each of their comments. This allowed us to compare their writing at the beginning and end of the process - and the results were clear to see. However, for those teachers not confident with this sort of technology then this coaching role would look different.


Although I would have previously already recommended quad blogging to any teacher, now I am thinking that we should be really insisting that something along the lines of this sort of learning experience really should happen in classrooms. The benefits were clear to see and I'm looking forward to continuing this with other classes that I've connected with before.

Questioning by design

Last week all of the staff at my school were able to spend some valuable time with an educational consultant who specialises in all things PYP. The Team Leaders were able to discuss strategies to foster shared leadership within our teams, as an entire elementary staff we examined conceptual learning and how it looks in our classes, and in grade level groups we discussed the importance of formative assessment and how we use the information it provides in order to drive learning forward for our students.

By using formative assessment data in a timely manner, teachers can individualise and differentiate the learning that takes place in their classrooms. This means that there is no specific teaching roadmap to follow for a particular unit or lesson. The learning may start in one way and take multiple directions before it reaches it's final destination. Some students may take these paths on their own and other times teachers might find that the same path is suitable for several students. When teachers negotiate the learning with their students, provide feedback in effective ways and differentiate accordingly, meaningful understanding can result.

These things won't just happen naturally, they have to be planned for. The PYP bases their unit planning document on Wiggins and McTighes's work in Understanding By Design. Part of UbD calls on practitioners to 'begin with the end in mind'. This means that they should know what it is they want their students to know, understand and be able to do and then plan appropriately in order to allow them to achieve these goals. 

The PYP planner asks teachers to consider the particular strands of the trans-disciplinary theme that  their unit will address. They then consider the key and related conceptual lenses that they will explore their learning through and develop central idea (big understanding). In the same section of the planner, teachers are required to consider the ways that they can summatively assess students' understanding. The planner provides guiding questions, such as: What are the possible ways of assessing students' understanding of the central idea? What evidence, including student-initiated actions, will we look for?

After reflecting on my practice in regards to my own use of formative assessment, I think my team andI have sometimes been making an error during this stage of the planning. We regularly plan our entire summative assessment task at this stage - a practice that has been adopted through planning many units of inquiry at various schools. But if we are using formative assessment correctly then the direction of the learning could conceivably change from the start of the unit to the time when the summative assessment is addressed. This means that the task that was designed at the beginning of the unit may not be applicable by the time the students come around to completing it. Have you ever experienced a situation similar to this? I have. 

So at this stage of the planning, instead of designing a complete task that we hope will still be appropriate for the students by the time we reach it, I think it is more important to simply be clear on the type of understanding that we want the students to achieve. As the summarising stages of the UOI are approaching, teachers can analyse where the students are with their understanding and  design a task that will be appropriate for them. This may mean an adjustment in the method or context for showing understanding than what may have been initially thought of at the start of the unit. However, it is important to remember that the purposes of this type of assessment remain the same.

One possible method of approaching this that my grade level team will be using in our next UOI is to develop an indicator scale based around the central idea. This involves us creating a 6-step set of descriptors that indicate the level a student is operating at with their current understanding. We'll still be using the guiding questions provided on the planner, including elements of these in each descriptor wherever possible. This will help us to see how the thinking of individual students is progressing and will enable us to question, discuss and problem-pose specifically for them in order to move their learning forward. It will also provide us with an insight into how the summative assessment task might be approached for each student. We hope this will provide another opportunity to expand the scope of access to the curriculum for all of our students.

The Education Miracle

This morning I read a very interesting newspaper article about educational performance of different nations. Its focus was on the recent high performance of Asian nations - namely Korea, Singapore and China and looks at their rise to the top of the international student rankings. It states, however, that this rise hasn't come without a cost.

These three nations, among others, have regularly topped these sorts of ranking tables in recent years. As a result, education reformers in search of similar results look to these countries' curricula for inspiration on how to enhance their own programs. However, according to Dr. Yong Zhao, from the University of Oregon, more attention needs to be paid to the other results that these systems yield.

