Formative Assessment: Looking beyond the techniques

1. Formative Assessment: Looking beyond the techniques Dr Jeremy Hodgen King’s College London

2. Improving (mathematics) education through feedback and formative assessment • Attainment, progression and standards over time • Teacher education • International comparisons • Primary and secondary

3. What are you already doing about formative assessment? Talk to your neighbour. Identify one issue or problem.

4. What is formative assessment: a working definition • Any assessment directed at informing learning • What do you need to do next?

5. TEACHING  LEARNING

6. TEACHING ≠ LEARNING

7. TEACHING ≠ LEARNING

8. TEACHING ≠ LEARNING

9. TEACHING ≠ LEARNING

10. If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate. (Tom Watson)

11. The evidence … • Origins: Bloom (1970s) • Black & Wiliam: Inside the Black Box (1998) etc • Numerous other reviews worldwide • Natriello (1987); Crooks (1988); Kluger & DeNisi (1996); Nyquist (2003) • All find consistent & substantial effects on … • Attainment and engagement • BUT poorly described in practice.

12. More evidence … • Hattie’s (2007) meta-analysis: • Feedbackis the most effective intervention in education (effect size: 1.14) • Wiliam (2007): • Assessment for learning probably the most cost effective way of improving teaching • Better and more achievable than reducing class size or enhancing teachers’ subject knowledge

13. Extraordinarily “successful” … • Inside the Black Box: > 50,000 copies sold (UK) • Working Inside the Black Box: > 40,000 • Mathematics Inside the Black Box: > 7,000 • Embraced by DCSF / DfES, National Strategies • Taken up by schools • Hard to find a teacher who hasn’t heard of it

14. What people say: debunking some myths and misconceptions • “Don’t students need marks?”

15. The effect of marks & feedback

16. The effect of marks & feedback

17. Marks and Comments

18. Marks and Comments

19. What people say: debunking some myths and misconceptions • “Don’t students need marks?” • “What’s new? Good teachers already do this anyway?” • “I already ask lots of questions”

20. Listening to students’ answers • Evaluative • Teachers know the answer • Listening for the correct answer • Often give clues: “Almost …” … “Nearly …” • Interpretive • Teachers don’t know how students will answer • Why do they say that?

21. When Miss used to ask a question, she used to be interested in the right answer. Now she’s interested in what we think.

22. What people say: debunking some myths and misconceptions • “Don’t students need marks?” • “What’s new? Good teachers already do this anyway?” • “I already ask lots of questions” • “If only I had the time …” • “Our students couldn’t do that.” • “It’s just a set of tricks.”

23. Looking more closely : Five principles • Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning intentions • Engineering effective classroom discussions, tasks and activities that elicit evidence of learning • Providing feedback that moves learners forward • Activating students as learning resources for one another • Activating students as owners of their own learning

24. Looking more closely : Five principles • Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning intentions • Engineering effective classroom discussions, tasks and activities that elicit evidence of learning • Providing feedback that moves learners forward • Activating students as learning resources for one another • Activating students as owners of their own learning

25. Looking more closely : Five principles • Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning intentions • Engineering effective classroom discussions, tasks and activities that elicit evidence of learning • Providing feedback that moves learners forward • Activating students as learning resources for one another • Activating students as owners of their own learning

26. Looking more closely : Five principles • Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning intentions • Engineering effective classroom discussions, tasks and activities that elicit evidence of learning • Providing feedback that moves learners forward • Activating students as learning resources for one another • Activating students as owners of their own learning

27. Looking more closely : Five principles • Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning intentions • Engineering effective classroom discussions, tasks and activities that elicit evidence of learning • Providing feedback that moves learners forward • Activating students as learning resources for one another • Activating students as owners of their own learning

28. Some broadbrush strategies • Rich tasks • Sharing learning intentions • Questioning and dialogue • Marking and Feedback • Peer and self-assessment • Using summative tests formatively

29. Sharing learning intentions • Today we are learning … to use capital letters and full stops • How could you sharethis learning intention with students? … scientific method … English grammar … Physical Education / Sport …

30. Improving classroom dialogue • Some examples from UK classrooms

31. Improving classroom dialogue • The power of wait time • Increasing the range of students who answer • Increasing the quality of answers • More WRONG / partially correct, longer explanations • Asking better questions • Highly context dependent • Saying less and listening more

32. Marking and feedback • Two ideas: • There are 5 mistakes here. Find and fix them. • You seem to be confused about … Talk to Eeva about how to work out the difference. • Have you got some more ideas that might work?

33. Peer and self-assessment • The learning paradox • It’s good to talk • The value of being wrong

34. Using summative tests formatively • Use to expand students’ conceptions of learning …

35. He was not a very careful person as a mathematician. He made a lot of mistakes but he made mistakes in a good direction … I tried to imitate him but I found out that it is very difficult to make good mistakes. (Goro Shimura)

36. Start NOW • Doing something is better than doing nothing • Try something & evaluate whether it works • Assess before or during teaching: don’t teach student what they already know • Teachers don’t have to do it all

37. Moving forward • Keep it simple • Work with others • Give and ask for feedback • Mistakes are useful: Getting it wrong can be helpful