Ten Trends 2014: New approaches to assessment

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CORE's Ten Trends for 2014 have been published. This post considers the tenth of these trends: New approaches to assessment. We publish posts on one of the trends approximately each month. You are encouraged to comment or provide supporting links.

Explanation

Assessment plays a significant part of our education system. None of us would go to the doctor or visit the hospital with an ailment without an expectation that we’ll receive some sort of treatment to make us well. So too with education — assessment is the way we have of making the learning visible, and of applying some measure to the success of the learner in demonstrating what he or she has learned.

Historically the focus on assessment has been summative — applying measures of how successfully the learner can demonstrate what he or she has acquired through the learning process. There is a saying in education that “the pedagogy of assessment drives the pedagogy of instruction”, meaning that the focus on what is being assessed will often drive what and how we teach. We see evidence of this in the way many teachers and schools approach the challenge of assessing against national standards or NCEA: instead of assessment being the means of measuring student success, it becomes what shapes the curriculum and the way it is taught.

For decades our approach to assessment has also been shaped by notions of the physical place and time of assessment activities, leading to practices that require students to complete assessment activities in certain places at certain times. In recent years there has been an increasing focus on the importance of formative assessment, focusing on progressions in learning, and identification of next steps. Such an approach is gaining support internationally, with a number of initiatives looking at embedding assessment through the learning process

Drivers

The NZQA website lists a number of examples of assessment approaches in which they distinguish between ‘task assessment’ and ‘evidence assessment’. NZQA have also recognised that the increasing access to and use of digital technologies by students creates significant opportunities for assessing in different ways — using these technologies as the means of completing assessments that are no longer bound by the same constraints of time and place.

Digital technologies are opening up new assessment processes that cater for a learning-centred approach, including eportfolios, rubrics and badges for learning, providing a flexible mechanism for recognising achievements that can be orchestrated and managed by the learner. Today’s students leave lots of data trails – from demographic information, to how they read and highlight ebooks and interact online. The greater use of analytics tools to capture and process this data may provide even greater opportunities to tailor next-steps suggestions for learners, and to understand where the difficulties are occurring so that we can address them in our planning and teaching.

Implications

Thinking about these new approaches to assessment creates opportunities for schools to work with their learners in quite different ways, and to see assessment as a part of the learning process. Over the next few years there will be opportunities for schools to allow students to complete summative assessments using the NZQA digital assessment approaches as they come on stream. There will be opportunities for students to complete assessments at different times and in different spaces to the traditional exam room. But, this will rely on schools planning ahead to ensure there is the proper infrastructure in place and access provided to the appropriate devices for all students.

The growing amount of digital data being generated from learner activity will require schools to consider how they store, manage and report on this data, and how it might be used effectively to enable next-steps learning approaches.  Schools must also come to understand and plan for the ways in which digital technologies will make learning more transparent – for teachers, pupils and their parents/whanau. This will have important consequences not only for learners who will receive greater levels of interest and support from home as a consequence, but also for teachers who will be required to ensure systems are in place to keep the data in school management systems current and relevant. It will also place increased demands on individual learners to take responsibility for managing and keeping current the artefacts in their personal learning portfolios as evidence of their learning.

Links

 

For more about the Ten Trends:

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Ten Trends 2014: The singularity

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CORE's Ten Trends for 2014 have been published. This post considers the fourth of these trends: The singularity. We shall be publishing posts on one of the trends approximately each month. You are encouraged to comment or provide supporting links.

Explanation

In recent years technology has become smaller, more personalised and more connected. This in turn is affecting the ways we are using technology and our expectations of it as an almost ‘essential’ part of our day-to-day existence. The “singularity” is a concept most often associated with the development of artificial intelligence, and the hypothetical moment in time when we’ll see a complete merging of technology with our lives.

We’ve chosen to use the term for our trend with a slightly broader view, describing the convergence of previously discrete and separately used technologies, as well as the almost ‘invisible’ integration and use of technologies as a part of our everyday life. We’re now seeing the emergence of technologies that we can wear or have embedded within the things we use everyday — or into our bodies. Where these sorts of technologies were once regarded as something ‘external’ to our selves, the yare becoming increasingly ‘a part’ of us — how we live, work, and communicate.

Drivers

The emergence of the singularity is the result of three key drivers;

  1. A more personalized, just-in-time user experience of technology
  2. Technology miniaturization
  3. Technology convergence

Examples in practice

An obvious educational example of this trend occurring currently is in schools pursuing Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiatives. Allowing students to have ownership and control over the device they choose to bring with them to school to support their learning has opened the floodgates to new models of how teaching and learning occur. We need to be considering how much more we’ll see happen as the notion of the singularity becomes even more evident — when mobile devices are replaced by wearable devices, or by technology embedded into the clothing we wear, or even a part of our own bodies.