The article highlights three key educational points:

(i) The development of the whole child - Dr. Zhao highlights the existence, in these systems, of high levels of psychological stress, the strong directional focus from the teacher to the student, and a lack of social experiences, which can lead to poor emotional development in a child. He also mentions the children's lack of confidence, for example, creativity, entrepreneurial spirit and imagination. To claim that an over-reliance on purely an academic focus - however that may be defined - is detrimental to a student's development is not ground breaking news. However, what still astounds me is some people's (and I include teachers, parents, students and policy makers in this group) fascination with academic scores and results. People talk about the importance of developing the 'whole child' but I sometimes get the impression that few truly believe it and even less actually act on it.

(ii) The over-reliance on standardised testing results - Dr. Zhao states that standardised test scores are ''easily manipulated if you pay for college prep schools''. Long used to measure student achievement or academic ability (and more recently for other means), there is regular discussion about the methods and uses of standardised testing in many different settings. The use of standardised testing results to allocate funding, student class or level placement, and teacher performance has wreaked havoc among several countries with one of the most notable examples being the No Child Left Behind Act in the United States. Despite all this, Government representatives still seem to view this as the most effective way of evaluating many parts of a school's teaching and learning. And to be perfectly honest, it's hard to blame them. Many elementary school teachers advocate the end of standardised testing, citing student rates of development, over-reliance on factual knowledge over deeper understanding, and multiple intelligences as key arguments against the use of these assessment methods. But many Universities still base their student admission criteria on these sorts of tests. So, inevitably, as the student progresses through their schooling years, they need to learn how to perform on such assessments. It pleased me to read the section in the article that mentioned how some Universities are changing their selection process and criteria to not only rely on academic performance. They are doing this because students are performing well on standardised tests to enter their universities, only to find themselves being 'dragged back into the pack' once they're in. It is a small start, but these realisations need to come from the top (ie. universities and colleges) in order for the changes to fully filter through the complete educational life of a child.

(iii) The importance of collaborative working skills - The article also states that many of the students that enter 'top' universities are leaving without jobs in any of the Fortune 500 companies that they expect to gain. 'People talk about how they lack confidence, how they lack entrepreneurial skills, how they lack the ability to work with a group'. These skills need to be fostered and a focus on 'skill and drill' style learning experiences does little to enhance them. This loops back to the first point of developing the whole child but highlights that fact that it doesn't simply stop after elementary school. These skills need to be developed throughout a child's entire education.

It is sometimes difficult to have the vision and courage to change the ways of the past, especially when they are still used in many circumstances or if the reasons for the change are not completely understood. Fast disappearing are the days where mastering one discipline in one way would be enough to guarantee the successful completion of a task - or even a career. Today's workforce favours employees who boast a skill set consisting of creative thinking, the ability to collaborate, and the capacity to synthesise and transfer knowledge to new and related fields. It is the students that possess these skills that are the real miracles of education.

What? Why? How?

There are many techniques teachers can employ in order to create effective assessment pieces. When writing summative assessment tasks, or culminating performances, a trap that sometimes occurs is that the piece is superficial and there is no opportunity for students to demonstrate deep understanding. One way of ensuring that this doesn’t happen is to use a simple formula called ‘What, Why How’ (Erikson, L., 2002).

Each subtitle is used to formulate the assessment task. First, you ask what it is you want the students to do. Erikson suggests using a higher-level cognitive verb, such as analyse, evaluate or investigate when writing this part. For example, ‘analyse the development of technology in sports performance in the 21^st Century’. Next is the why part, and this can be prefaced by the words ‘in order to’. We are asking, ‘why we are performing this task?’ What are the transferrable lessons to be gained from this? For example, ‘in order to understand how technology advances performance’. Finally we state how we want our students to demonstrate their understanding. Erikson states that this is the most important step, as we need to ensure that we are asking our students to demonstrate the ‘why’ as well as the ‘what’ of the task. If we only ask them to show their understanding of the ‘what’ then the assessment piece will be shallow and not provide opportunity for deeper understanding.

