We have just been lucky enough to have a world expert come to East Campus to talk to us about Educational Assessment. Dylan Wiliam is the renowned author of Inside the Black Box – widely regarded as the paper that has really focused educators around the use of assessment as a tool for learning, rather than simply as a judgment of learning. For those of us who went to school and were largely ignored by teachers except when getting back a piece of work (with useless comments such as ‘C – try harder!’ or ‘A – keep up the good work!’), this was a new kind of approach. And in the last decade we have seen assessment emerge as an area worthy of intense scrutiny in its own right; Wiliam is, for example, Professor of Educational Assessment, not Professor of Education, at the Institute of Education in London.
The increased focus on assessment is in keeping with other developments in education – not least that today we endeavor to see each child as an individual and, I believe, seek a broader and more holistic education than you or I probably received. The link between a more individualised education and a greater focus on assessment may seem odd, but something Wiliam said made it all fall into place for me. The point, obvious in retrospect, is that teaching is not the same as learning; that the gap between what we teachers say and what students understand can be a chasm. The simple fact is that often students do not learn what they were taught (at least, in the usual sense of the word taught). If they did, we would never need to assess – we could just keep records of what we had taught. Further, we know from cognitive science that students learn things largely on the basis of existing understandings; they construct meaning by making connections between what they know and what they see or do in class. So it follows, quite logically, that if we are serious about helping each individual learn, we need to figure out – that is, assess – what the individual already knows, and how he or she is linking that knowledge to the intended learning. This is a radically different form of assessment to the traditional form that I caricatured above; and the practices that have developed as a result recognise that trying to get inside someone’s head – which is essentially what teachers are always trying to do when they interact with a class – is not easy.
There is a great deal of evidence here, and perhaps most striking to many outside education is that more assessment does not equal better assessment. So this does not mean ‘back to basics’ and more testing. Far from it. As far as formally assessed pieces of work go, detailed numerical tracking can actually be counter-productive, and there is a mountain of research showing that giving grades and scores too frequently will certainly slow down learning. That’s not to say, of course, that we should not give students any indication of whether they are making progress; we should and we must. But good assessment must also consist of feedback so that it encourages further thinking and generally, raw grades are the end of a conversation, not the start of one. In any case, most learning happens not in the formally-assessed pieces, but is embedded in day-to-day classroom business. So this speaks to the need for us to find ways to assess all students, every lesson; to be aware of where their understanding is (or more precisely, is not) at any given time and to adjust our lessons accordingly. That probably doesn’t involve marking an exercise or an essay. We need to be creative and thoughtful in how we assess, so hat it happens organically and in time-effective ways. Happily, that’s just what good teachers are doing all the time. The research is helping us to do it better.
