TABLE OF CONTENTS
2.
WORKING DEFINITIONS *3.
TEACHER RESPONSES TO THE QUESTIONS ABOUT FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT *4.
BARRIERS TO EFFECTIVE PRACTICE *5.
TOWARDS THE IMPROVED USE OF FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT IN ENGLISH *6.
EMERGING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT NEEDS *7.
CONCLUSION *REFERENCES
*
The significance of formative assessment strategies to student learning has been summed up by Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam in their review of all research data from 1988 to 1998. The potential value of a range of strategies for the effective incorporation of formative assessment in secondary English classrooms is beginning to be appreciated by teachers in New Zealand.
Formative assessment places an emphasis on effective feed-back to students, close to the time of the learning task, and it should look forward to the specific next step to improve performance.
This paper summarises the perceptions of twenty secondary English teachers from a range of secondary schools across the Massey University College of Education’s catchment region.
The paper outlines the present understanding the teachers have of the following issues raised by Black and Wiliam:
The paper will outline the nature of the gap between the perceptions held by the teachers involved in the study and their actual classroom practice and will highlight the reasons for that gap. It will also look ahead to the professional development needs arising from the gap.
The data which underpins this paper was gathered at a one-day in-service course for secondary English teachers held in Palmerston North in March 1999. The 20 teachers came from a wide range of schools and had similarly wide-ranging teaching backgrounds.
The teachers spent the day discussing the significance of formative assessment in promoting effective learning. As preparation for the meeting teachers were asked to evaluate their own teaching and assessment practices, their school/departmental assessment policies and their marking routines.
During the day-long meeting, issues raised by Black and Wiliam were discussed and eight questions (based on those issues) became the focus for individual responses by the teachers.
The actual responses to the questions are included as an appendix to this paper.
The questions which were used to draw forth the summary responses were:
As New Zealand teachers of English have become increasingly familiar with the ‘new’ English curriculum and its achievement objectives, they have also had to become accountable, through planned teaching programmes based on the effective use of learning outcomes derived from those objectives. Focused teaching and assessment have provided the planning aims of most Heads of Departments, often in response to comments made in reports on schools’ performance by the Education Review Office.
The Ministry of Education issued a support resource to schools – Planning and Assessment in English (1997). This book stated:
‘Assessment information is collected in order to:
These purposes are best served when both teachers and students are involved in making assessment decisions.’
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This statement emphasises the implicit value placed on formative assessment as a strategy for fostering learning and improving teaching programmes.
As an English adviser in secondary English I visit schools regularly. I am aware that most English teachers understand the differences between formative and summative assessment. Whether this understanding is carried through into effective teaching strategies and classroom management is less sure. There are tensions between the demands and pressures on teachers to produce ‘good results’ (in both internal and external examinations) on the one hand, and their own professional judgement which asks teachers to spend more time with students in order to ensure full understanding of new content on the other. These tensions reflect the new ‘accountability’ schools feel under pressure to respond to. School community perceptions must be maintained to a level which ensures secure school enrolments in future years. Against these pressures, the commitment to formative assessment becomes marginalised.
It was with this background in mind that the teachers involved were invited to attend the course in order to share their perceptions regarding the uses and value of formative and summative assessment in their classrooms.
(For the purposes of this paper)
Current assessment practices in secondary schools are competency-based in their design. Competency-based approaches place considerable emphasis on both the formative and summative functions of assessment. The function of assessment is not just to identify competence, but also to facilitate competence. Competency-based assessment encourages learners to play an active role in their own formative assessment.
Formative assessment is on-going throughout the learning process.
Teachers assess students to monitor their progress, to diagnose their strengths and weaknesses, to provide them with effective feed-back, and to appraise the effectiveness of teaching and learning strategies. Using assessment formatively is more than taking the temperature of the learners; it informs the learning, helps improve it and organise it.
Formative assessment focuses on effective feed-back to students. It reduces the gap between what has been learned and what now needs to be learned. Feed-back which compares students with other students is less useful in promoting learning than feed-back related to a student’s achievement of the task requirements. It should also look forward to the specific next step to improve performance, perhaps through the use of alternative strategies.
Summative assessment makes a final judgement about student learning. It records and reports an achievement, indicates an acquired standard and it may bestow an award or credential. It is a summary of the learning outcomes, coming at the end of a learning process.