Following the theme in the above example, students could be asked to explain (through a choice of mediums) how technological advances have shaped the development of a product they have created. They could design the product themselves or pretend they have invented one that already exists. The important part, however, is that they can explain the relationship of technology to the impact of their product. This way, they wouldn’t only have to be limited to sport and they could call upon other areas to compliment their understanding. Transport, leisure and communication are just three examples that could be used. This way we are not just asking them to list facts about technological advances in sports performance, but to explain their understanding at a conceptual level.

Using this format allows teachers to ensure that the assessment pieces provoke deep understanding. One of my goals for this year is to revise, along with my team, the assessment pieces in my grade level to ensure that they are facilitating deeper levels of conceptual understanding and not just focusing on facts. This will lead to more meaningful assessment tasks and aid in raising standards.

Behind the scenes

As part of a maths assessment for a unit on fractions, my students were required to plan, resource, teach and evaluate a lesson focussing on one of the topics we'd addressed in class. Today they shared their lessons and taught a small group of their peers.

The students had the choice of what topic they would teach - they could combine topics if they were related. They could also decide at which grade level their lesson would be directed towards. Four students surveyed some Grade Three students to find out what they knew about their topic before they planned their lesson.

They were welcome to use any of the available tools in the classroom in order to deliver their lesson. Quite a few students saw the effectiveness of using the SMARTBoard and prepared resources to use on that. This was great as we've only had the boards for this year and it showed me that they felt very comfortable with it. Others enjoyed applying their knowledge through games and created their own versions of maths games that would suit their lesson. Another group created process and word problems with extra challenges at the end. A whole range of learning styles at work! The process needs some improving before I try it again but all of the students did a fabulous job and were very enthusiastic about their lessons. The fact that they had invested their own time into the development of their lesson helped them to form a stronger connection and I was able to see how well they understood their topic as they presented it.

One of the things that a lot of the students found difficult was the ability to have everything as prepared as possible so that the lesson would flow freely. Some students were unable to engage in much teaching as they spent too long setting up and their 'students' were lost. Some planned lessons that were too easy or difficult, or didn't research their topic enough so were caught out when asked tricky questions by their peers. Some were simply missing important resources so their lesson didn't run well. Obviously I wasn't gauging them on their teaching skills. I did look for appropriate planning and preparation, but teaching techniques and delivery methods weren't the focus of this activity. I wanted to see how well they knew their topic and whether or not they could be creative in the way that they applied it.

I was recently a mentor teacher for a student on his first teaching practicum. He'd been in the class 3 months earlier as he was changing careers and, as a parent of the school, he was considering taking up teaching as a profession and wanted to get 'a feel' for it. The observation period was a lot of fun for him as I was the one preparing all the learning experiences and he had the freedom to sit in with small groups or observe the class as a whole. The shock for him came when it was his turn to handle lessons on his own. He was blown away by how many balls he had to juggle at the same time as a teacher. It was a valuable lesson for him and something that he took for granted in the observation phase. He's already a very good teacher and these realisations will only help to make him even better.

The amount of planning for each lesson we teach requires an enormous amount of preparation and sometimes I think this work is invisible to third parties. It's all well and good for people to agree that keeping our students at the centre of learning is best practice, but to actually do it effectively is a whole different ball game. Great teachers are well prepared, knowledgable and enthusiastic about each lesson they teach. On the outside it may look like some lessons can be thrown together on a whim, but in most examples this is certainly not the case.

In the Zone

The philosophical basis of the Primary Years Program is built on the theories of constructivism. Constructivism learning theory argues that humans generate knowledge and meaning from interactions between their experiences and ideas. They construct understandings based on the information they have learned in the past. A key part of this in practice is being able to maintain students in their zone of proximal development. This means that their learning should be at an appropriate level so that it challenges them, but is not beyond what they are capable of. For us to ensure that we are keeping our students 'in the zone' we need to know what they are capable of.

Throughout learning this is achieved by regular formative assessment. This helps us to keep track of where we currently are and where we need to go in the future. Another important element of this is pre-assessment. This is completed at the beginning of an inquiry so we can ascertain where we should begin. For example, there is no point jumping into a lesson on adding fractions if the students don't know what a denominator is! The same obviously works the other way and sometimes students become disconnected from class if they're not inspired by the work. Obviously the difficulties come for teachers as they inevitably find out that there are varying levels of ability throughout a class. Learning has to be catered for all of these levels and requires dedicated work from teachers to ensure that this is happening.