Google released their glasses nearly two years ago — and these are now available as an option from many optometrists. This year they released Android Wear in the form of watches that “allow information to move with you”. The watches are just the beginning — in the future, we’ll see broaches, necklaces, headbands, and all manner of wearable devices emerging.

Nike has had its running app available for at least two years now, with a sensor embedded in the sole of your shoe that communicates with your smartphone to tell you how fast you are running, and how far and how many calories are being used. Making things even more personal, Motorola have plans for an electronic neck tattoo that operates as an auxiliary voice input to a mobile communication device.

Such apps are already being used in education settings, ensuring learners can learn in their location as well as learning about the location they’re in. Some apps include links to maps and translator tools as well as providing augmented reality experiences of what you’re viewing or engaging with. All of this is a part of the growing world of the “Internet of things”, involving the continual merging of the physical and digital realms capitalising on the huge increase in the number of internet-connected devices, objects, sensors, and actuators. Understanding a world where anything, including humans, may be a ‘node’ on the Internet of Things will be increasingly important for our young learners to know, understand, and be able to operate within.

With the singularity trend comes the ability to envisage a time where a truly personalised learning experience may be possible — not simply through the customised delivery of learning content, but also through the ubiquitous connection to applications and services that are learning as you learn, and are able to provide information and challenges that target the next steps in learning that are unique to you.
 

Implications for the future — questions to guide discussion

As we consider where all of this may be taking us, we need to think specifically how such technologies may impact what we’re doing in our schools and classrooms. Here are some questions to help guide some proactive discussions among your staff and school community:

  1. How well equipped is your school to accommodate the demand for students to use mobile devices as a matter of course in their learning — in and out of school?
  2. In what ways might the constant tracking of learner behaviour and engagement via these devices be used constructively to achieve better learning outcomes?
  3. What are the privacy and ethical considerations that need to be taken into account?
  4. How is this thinking reflected in the ways in which your staff collaborate, plan, assess, and participate in professional learning?

Examples and links:

For more about the Ten Trends:

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Improvement vs transformation

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About this time last year I wrote about two agendas that are driving change in our education system — these are the improvement agenda and the transformation agenda. In preparing for an online course I'm about to teach I put together the short video above that is an attempt to illustrate the relationship between these two agendas, and how they need be working together, not viewed as 'either-or'.

The critical thing, however, is the notion of the 'third place' as the aspiration or goal we must have for our work to re-define schools and schooling, otherwise we simply get caught in the trap of continuous improvement, which sees us doing more of the same, but better.

The 'third' place is where we will achieve the practices required to operate effectively in a modern learning environment, where professional practice is de-privatised and collaborative activity becomes the norm, and where schools cease to be completely autonomous, competitive units, and become a part of a network of provision.

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Ten Trends 2014: Learner Agency

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Ten Trends 2014: Agency from EDtalks on Vimeo.

CORE's Ten Trends for 2014 have been published. This post considers the first of these trends: Learning Agency. We shall be publishing posts on one of the trends approximately each month. You are encouraged to comment or provide supporting links.

The concept of agency has been central to educational thinking and practice for centuries. The idea that education is the process through which learners become capable of independent thought which, in turn, forms the basis for autonomous action, has had a profound impact on modern educational theory and practice.

One way of thinking of learner agency is when learners have “the power to act”. When learners move from being passive recipients to being much more active in the learning process, actively involved in the decisions about the learning, then they have greater agency.

Three core features of learning agency

There are three things that I think are core features of our understanding of learner agency. The first is that agency involves the initiative or self-regulation of the learner. Before a learner can exercise agency in their particular learning context they must have a belief that their behaviour and their approach to learning is actually going to make a difference for them in the learning in that setting – in other words, a personal sense of agency. The notion of agency involves a far greater tapestry of intentionality on the part of schools and teachers to create that context and environment where the learners are actively involved in the moment by moment learning and well being.

Second, agency is interdependent. It mediates and is mediated by the sociocultural context of the classroom. It’s not just about a learner in isolation doing their own thing and what suits them. Learners must develop an awareness that there are consequences for the decisions they make and actions they take, and will take account of that in the way(s) they exercise their agency in learning.

And thirdly, agency includes an awareness of the responsibility of ones own actions on the environment and on others. So there’s a social connectedness kind of dimension to that. Every decision a learner makes, and action she or he takes, will impact on the thinking, behaviour or decisions of others – and vice versa. You can’t just act selfishly and call that acting with agency.