3. TEACHER RESPONSES TO THE QUESTIONS ABOUT FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
The eight questions which were the focus for the teachers’ thinking about their use of formative assessment as a classroom strategy were designed to offer a picture of both perception and practice.
I have already stated that the teachers involved in the study shared a general awareness of the main distinctions between summative and formative assessment. Variations in this awareness come through in their responses, as do variations in the use of formative assessment as a regular classroom strategy.
After each of the questions which follow I have selected a response or two to highlight the spectrum of those responses. Comment on the responses comes after each question. (The appendix to the paper comprises the full set of responses).
1. What are the ways in which you understand and deal with the relationship between your formative and summative assessment roles?
As I stated in the introduction to this paper there was a general level of understanding of the differences between the two assessment roles. All the teachers involved understood the respective theoretical place of each type of assessment within the teaching and learning process:
Most of the responses revealed similar levels of understanding as the ones quoted above, but only a small percentage spelt out how they ‘dealt with’ the relationship in terms of the practicalities of classroom management:
COMMENT
The responses, in total, revealed a good theoretical understanding of the different uses for formative and summative assessment. Formative assessment was seen, variously, as ‘user friendly check points linking teaching and learning, and, it encourages student involvement in learning.’ Summative assessment was recognised as the measuring of achievement at the end of a task.
One teacher commented on the increasing use of formative assessment, within group work, through peer and self assessment.
Another referred to the use of conferencing with individual students and the use of comments on drafts as bases for formative approaches. The same teacher indicated that the use of these strategies was only possible because of small classes.
This last point highlights the tension between the realities of the classroom situation and the need to utilise strategies which helps maximise student learning. It is not only class size which is a factor influencing teachers’ commitment to the use of ‘time-consuming’ strategies such as those upon which formative assessment rests. Secondary school time-tabling, which only permits class contact for (approximately) one hour several times a week also impinges on teachers’ willingness to spend time on, say, conferencing as an aid to student learning. Highly structured curriculum delivery usually imposes similar time constraints on teachers in a way which precludes maximising formative assessment strategies throughout any particular unit of work.
2. How does the predictive validity of your summative assessments compare with the external exam results of the same students?
Teachers are clear about the close links between their internal school summative assessments and the external examination results relevant to the same students (in Years 11 and 13).
There are also a clearly stated pressure on teachers to respond to the demands of the ‘high stakes’ examination demands – even if it involves a mistaken belief that their own exams are a type of formative assessment.
COMMENT
The teachers, in recognising the high predictive validity of their own students examination results (vis a vis external exam results), clearly indicated the influence of the external summative assessments. School exams tend to prepare students for external exams, in that they replicate the external examination situation in both the constraints of time and in the scope of content mastery essential to success in these examinations.
The internal school examinations also serve a managerial role in that poor results can be harnessed by teachers as a ‘wake-up’ call to students who have not achieved well.
In general, the teachers involved in the study showed that they were often able to predict students’ results in external exams, but at the same time they either did not know, or did not spend the time in class meeting the learning needs of all their students.
As teachers gain in experience at teaching examination classes, they get more efficient in ‘training’ their students to meet these demands. The external examiners reports on how students answered the examination questions is a further ‘guide’ to successful summative assessment. These guides are poor models for the use of formative assessment as an aid to learning.
3. Marking is usually conscientious but in what ways could / should it offer guidance on how work can be improved?
Most of the teachers recognised the value of using marking as a basis for helping students improve their work. They did this through criteria-based marking and focused commenting on student work.
The reality of pressures on teachers’ time is referred to:
COMMENT
The teachers comments focused on the use of criteria, known by the students, as an aid to effective marking. They also suggested that individual conferencing is a help (if time allows), as well as stressing the need for reinforcement of learning in the classroom by means of modelling and going over weaknesses.
It was clear from discussion that many of the teachers felt guilty about marking to set criteria – they felt that other ‘errors’ should be marked as well. They recognised that ‘over-marking’ can reinforce underachievement. They also revealed in discussion that they do not utilise their knowledge of student strengths and weaknesses as a basis for on-going planning of their own programmes.
Marking is rarely used, on a teacher / student basis, as an inter-active basis for improving learning.