Sometimes I get the feeling that we gloss over pre-assessment and don't give it due credit. Mindmaps, T-charts or a picture analysis can be great tools for pre-assessing students, as long as they are not seen as ways in order to simply tick a box. Better still, we should make sure we provide pre-assessment tasks that cater for a variety of learning styles and abilities. We need to ensure that our pre-assessments are differentiated - there's no excuse for not keeping our students in the zone of proximal development purely because of what stage we are at in the inquiry. By guaranteeing developmentally challenging pre-assessment, we learn valuable information about our students that can lead to more authentic, meaningful inquiry in the future.

The Negotiated Curriculum

At about this time every year I sit back and reflect on the year that is fast coming to a close. I think I have done many things right this year and learned a lot. Still, I know I have many areas to improve in and have been asking myself an important question over the past few weeks: Am I afraid to give up control of a learning experience?

By handing over the metaphorical reigns of learning to the students, teachers allow them to drive their own learning through their own curiosity. This usually results in genuine and significant inquires. This aspect of the curriculum - the role of students in decisions made about and for their learning - is valued by the IB, and particularly in the Primary Years Program:

Many different forms of inquiry are recognized, based on students’ curiosity and on their wanting and

needing to know more about the world. They are most successful when students’ questions and inquiries are

genuine and have real significance in helping them progress to new levels of knowledge and understanding.

The most insightful inquiries, ones most likely to move the students’ understanding further, come from

existing knowledge. (PYP Basis for Practice pp. 4)

It is also something that I don't find particularly easy to manage and one of my goals for next year is to really try and improve in this area.

Generally, I think I fall into one of two traps. I either expect (a) too much too early from my students and they aren't able to lead a learning experience (or don't yet know how) with their own curiosity, or (b) I don't give them enough of an opportunity.

These aren't done on purpose, of course. Sometimes I simply don't feel that I have enough time to let the students 'wonder and wander' for extended periods as I have to get through other mandated curriculum. Other times I haven't provided the students with enough opportunity to develop their knowledge of an inquiry before allowing them the chance to drive it. Then I feel worried that nothing is happening, the lesson is shallow and my reaction is to take more control.

Some strategies that I will be working on next year are:

Taking more time to really listen to my students - either as a class, in small groups or individually. Although I give my students plenty of my honest attention I am sure there must be some things that I'm not picking up. So I'm making a conscious effort next year to really look for indicators when the students are talking. I'm going to make a checklist of things to look out for during conversations so I can constantly remind myself. I'd also like to trial a few different ways of recording the information too, as this is something that I've found tricky to manage in other years.

I'm also thinking about the best ways to display student questions and inquiries as they arise. When I've attended PYP workshops in the past the facilitators have usually created a 'wonderwall' or something similar. Unfortunately these are not always re-addressed throughout the workshop but when they are I really like the way they work. It's not something I've successfully achieved in my own classes thus far so I want to try harder next year. I've tried using wallwisher before but I think I'd really like something that is up in the class and can be accessed at all times.

The next strategy I'm going to try and employ is to try and work opportunities for student input into my planning. I know that many student observations occur 'out of the blue' and can't be planned for, but I think I can facilitate these better by thinking about the type and structure of my lessons. What are my students revealing to me? How will this inform and alter future lessons?

I think it is also important that these experiences are developed around an environment that really encourages this type of behaviour. Some students may not be used to this level of freedom, opportunity or responsibility from other classes they've been in so I think it is important to model the sort of behaviour I want from my students. I must admit, I regularly fall into the trap of expecting that my students know what I want them to do without me really modeling it for them. It will also be helpful for me to provide routines and structures which they can follow - scaffolding, not controlling!

