Alignment

‘Constructive alignment’ starts with the notion that the learner constructs his or her own learning through relevant learning activities. The teacher’s job is to create a learning environment that supports the learning activities appropriate to achieving the desired learning outcomes. The key is that all components in the teaching system - the curriculum and its intended outcomes, the teaching methods used, the assessment tasks - are aligned to each other. All are tuned to learning activities addressed in the desired learning outcomes. The learner finds it difficult to escape without learning appropriately.’ -John Biggs; Aligning Teaching for Constructivist Learning

Strategies available to teachers to assist alignment

The most significant notion that teachers should adopt is this: PLAN BACKWARDS.
Teachers and school need to ask some questions of their programme: What do you want your students to look like at the end of the year? Mid semester? at the end of the term? at the end of the week?
Educators can therefore align based on their vision of the future. The clue is to set the “there,” first. Then cut the path to that goal into smaller pieces, utilising contextualised examples and technologies along the way.

http://nde.doe.nv.gov/Assessment_WA_SG.htm#NWAHR 

A standards-referenced approach provides the means by which students know what they are expected to learn and the standards against which they will be assessed. A standards-referenced approach will assist teachers by providing information related to student achievement in curriculum terms over time. A standards-referenced approach provides the capacity to do this because the assessment is against standards rather than different groups of students. Standards can assist students to think about their learning. An understanding of standards in a course can assist students to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses and how they do things.

Principles of effective feedback

As previously discussed, students benefit when they receive feedback about their progress. Meaningful feedback about progress towards achievement of course outcomes will enhance student understanding and assist teacher monitoring of student achievement and progress. 

Examples and implications

QLD pedagogy alignment tool

The QCAR (Queensland Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting) Framework supports the alignment of curriculum, assessment and reporting. The framework supports teaching that is tailored to meet the unique needs of students, by providing teachers with direction and valuable resources to support them in their everyday work. The Framework supports teachers and schools in building a culture of “high expectations engaged learning and focused teaching” (Hill, 2003). It helps teachers to plan and provide opportunities for students to experience rich learning programmes that have relevance and application in the real world; Authentic Pedagogies. It also supports students to be active participants in their learning (Self-Regulation).

Implications

Good sense of pedagogy, some frameworks to apply, like NSW productive Pedagogy and school-based assessment policy understood by all are the practical keys to alignment, reporting and sound assessment.Maybe the solution is a double-edged assessment system?

Side 1:  Accept that facts are important, and that an efficient way of assessing a massive amount of information is through multiple choice and short response examinations. We have learnt in previous sessions (refer to page 2 of this blog) that higher order thinking strategies can be applied to MCQ’s.

This first direction of assessment would ideally happen throughout a term or semester to assess how much raw knowledge students have gained, particularly important in cumulative subjects like maths and language, or where there is a pre-requisite of knowledge, maybe terminology.  There is essentially this infrastructure in place, but maybe it is not used in ways to inform both student and teacher as it should. There is also a need to have professional development on item writing, particularly MCQ’s.  From what I have seen, many exams have some poorly assembled questions.

Side 2: This is the direction that doesn’t yet exist in formal assessment strategy in most faculties or school. Perhaps it is mainly thought of as just regular day to day classroom activity, and undervalued?  Either way, it should be more of a continuous assessment that happens along side the daily activity of learning vs the sporadic assessments as described in side 1.  Assessments here should be authentic, contextualised and meaningful, based on student performance of various skill sets as well as high levels of thinking, such as create, perform and synthesise.  Tasks should be highly engaging, and allow for student judgement and direction.  The focus will not be on facts, but more on enduring understandings; life-long learning.  Here, students won’t be required to have learnt verbatim concepts or terms, but they may be required to take on an authentic role in the study and solution searching issues.

Using an approach like this could assist in making sure all elements of the assessment are supported by curriculum and the true outcomes of education are reported and the results utilised in meaningful ways.

Summative and Formative Assessment

Summative is the end result of all that the student has achieved. Following discussion, I believe that the only true summative assessment is perhaps the HSC examination. Some examples may include tests and measurements.  The formative evaluation is happening while the student is still learning.  Constructive feedback to assist the learning process is the most fundamental aspect of formative assessment. This form of assessment is used to help the student improve, and take many varied forms, both formal and informal, whereas the summative assessment is usually testing at the ‘end’ and helps the teacher, school, and other stakeholders to refine their methods to assist in student learning and classroom management skills. In this aspect, summative assessment could be classified as formative. It is stakeholder dependant.