4. In what ways can teacher / classroom tests encourage rote and superficial learning?
The teacher responses, in a variety of ways, again reflect the tension that exists between teaching for learning and teaching for ‘high-stakes’ assessment. They comment on a range of ‘diversions’ away from the underlying principles of effective teaching and learning when testing is used in a non-formative way.
COMMENT
Preparation for external examinations dominated the discussion about this question. Except for the first two years of secondary schooling (and in some schools not even at these stages) internal examinations and tests are regarded as vital preparation for the School Certificate (Year 11) and Bursary (Year 13) examinations.
Teachers mentioned that when concepts were ‘provided’, without application to contexts, there was no guarantee of real learning by students. Similarly, content-based teaching, again ‘provided’ for the students, because teachers guessed it was going to be examined, did not ensure meaningful learning.
If a teacher ‘sign-posted’ the learning for examinations by clearly indicating to students that ‘this is what you have to say / think / do’ (in order to score well), the managerial role of assessment comes to the fore.
As one teacher stated – it all depends on your philosophy about education.
It was clear from the discussion that even when teachers stated that their main teaching aim was to promote student understanding, their assessment practices tended to place far greater value on summative, rather than formative processes. This inconsistency was not worked at by many of the teachers involved – they cited the ‘pressures of time’ and ‘school ethos’ as reasons.
Teacher responses to this question, more than to any other, reflected the tension between teaching for learning and teaching for examinations. Social, political and educational factors were raised by teachers in their responses:;
COMMENT
If a school ethos is examination oriented and the political commitment within the school tends towards external assessment (of teachers as well as students) formative assessment becomes marginalised. As one teacher stated, in schools such as this students tend to ‘demand’ a grade by way of evaluating their own relative class position. Useful advice tends to be ignored when marks command all the respect of students.
The obverse side of the coin which favours assessment as a managerial tool reveals the value placed by the school on grades and marks. In this situation it is hard for teachers to convince students of the value of formative assessment.
Teachers felt that in junior classes (Years 9 and 10) there is more scope for the use of formative approaches through peer and self assessment. But even this factor depends on individual teaching style.
Teachers revealed a mix of responses to this question. There is an indication of the tension teachers’ feel within themselves about the relative value of each of the two purposes for assessment. This question generated the most heat when discussed during the day. It focused attention on the links that exist between student learning on the one hand, and the teaching styles and strategies and the assessment, recording and reporting techniques used by teachers, on the other.
COMMENT
Some teachers felt that ‘competitive’ related feed-back, usually in the form of marks or grades and comments on weaknesses, tended to foster the failure cycle – ‘I can’t do this’, I’m not interested in this subject’ or ‘It’s too hard’. This type of feed-back tended to make students focus on what they can’t do, and demotivation followed.
Students who come to see themselves as unable to learn, as evidenced by their on-going low summative assessments, usually cease to take the subject seriously. This disaffection tends to result in disruptive classroom behaviour.
This question evoked responses in which teachers considered the demands of the ‘paperwork’ they were involved with as part of the total assessment process.
COMMENT
‘Over-assessment’ was the most common theme underpinning both the day-long discussions and the responses to the question. Teachers felt that the accountability factor was intruding to the extent that more summative assessments were being undertaken. School examinations were becoming a powerful control tool which ‘regulated’ student behaviour and the learning process. Marks were becoming over-important, together with the requirement to record the same performance information in more than one place, more than one time! Marks were judged to be a more convenient type of comment on success - easy to understand and useful for ranking purposes.
This over-emphasis meant that considerable class time was being spent on ‘training’ for examinations.
These same teachers felt that time needed to foster formative assessment approaches.
The range of responses reflected the dichotomy implicit in the question:
COMMENT
Teacher responses indicated that, in the main, they worked to policies which attempted to address both sides of the issue raised by the question.
They indicated that they worked hard to find a balance between fulfilling the school / departmental demands for the recording of summative assessments, as well as endeavouring to identify the learning needs of individual students. This seeking of a balance reflects the tension teachers work within with respect to spending time gathering and recording meaningful information about student learning and providing helpful feedback to the students at the point of learning.
Teachers who have followed professionally offered advice about ‘doing less (assessment) but do it better’, have felt guilty about mark-books which look ‘empty’ compared with some of their colleagues’’ books. Extensive formative information (comments, ü or û against criteria etc) does not seem to be as acceptable as columns of marks!