Consecutive Years

When I was in primary school I never had the same teacher for more than one year. Some students did, but this was rare. As a teacher I have also never taught the same class for consecutive years. I have often thought about whether or not it would be beneficial to have my students for two years in a row, either as a whole class or as part of a split where the older half would move on after two years and the younger grade would take the place of the older ones when the next bunch joins. I have just read 'Learning Together Through Inquiry' by Kathy Short and several other authors. Quite a few of the teachers who contributed to the book spoke of having their students for more than a year, or as part of a split. They seemed to heavily favour it.

I can see some of the benefits. A lot of time would be saved at the beginning of a year that is usually used as 'getting to know you' time. Obviously it is very important to connect to your students on a personal level and this cannot be done overnight. You would also have a good idea of the different ways that each student learns. At the start of the year time needs to be set aside for pre-assessing students for specific skills and abilities. This could be heavily reduced if you had a good idea of where they were coming from. The dynamic of the class as a collective and what they do and don't respond well to is another thing that takes time. If you have the same students from the previous year you can get straight into the curriculum and not have to worry about a lot of the aforementioned. Time is at such a premium in our crowded curriculums and this could be one way of finding some more.

A situation where it may not be beneficial for students to have the same teacher for consecutive years could be if the student and teacher do not have a strong relationship. Perhaps the teacher is ineffective, perhaps the two personalities don't mix, perhaps there are other reasons. There are many occasions where people work with each other purely on a professional level without any social connection and this may also happen in the classroom. Although, in Primary School especially, I think this would very difficult. There would need to be a lot of trust between the teacher-principal-parent triangle for things to work in this situation.

In progressive systems of education (eg. Finland) teachers regularly have their students for more than one year. I am sure this is practised in quite a few systems around the world but I hardly hear of it - unless a school is under-staffed and teachers are forced to combine classes. I can't think of any International Schools that follow this system. I wonder if this model is considered in many schools? Is it too difficult to manage? Proven to be ineffective?

Next year I have a teacher joining my team that has taught in the grade below me this year. It is possible that she'll have some of the same students in her class and I'll be interested to hear her opinions on this subject.

Fast Food Education

Standardised testing is common throughout many school systems. The results are used for a myriad of reasons, from comparing national standards to other countries, to exploring whether students are achieving at a predetermined level that is designated by a school.

I believe tests are useful. Administered in the right way, they can help a student see what they know and what they still need to improve at. This can aid in raising standards, which is generally the goal of any test.

The problem with this is that many people identify standardised testing with raising standards. This isn't the case. Borrowing from the preachings of Ken Robinson et al., standardised testing serves to create conformity among it's recipients. It makes sure everyone can so the same thing at the same stage. This has been referred to 'fast food education' - a lot of the same thing. The argument against this type of conformity is that humans are not machines. We don't all perform at the same level at the same time for the same rate. We are individuals who all develop at different rates and, if you believe in multiple intelligences, learn in different ways.

We should do the best we can to create systems of education that cultivate conditions to let our students flourish. By trying to ensure that everyone can do the same things, at the same stage of their lives, we are sending a message to some students that they are not good enough. What does this do their psyche if they begin hearing it at the age of 8?

It concerns me that education in Australia seems to heading down the same path as the US is finally beginning to shy away from. The No Child Left Behind Act failed and the NAPLAN assessments introduced in Australia in 2008 similarly has the potential to lower standards, instead of raise them.

The school I am currently working at is at the pointy end of the process of developing learning outcomes for each grade level at our school. This is helping them achieve their goal of creating a clear and connected curriculum for K-12. Being an International School that is a private institution, they don't have the shackles of a national curriculum to adhere to. The idea is that stake-holders will be able to see what students will be able to know, understand and do at each year of their education. I think it is important for a school to have a clear and strong curriculum. How else can we drive daily instruction in relation to the school's values? During our process, the usual concerns of OBE have been raised: Are we measuring everyone to a minimum standard? What happens if students don't achieve the required level? What happens if they do it before they're 'meant' to? How will these affect assessment and reporting processes?

I advocate certain aspects of OBE. It is based on constructivism theories, it doesn't compare students to other students and assumes nothing in terms of student's capabilities. What concerns me is that if outcomes are too shallow (ie. 'a mile long and an inch deep' - as Linda Darling-Hammond puts it) or restrictive and narrow, then we run the risk of measuring our students to the same standards and this can also lends itself to an over-emphasis on standardised testing procedures. We need to ensure that we develop continuum based outcomes that allow students to achieve at a rate that is developmentally appropriate for them.

