Moderation

1. Moderation School Based Assessment and Reporting Unit Curriculum Directorate

2. What is moderation? • Moderation is the process where teachers compare judgements to either confirm or adjust them • The process involves close collaboration to establish a shared understanding of what achievement of an outcome looks like and whether or not the student has demonstrated achievement of the outcome

3. Discussion • What moderation processes exist in your school? • How can these be further developed?

4. Factors that make moderation easier • where criteria were agreed upon. Using the same tasks with common aims and criteria enabled assessors to know what they were looking for • where criteria for judgement were explicit and easy to see • where substantial amounts of work were sought from the student • where appropriate and realistic tasks were set for particular levels to meet students’ capabilities • where tasks were sufficiently open-ended to allow students to demonstrate more widely across levels • where details of the context were provided • where teachers were familiar with the Curriculum Standards Framework (CSF) and were able to set tasks designed to meet learning outcomes • where provision was made for pooling and discussing opinions about students’ work. (Findings from Consistency Project Report 1998 [DEETYA])

5. Factors that make moderation difficult • where student’s work showed insufficient evidence • where teachers set different tasks which needed clarification of what they had been taught and how • where tasks were poorly set • when a piece of work showed achievement of outcomes at more than one level • where teachers had difficulty interpreting the exact meaning of the Curriculum Standards Framework statements. (Findings from Consistency Project Report 1998 [DEETYA])

6. Factors to address in moderating activities • internalise stage understandings • understanding the outcomes: clarifying definitions and wording • developing similar assessment criteria for tasks as a basis for comparing judgements • acknowledging and agreeing upon the role of prior knowledge of students • fine tuning transition points • using multiple task samples versus single task samples • on-balance judgements versus one-off judgements • how to construct quality assessment tasks • developing different and additional indicators

7. School Planning • Where are we now? • What processes do we need to put in place? • How will we know we have we have achieved this?