Bethan Marshall

How teachers engage with Assessment for Learning: lessons from the classroom

Using video recordings of lessons and interviews with teachers, this article explores the way in which teachers enact Assessment for Learning (AfL) practices in their classrooms. Starting with the hypothesis that AfL is built on an underlying pedagogic principle that foregrounds the promotion of pupil autonomy, we analyse the ways in which teachers instantiate this principle in practice. A distinction is drawn between lessons that embody the ‘spirit’ of AfL and those that conform only to the ‘letter’. The nature and sequence of tasks and especially ‘high organization based on ideas’ appears crucial to the former. This adds a dimension to more familiar formulations of AFL practices. We also ask whether the teachers’ beliefs about learning contribute to the different ways in which they interpret the procedures of AfL. Interviews with teachers indicated that those whose lessons captured the spirit of AfL were more likely to take responsibility for success and failure in the promotion of pupil autonomy. Thus they had a sense of their own agency and sought to use it to overcome barriers to learning.

Validity in teachers’ summative assessments

This paper describes some of the findings of a project which set out to explore and develop teachers’ understanding and practices in their summative assessments. The focus was on those summative assessments that are used on a regular basis within schools for guiding the progress of pupils and for internal accountability. The project combined both intervention and research elements. The intervention aimed both to explore how teachers might improve those practices in the light of their re‐examination of their validity, and to engage them in moderation exercises within and between schools to audit examples of students’ work and to discuss their appraisals of these examples. This paper reports findings, arising from this work, of the research that aimed to study how teachers understand validity, and how they formulate their classroom assessment practices in the light of that understanding. The paper also considers how that understanding might be challenged and developed. It was found that teachers’ attention to validity issues had been undermined by the external test regimes, but that teachers could re‐address these issues by reflection on their values and by engagement in a shared development of portfolio assessments.

Can teachers’ summative assessments produce dependable results and also enhance classroom learning?

Summative assessments that are integrated within the daily pedagogy of teachers are problematic. Some argue that they cannot both be helpful to pedagogy and yield results that are comparable across and between schools. Others claim that there is enough evidence to show that these targets can be achieved. The project described in this paper explored how teachers might enhance their competence in summative assessment in ways which might also have a positive effect on their teaching and learning. A strategy was developed based on five key features of summative assessment practices. The findings, from a longitudinal study with 18 teachers, are based on the teachers’ opinions, both about the quality of the results which they achieved, and about the positive impacts on the involvement of pupils, on collaboration between teachers, and on interaction with parents. The project involved teachers of English and mathematics in three schools, working with the authors, over two-and-a-half years.

Assessment for learning in English and mathematics: a comparison

Research in the area of assessment for learning (AfL) has largely focused on generic approaches and strategies, applicable to teaching and learning in all subject areas. In this article, we address the issue of subject-specific approaches. We examine two lessons, one English and one mathematics, and we discuss the form of assessment for learning in the context of these two subjects. English and mathematics are often thought of as contrasting disciplines, typifying the arts/sciences split in education and there are significant differences in the social norms and the structure of knowledge in each subject. This article undertakes a comparison of the lessons in order better to understand how these significant differences affect the realization of formative assessment in the classroom, and in doing so finds much common ground which might be the starting point for future dialogue between the disciplines.

Learning how to learn: Tools for schools

Learning how to learn is an essential preparation for lifelong learning. This book offers a set of in-service resources to help teachers develop new classroom practices informed by sound research. It builds on previous work associated with ‘formative assessment’ or ‘assessment for learning’. However, it adds an important new dimension by taking account of the conditions within schools that are conducive to the promotion, in classrooms, of learning how to learn as an extension of assessment for learning.

Goals or horizons—the conundrum of progression in English: or a possible way of understanding formative assessment in English

This article examines how the principles of formative assessment might be applied to the curriculum subject of English. It takes as its starting point the problematic nature of progression in the subject and suggests that it may be better to understand progression as heading towards a horizon rather than a clearly defined goal. The article argues this by exploring the potential constraints of what might be considered goal models of progression and contrasts these with the affordances offered by those approaches that view progression as towards a horizon. In particular it suggests that, in order to understand how to progress, pupils need to acquire the guild subject knowledge of their teachers by being apprenticed into the same community of interpreters. The article situates this discussion within wider concerns about how teachers scaffold and regulate the learning process for their pupils.

Learning about Assessment for Learning: A Framework for Discourse about Classroom Practice

Abstract ‘Learning how to Learn – in classrooms, schools and networks’ is a four-year, multi-site project funded under the Economic and Social Research Council Teaching and Learning Research Programme and concerned with the development of formative assessment practice. This article describes how analysis of a large double-scale questionnaire administered across project schools provided not only information about trends in teacher values and practices, but also a basis for observation, analysis and discourse about classroom practice. A group of secondary Postgraduate Certificate of Education trainees were provided with a semi-structured observational framework derived from factor analysis of questionnaire responses in order to guide their observation of classroom video and analysis of teacher interviews. While all trainees were able to identify effective practice and to relate it to their own evolving craft knowledge, for a minority the framework also provided a focus for enquiry and dialogue about the relationships and tensions between the values and practices of the featured teachers and of the participating trainees themselves.

Teachers' Subject Philosophies Related to their Assessment Practices

Abstract This paper explores the relationship between the subject philosophy of English teachers and their assessment practices. The research is contextualised within the wider debate about the validity and reliability of course work-based assessment in English. It examines the history of that debate and then looks at ways in which practitioners and exam boards have sought to grapple with the issue of reliability and validity within English assessment. The research contributes to the debate by suggesting, through a small-scale indicative study, that English teachers are not influenced by their subject philosophies when assessing pupils’ course work but by their understanding or ‘construct’ of grade boundaries.

The Politics of Testing

Abstract This article looks at the changes made to examinations in England over recent decades and asks about the politics behind the changes. It considers how increasingly centralised the assessment regime has become, moving from a system where teachers could have a say in how pupils are assessed to a regime dominated by government approved tests. It considers too how the standards‐based tests in England are both political in the abstract and party‐political in their content.

The use of television in the development of literacy

Abstract This article considers the uses and benefits of schools television programmes aimed at developing literacy. It begins to examine the wider implications of the uses of film and television narrative on the teaching of reading. The research looks at the practice of two primary schools in west London in which a schools television programme formed a central part of the literacy teaching. It goes on to draw conclusions about the way in which such programmes can be used more effectively in the teaching of reading.