Bitesize Research: Designing Assessments

 By Jaya Carrier

I hope everyone has had a good week so far! We’ve been doing lots of thinking about assessment practices this term, and therefore I was interested to see the following article on Edutopia which looks at evidence-based practices in designing assessments. Objectives:

To understand how evidence-based practices for assessment can be applied to the designing of assessments. Summary:

The author of the article recommends the following practices for designing and implementing assessments:

1) Support students in getting good test preparation habits - in particular, students often overestimate their preparedness for a test, so the author recommends that teachers ask students to show a detailed revision plan, including the kinds of activities they are going to undertake.

2) Consider the level of difficulty in an assessment carefully - in particular, overly difficult tests have been shown to have decreased motivation, as well as being a more likely cause for students to remember wrong answers. The author recommends that students who study moderately should be getting 70-80% in the assessment.

3) Consider the question order - in particular, put easier questions first. Recent studies have shown that students are more likely to do worse on tests if the difficult questions are at the start.

4) Be aware of implicit bias - in particular, consider the question phrasing and construction. Girls have been shown, for example, to answer consistently better on open-ended questions. The author recommends combining different question types - multiple-choice, short answer, essays - with creative, open-ended assessments.

5) Break up assessments - in particular, space them out across a sequence of work.

6) Get students to write their own tests - some research shows that students who did this regularly got on average 14% better marks.

7) After assessment work - the author recommends not seeing tests as an endpoint, but as an ongoing journey, and a valuable opportunity to address misconceptions or gaps in knowledge. One strategy promoted is ‘exam wrappers’ which are short metacognitive writing tasks that get students to review their performance on the test. How does this impact me and my practice?:

Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:

• How am I designing and implementing assessments currently?
• What of these practices am I already using?
• What assessment practices would you like to improve upon further?
  

If you would like to discuss this further with me please get in touch! I’d be delighted to hear from you!

Bitesize Research: Understanding Why Cold Calling Is Effective To Assess Learning

 By Jaya Carrier

I hope everyone had a great half term, and that this first week back is going well. For this week’s bitesize research, I was interested in looking at Tom Sherrington’s take on cold calling in the classroom from February 2021. Objectives: To understand why cold calling is so effective as AfL, and how it might be effectively implemented in a classroom setting. Summary:

The key overall themes are:

• Cold calling supports inclusivity in the classroom wherein everyone’s contributions matter
• Cold calling supports accountability in the classroom - there is no opt-out
• Students are made to think routinely by way of cold calling - it causes a cultural shift
• Cold calling should be the default position for questioning in all classrooms but can be used as part of a wider repertoire of questioning techniques too
• Sherrington notes that cold calling is really powerful in remote learning as well as in-person.
• Sherrington also offers a number of strategies in the article to support with cold calling as effectively as possible

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:

• How much do I use cold calling in my classrooms? Do I use it as the ‘default mode’? What works well in using it?
• How useful are Sherrington’s cold calling strategies in my classroom? What ones can I add or develop in my practice?

"Show me the Way": The importance of feedback in the plan-teach-assess cycle

By Dr Paul Wood

[Note: This short blog post is part of my efforts to share my educational thinking. Nothing below should be interpreted as a comment on WA teaching since I've yet to observe that in practice].

Assessment is one of the most important tools to help a teacher maximise each individual student's learning. I continue to find it a fascinating topic, not only because of its aforementioned importance, but also for reasons such as:

• the wide range in philosophical attitudes towards it (what is its purpose?!)
• the controversies that it generates (E.g. should students be able to resubmit assessments? What if students miss a deadline?)
• the ways in which it is used to inform grade determination (most
• the anxieties that it can cause students if they (or their parents) believe their grades are not good enough.  

Effective use of diagnostic, formative and summative assessments is vital but depends on a shared understanding within each class and across a faculty of how those assessment types best support the plan-teach-assess cycle (see page 18 of the WA Best Practice Handbook). Such a shared understanding helps ensure a consistency in the student experience: I have no doubt that it benefits students to hear consistent language about, and have consistent experiences of, assessment (and hence grading) and other important aspects of teaching and learning.

The simple "plan-teach-assess" cycle could be expanded to "diagnostically assess-plan-teach-formatively assess-feedback to students-plan-teach-summatively assess"!  The role of feedback in this expanded cycle is crucial and this article, while a little old, usefully summarises what is required for feedback to be meaningful.  However, there's little value in a teacher taking the time to provide meaningful feedback if students do not understand it and act on it.  Hence, the importance of using some classroom time to ensure that's the case.

My own thinking about assessment has been informed by the work of many people including those listed below.  Anyone who is interested in assessment might like to explore their work and opinions, but it's always important to think critically about pedagogical research, trends and "theories"!

Dylan Wiliam

Ken O'Connor

Michael Fullan

Robert Marzano

Jay McTighe

I welcome your suggestions of other people who have worthwhile things to say about assessment.