 Assessment of,for but most importantly as learning

For some time, I have been aware of assessment of, but more over a fan of assessment for learning. A further concept of assessment as learning is a new, innovative way of viewing and planning for the daily classroom experience. It suggests a closer alignment to pedagogy and true classroom activity. In essence, teachers are always ‘assessing’ student performance and providing feedback on these observations. This theory implies constant feedback loops between students and teachers and would appear to appeal to high order thinking and consistent evaluation of learning and teaching programmes. Asking questions along the learning journey, and using assessment AS a learning tool points towards a metacognitive process; where students and teachers think about their thinking, negotiating the curriculum along the way.

 Norm referenced, Criterion Referenced, Ipsative AssessmentThe argument that numbers mean nothing unless they are attached to standards is significant. Students, informed by society have come to place significant emphasis on numbers and are seemingly able to assert value to them. In reality, numbers alone are meaningless.This concept alone appears to significantly undermine norm referencing legitimacy. However, Killen (p130) would argue that fairness is a positive attribute, as tests are administered under the same conditions and work is marked in a uniform way (even if the only differences noted are really in the quantity of understanding, not quality.) Nevertheless, parents, and more recently governments appear to place far more significance on the mark rather than the process to get there, or the validity/reliability of the process. Norm referencing still has a legitimate place in education, particularly in the allocation of resources. To know the ‘best and worst’ in a class or cohort can go a long way to inform allocation of human and material resources in schools. It is also significantly used as a ‘gate keeping’ device to university entrance through the ATAR (arguably a far less legitimate use.)In order to address some shortcomings of norm referencing, standards-based assessment offers the more meaningful (for the purpose of true educational development) method of comparing student performance against a set of articulated standards, rather than against the ranked performance of others. It values the individual quality of response. This form of assessment can share the fairness factor of norm-referenced assessment, by being administered under the same conditions and marked in a uniform way (Killen, p131). This method reflects true student performance and ability, as their results do not have to conform to a ‘bell curve’ or pre-determined distribution of marks. An example is a student meeting criteria for a ‘D’ level at university, rather than simply being awarded a shallow ‘HD’ on the basis of a certain number of ‘HD’ marks mandated. While standards-based assessment and Criterion based assessment share many of the same values and features, there are allowances made for students with special needs in task administration in standards based tasks, and no comparisons between students are made, while criterion based indicated whether a student can or can’t fulfil the criteria, not to what extent. Students can get some really good feedback from these tasks, in the marking rubric and stated standards they have achieved alone.

Since really examining assessment, I have explicitly articulated the role of ispative assessment to my students. It is SO middle school...(thinking about the self and who I am...) Borrowing from the good points of standards-based assessment (which also speaks of formal assessment strategies), ipsative assessment  is the practice of assessing present student performance against prior performance of the person being assessed. This, to me, indicates a more informal approach, however can of course be used in conjunction with a range of other assessments to inform a good foundation of feedback activity.

I would argue that the starting point for all involved in education is to make the clear distinction between testing and assessment. The purpose of all assessment, whether informal classroom-based assessment or formal high stakes testing is to provide information that will support teaching and learning in schools, hence improve student outcomes. (Cooney 2006 pii)

Assessment is essentially about gathering data for student progress, feedback and educational accountability. It provides evidence that can be interpreted in a range of ways depending on the stakeholder’s frame of reference, and can be an important tool of communicating with parents, the community, teachers, school executive, prospective parents and governments. It is significant to note that assessment data is useful if only matched against outcomes.

 
Assessment needs to fit a particular purpose.

 Evaluation is a highly inconsistent process. Teachers give different numbers and types of assessments and weight them differently.
There is disagreement on issues like the role and value of homework. Some teachers assign homework frequently and weight it heavily, while some don’t assign it at all.
Some teachers will allow retakes of tests and quizzes, others do not.
Different policies exist for work turned in late not only among different schools, but within schools. An example recently surrounds the situation of two teachers teaching the one senior subject. One teacher placed a significant amount of emphasis on a given task, including the importance of timely submission, while the other teacher allowed students to hand in the task late without penalty. Subsequently, the first class were in essence disadvantaged by the actions of the latter teacher, whom provided more time for students to complete a common task, undermining the significance of the task, and arguably some of the data attached to it.
The validity and reliability of student assessments vary. This can be a significant factor where conflicting pedagogies are in play.
There are major philosophical differences regarding evaluation. Some teachers view learning as primarily a student responsibility, while some place the responsibility for teaching mainly on themselves. (I would also argue, both values can work in tandem)
There is little agreement on many assessments and what kinds are needed for evaluation. In fact, the use of multiple choice is disregarded, and often the rigour of an assessment programme is quantity not quality.
Even within the same school different teachers teach differently and test differently for the same course. Particularly informal assessment. Another recent example is drawn from a shared class arrangement.  Two vastly different teachers in terms of pedagogy, student connection and engagement (sure, a largely qualitative statement, but revealed in differing class management issues). 

Assessment validity fails when pedagogies of teachers are not aligned.