Implications

We could start by adopting the use of individualised education plans (IEPs) as a way of personalising the approach to learning, not just in terms of the delivery, but in terms of the learners’ ownership of that learning – the direction, content, process, and assessment of that learning.

It is critical to consider the pedagogical approaches that are adopted by teachers and schools, and to question and challenge those that are overtly teacher-centric, with an emphasis on delivery and curriculum coverage. Learner agency will develop when learners are involved in the whole learning process – including decisions about the curriculum itself, involving learners a lot more in the choices about the what as well as the how and the why of what is being learned.

We need to consider student voice is that reflected in the day to day decisions that are made around school – not simply in order to satisfy ourselves that we’ve heard what students have to say, but in more engaged and authentic ways that are about their learning.

Challenges

  1. What use is made of IEPs in your school to enable the development of a personalized approach to teaching and learning?
  2. Who designs these? Who has access to them?
  3. How is student voice reflected in all aspects of school life?
  4. What safeguards do you have for ensuring no students ‘fall through the cracks’?

Examples and links:

For more about the Ten Trends:

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What can we learn from PISA 2013?

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Derek Wenmoth ponders the PISA Results for 2012

Reactions to the recently published PISA Results

The recent release of PISA data for New Zealand (top-line results here) has led to a wide range of reactions from teacher organisations and principal groups, to social commentators and government.

Some have responded by questioning the reliability of the PISA statistical methodology, while others point to social and economic conditions that impact on the results. Read in isolation such responses may be regarded more as excuse making or political positioning, but when viewed together in the broader milieu within which our education system operates, we gain an insight into the complexity of issues with which educational leaders must grapple — at every level, from those leading learning at the classroom level, to those leading schools and those leading the national level support and policy frameworks that guide this effort.

The 2013 rankings reveal New Zealand slipping from seventh to 13th in reading, seventh to 18th in science and from 13th to 23rd in mathematics. No one likes to feel they’re ‘failing’ in what they do, and the first response may often appear defensive. It’s ironic that when the previous results were announced a lot was made of New Zealand’s position in the top five countries in most areas. Now we read that ‘while we have dropped in most areas, we’re still in the top half of the OECD’, pointing to similar drops by other countries including Finland and Australia.

To react negatively or politically is to miss an opportunity for improvement

To respond only to the headlines, or to simply quote the ‘rankings’ to defend a particular ideology or political stance, is to miss the opportunity to learn from what the PISA data tells us. Over the next 12 months we’ll see the more in-depth reports released, based in further analysis of the data, and providing more specific insights into the achievement areas of literacy, numeracy and science. There’s a lot the data will be able to inform us about in terms of links between socio-economic status and achievement, or what areas specifically within the mathematics curriculum (or science, or literacy) are strengths and which are weak, for example.

The other useful thing about such a rich data source is that we can begin to explore any comparisons between what it reveals in terms of NZ students’ achievement in these international results and what our own, domestic results are telling us (NCEA, national standards, Bursary etc.). If these are consistent, then our response will be quite different than if we discover there are inconsistencies. This should also help us identify specific areas that we need to target for interventions such as targeted professional development, or resource allocations etc.

The key thing will be to take sufficient time to make a considered and informed response, and to avoid any sort of ‘knee-jerk’ reaction (although that will be a challenge for New Zealand given that 2014 is an election year). Rather than using the results for political points scoring, it would be great to see a genuinely cross-party and cross-sector approach to resolving what we need to do as a country, for the sake of all of our learners, now and into the future, regardless of which political party happens to be in government.

What can our schools do with the report findings as we plan for 2014?

As we plan for 2014 it’s likely we’ll see a number of responses at a national/policy level, including more targeted provision of PLD, even before the review of professional learning and development is completed, with a special focus on science being called for.

Within our schools we need to be encouraging more in-depth engagement with the PISA findings with our staff and communities in order to understand what an appropriate response should be. Even more important, our response should be to think more critically about how we are using data more broadly — not only the PISA data. As educators, we are collecting data regularly from a wide variety of sources — our challenge with all of it is to consider how we are using it to inform what we are doing with the programmes we offer, to ensure that student needs are being met, and student achievement remains the focus. The PISA results provide a challenge to consider what we’re doing in the areas of literacy, numeracy, and science — but what about our programmes in the arts or social sciences? Where is the data to show how we’re supporting achievement in these areas for instance?

Let’s not fall into the trap of laying blame or making excuses. Let’s use the challenge of the PISA results to become more intentionally engaged with data in our schools, in the way we collect it, interpret it, and make plans based on the evidence it provides — across all areas of the curriculum.

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