4. BARRIERS TO EFFECTIVE PRACTICE
The views of the teachers involved in this study supported the research evidence, cited by Black and Wiliam, that the every day practice of assessment in the classrooms is beset with problems and short-comings. These arise from tensions which exist between the ‘political’ commitment of schools (and the educational system) to ‘high-stakes’ assessment which dominates teaching. Despite many teacher’s awareness of the value of formative assessment, when confronted with the realities of recording and reporting summaries of student achievement in summative terms, they cannot spend sufficient time providing helpful diagnosis to all their students.
This paper has outlined the manner in which, in general, marking and testing is carried out, how feed-back seems to serve social and managerial functions at the expense of learning functions and how constrained some teachers feel by the present demands placed on their time and teaching activities.
It becomes clear, as investigation of these problems progresses, that effective teaching and formative assessment are indivisible.
Most of the teachers involved in this study were caught in conflicts among system structures, political and social agendas, as well as educational philosophies and practices. They tended not to see assessment as a technical problem but as a social and philosophical function.
External tests / exams, together with school-wide testing regimes can constrain teachers to act against their own better judgement about the best ways to develop the learning of their students. Although these tests / exams have an important role to play in securing public confidence in their local schools, their undue influence upon the development of effective formative assessment is a significant constraining factor. Teachers, involved as they are in both tasks
find it difficult to reconcile their formative and summative roles. Confusion exists in their minds as a result.
5. TOWARDS THE IMPROVED USE OF FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT IN ENGLISH
Black and Wiliam’s summary of research (see References) about formative assessment indicates that the interactive nature of teaching and learning provides the basis for modifying the teaching and learning activities in order to meet better the needs of the students.
They state that assessment becomes formative when the evidence is used to adapt the teaching work to meet those needs.
If this is the case there are big implications for classroom management strategies the use (or otherwise) of certain types of teaching strategies as well as for the nature of school / departmental policies regarding delivery of the curriculum and the use and value of summative assessments.
These same implications become even more significant within English classrooms, where most schools regard the responsibility for developing student literacy should lie.
And all of these factors must be related to the current climate of school-wide accountability, competition for enrolments and community pressure on schools to perform well in the ‘league tables’.
The journals reviewed by Black and Wiliam contained a significant number of references to research on learning gains which had, as a common feature, enhanced formative assessment. Other features were variously associated with formative assessment and these would need to be taken into account if teachers wished to make significant changes to their classroom practices:
The teachers involved in the day of discussion referred in various ways to each of the above points. The increased use of feed-back was seen as an impossibility against the demands of teaching large classes, the need to ‘cover the syllabus’ and the domination of ‘high-stakes’ assessment with its higher status in the eyes of the school as a whole.
Teachers did indicate that they are involving students in the assessment of their own progress. The new English curriculum with its achievement objectives, is leading more and more teachers to focus their teaching around relevant learning outcomes. As teachers make students more aware of the criteria for assessment, they are utilising peer assessment, and to a lesser extent student self-assessment as a basis for encouraging students to become aware of how they can improve their work. I have noted, as a visitor to classrooms, that where teachers have moved towards student-centred assessments, student attitudes to their work ahs been enhanced. If teachers continue to hold the reins of assessment (as in the managerial and social functions referred to in Question 7) students take less responsibility for their own learning than if peer assessment, and to an even greater extent self-assessment, have a significant place in classroom procedures as units of work are undertaken.
It is clear that as students’ awareness of, understanding of, and even formulation of the criteria for assessment increases, so does their understanding of the work being undertaken.
Formative assessment can become more effective if students are trained in self-assessment so that they can understand the main purposes of their learning (by linking learning outcomes to relevant curriculum objectives), and thereby grasp what they need to do to achieve.
I have observed these processes in operation in low-attainer classes. Work is advanced one criterion at a time. But the sense of achievement felt by the students is as great as that experienced by more able students where work being formatively assessed may carry three or four criteria as a basis for peer or self assessment.
Greater motivation and increased student self-esteem follow the sustained use of these approaches. Teachers commented during the day on higher work rates and less disruptive behaviour in their classes. They hinted at a price for this – a slower pace of covering the syllabus. A sense of tension and guilt developed, particularly in schools where prescribed summative testing was scheduled across their department.