Girl Power

I recently read this article from an Australian newspaper. In a nutshell, it addresses the decline in NAPLAN maths testing results for girls. The article goes on to recommend studies and funding into finding a prevention for this perpetual 'drop-out' rate in maths participation as girls progress through school.

I realise that there are some benefits of criterion-based standardised testing, however those who analyse and make decisions based on the results must do it from an informed perspective. Earlier this year I read a fantastic book by Jo Boaler entitled 'The Elephant in the classroom: Helping children learn and love Maths'. The book addressed many topics including, among others, the effects of ability grouping, assessment styles and teaching practices. Boaler based her arguments on research collected from longitudinal studies conducted in the UK and USA.

One of the discussions that interested me the most was about the different ways that boys and girls learn. Research shows that when an embryo reaches the stage that the sex is decided the specific changes occur in the genetic make up have potential ever-lasting results on the way that they learn. The onset of testosterone required for the development of the X chromosome in males destroys other parts of their genetic make up that affect communication. This is why a higher percentage of babies that are born with communication-based developmental disorders (such as autism) are males. This also means that females generally have a greater propensity to learn in a more communicative environment.

The way maths is still currently taught doesn't always lend itself to this style of learning, especially in middle and upper primary. Girls can be more inclined to talk things out, work collaboratively and discuss their findings whereas boys can find it easier to work through things on their own in a systematic approach. The 'skill and drill' environment that is still present in many classrooms can have a strong negative influence on performance and inclusion rates, especially for girls. Of course these learning styles don't fit the mould of every student. I have taught many boys that thrive in an environment where they can discuss their work and, conversely, there are many girls that find the opposite approach easy to relate to.

Those in charge of policy and curriculum decisions need to be up to date and aware of current research findings and take them into account when analysing things such as standardised test results, that are very closed, individualised performances. These aren't always a clear indication of a student's understanding.

The Inquiry Cycle - Tuning In

During our UOI for How We Organise Ourselves my grade level inquired into the purposes of trade. This involved us exploring the history of trade, the reasons for trading and ethics in trading. It also coincided with my class assembly. My class and I had the choice between basing our assembly on our previous UOI (about The Arts) or jumping straight into the new UOI and presenting something associated with that. After some discussion we decide to run with the new unit.

This presented me with a new challenge. How would my students show their knowledge and understandings of the inquiry? There wasn't even an inquiry for them to show their understandings of! Due to the timeframe, our choices were limited. It was either tuning in for our UOI or practice for the assembly.

I made the executive decision to front-load the students with a lot more information than I normally would. This worried me because I was wary of simply give my students the information that I figured was relevant. The result of this, of course, would be that they would be able to share their new knowledge with the rest of the school at our assembly (our focus was on fair trade).

The assembly went well and the kids were brilliant. But it was what happened in the next 4 weeks that really surprised me.

My students had such a great understanding of fair trade early on in the unit that they were able to apply it in many ways. This took the UOI to a whole new level and was definitely something that I didn't foresee. They integrated their understandings into their language focus, took meaningful action throughout the local community and could easily relate to formative and summative assessment tasks.

This got me thinking, how much I should be front loading my students during the tuning in stages of the inquiry cycle? My feelings of worry at the beginning of the UOI were alleviated throughout the remaining weeks as the students raised the bar. Perhaps I have 'under-tuned-in' in previous units, only skimming the conceptual surface in fear of effecting a more didactic approach to teaching? Perhaps I was allowing too much freedom and not providing enough guidance for their inquiry?

What occurred with this UOI reminded me that my students need to have acquired a certain level of knowledge and skills in order to make meaningful connections with the concepts they are focussing on. It is misguided of me to think that they will always be able to engage in deep and dynamic inquiry from the get go. The trick is finding the magic balance of providing them with enough information, through a constructivist approach, that will give them the opportunity to explore their learning with enthusiasm, confidence and curiosity.