Others felt that the slowing down was short-term. They insisted that as greater student understanding took hold, speed of ‘coverage’ increased. As one teacher put it, ‘I go slower, longer, in order to run faster, later’.
One of the four factors which Black and Wiliam noted as supportive of the increased use of formative assessment, namely adjusting programmes or activities to suit learning needs, did not figure to any extent during the day-long discussions, nor in the written responses to the questions.
It seems that teacher perception of the value of formative assessment does not equally extend to modifying pre-planned units of work, nor to the pre-determined use of certain strategies, once a unit is under way. Even if the actual unit itself is a problem for the students, or if the main teaching strategy employed by the teacher does not suit all students, no major adaptation or change is made. Possibly because these are not even recognised by teachers ass being at the heart of the problem.
Pre-testing, class discussion aimed at eliciting prior knowledge and understanding or planning with the class (as in Garth Boomer’s ‘negotiating’ the curriculum) are strategies which can assist in this respect. Opportunities for students to share their evolving understanding should be built into planning.
The frequency of feed-back, arising from formative assessment at the point of learning, enhances learning. Teacher involvement, together with peer and self-assessment used throughout a unit can help to reduce the reliance on summative assessment as the sole means of monitoring and reporting on student progress. Feed-back to all students should be about the particular qualities of his or her work, relative to pre-set criteria, with advice on how to improve. Comparisons with other students are not necessary.
The maintaining of student portfolios – where primary evidence of work in progress, with both teacher and student comment on strengths and weaknesses at the time, - is an invaluable classroom management strategy which gives pride of place to formative assessment as a basis for on-going learning.
The effective use of portfolios can become the basis for recording individual student progress in a manner which could contribute to half year and end of year summative statements of achievement.
6. EMERGING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT NEEDS
The discussions among and the responses of, the twenty secondary English teachers involved in this study showed that carefully planned, sustained, holistic professional development is required if formative assessment practices are to be effectively incorporated into classroom practice.
There is no one simple way to improve formative assessment. Many of the initiatives suggested in section five of this paper (and implicit in the teacher responses to the eight questions) take more class time. The underlying central purpose is to change the outlook on learning and the working methods of students.
A classroom culture of negotiation, questioning and focused thinking is needed. If professional development is to be effective in this aim to explore the potential of assessment to raise standards directly (ie. as an inherent component of each student’s learning) it must promote and support change within the classroom. Whatever specifics emerge as components of the professional development, they can only be judged as beneficial on the basis of their effects in the classroom.
To achieve these changes any programme should concentrate on how improvements in formative assessment can:
Any professional development programme built around these three broad approaches will only succeed if teachers find their own ways of incorporating the ideas and practices into their own patterns of classroom working. Teachers need help in doing this. Only a small percentage of innovative teachers is able to pick up ideas and principles and convert them into practical classroom ideas. Most teachers, particularly when confronted with all the other pressures already mentioned in this paper, need the support of other teachers, with whom they can identify, who can provide practical answers which justify a commitments to these ideas. Local networking, supported by external evaluators who can maintain development of the programme, could sustain dissemination over the period of time necessary to bring about such fundamental change.
The eight questions used as a basis for the day-long discussion with the twenty secondary English teachers provided plenty of scope for the issue of formative assessment and improved learning to be aired.
There is clearly a gap between the teachers’ appreciation of the value of formative assessment and their capacity to implement the relevant practices. The higher status of summative assessments as a basis for reporting on student progress dominates their teaching approaches.
The fundamental shifts required to give formative assessment a place in the sun will require time, for:
Black, P. and Wiliam, D. (1998) Inside the Black Box
– Raising standards through classroom assessment
London. School of Education, Kings College
Black, P. and Wiliam, D. (1998) Assessment and Classroom Learning
- in Assessment in Education 5 (1)
London. University of London
Boomer, Garth (1992) Negotiating the Curriculum
London. Falmer Press
Sutton, Ruth (1995) Assessment for Learning
Salford. R.S. Publications
English in the New Zealand Curriculum (1994)
Ministry of Education
Wellington. Learning Media
Planning and Assessment in English (1997)
Ministry of Education
Wellington. Learning Media
APPENDIX
Summary responses by teachers to the eight discussion questions