 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
||||||||
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||
 |
|
||||||||
 |
 |
|
|||||||
 |
|
||||||||
Helping teachers to use assessment for learning
in inquiry-based scienceWynne Harlen, UK
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The first part of this paper outlines a framework for improving cognitive development. To avoid repeating learning that is particularly relevant to learning science through inquiry, but has wide application to all learning. It has proven potential for raising students’ attainment, particularly that of lower achieving students. Assessment used for this purpose is described as formative (since it helps to ‘form’ learning) or alternatively, ‘assessment for learning’. The second part of the paper discusses four of the key features of formative assessment: teachers’ questioning; a view of progression; feedback to students; and involving students in self-assessment.The final part concerns the threat to implementing the use of assessment to help learning that is posed by the use of summative assessment (or assessment of learning), in the form of blanket testing, for accountability purposes. The point is not to oppose summative and formative assessment; we need both. The challenge is to conduct summative assessment in a way that does not lead to the negative impacts on students’ motivation for learning and on the curriculum and teachers’ teaching style, including the practice of inquiry-based teaching and learning.
I. The rationale for using assessment to help learning
The kind of assessment that is the subject of this paper is not merely compatible with, but a necessity for, proper implementation of inquiry-based learning. This is because the aim of inquiry-based learning is to enable students to build scientific ideas through direct interaction with and thinking about materials, events and phenomena in their environment. The emphasis is on understanding, which, on the basis of modern views of learning, requires action by the learner. The focus is on learners ‘doing the learning’ by constructing meaning from their experiences and making sense of the world in terms of concepts and mental models. Inquiry also involves students taking some responsibility for their learning and undertaking activities such as raising questions and hypotheses, designing and carrying out the inquiry, revising ideas based on observation and findings and presenting conclusions to others.
Formative assessment is underpinned by a constructivist view of learning, which contrasts with the behaviourist view that learning is a response to external stimuli and is very much in the control of the teacher, the role of the learner being to receive and respond. There is a considerable body of research supporting the view that learners construct their own understanding of their experiences, and that these ideas may be in conflict with the widely held ideas about events. (See, for example, Black and Lucas, 1993). The way in which learners come to revise and reconstruct their understanding to bring it more into line with accepted ideas is through interaction with their environment and with the ideas of others. This is elaborated in the socio-cultural view of learning based on the ideas of Vygotsky (1962) and Lave and Wenger (1991) among others (Bransford et al, 1999).
When learning is understood in this way, the learner is at the centre of the process. It follows that the more learners know about what it is intended should be learned – the learning goals – about where they have reached in relation to these goals, and about what further needs to be done to reach the goals, the more the learners can direct effort usefully for learning.The role of the teacher is to assess where students are in relation to the goals, to decide what are appropriate next steps, to help students take these steps and, importantly, to involve students in these processes. These actions together comprise formative assessment – or ‘assessment for learning’. A formal definition is:
‘the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners and their teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get there’. (Assessment Reform Group, 2002)
To add to this theoretical argument for using assessment formatively, there is also empirical evidence of a positive impact on learning. The value of using assessment in this way was the main message from a review of research on classroom assessment conducted by Black and Wiliam (1998a, b). Their conclusions were that the use of assessment for formative purposes can lead to substantial gains in learning when it includes certain key features that emerged from the research studies.These features include particular forms of feedback, the involvement of students in self-assessment and the use of assessment in modifying teaching. Black and Wiliam acknowledged that such practices require large shifts in teachers’ perceptions of their roles in relation to their students, but that considerable gains in achievements are possible as a result.
Perhaps the most significant finding from the research is that the practice of formative assessment benefits all students, but the increase in levels of achievement is particularly marked for lower achieving students. Thus the effect is to decrease the gap between the more and less well achieving students. In the past few years, evidence from projects designed to implement formative assessment has added to the evidence of its positive impact on student achievement levels (Black et al, 2003).
II. Assessment for learning in practice
Using assessment for learning (or formative assessment) is a continuous process that is integral to teaching. Like teaching, it does not happen at infrequent intervals, as in the case of assessment of learning (summative assessment).It is a cyclic process; the effect of decisions at a particular time is to alter the learning activity, hopefully towards achievement of the goals, and to lead to a further activity, where again information is gathered and interpreted to decide the most useful further steps, and so on. Thus formative assessment can be represented as a recurring cycle of events (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Assessment for learning as a cycle of events (adapted from Harlen, 2005)
To outline the stages in the cycle, we can begin with activity A, related to a clear goal of learning. This provides the teacher with opportunity to gather evidence about the students’ current understanding or skills in relation to the goal. Evidence can be gathered in a range of ways, such as questioning, discussion, asking students to write or draw what they know and other methods that are designed to gain access to the students’ existing understanding (see Harlen, 2005). The teacher then interprets the evidence in terms of the goals of the activity, but also takes into account such things as the recent progress and the effort of the student. This means the judgement is student-referenced (ipsative) as well as criterion-referenced.The next part of the cycle is the hallmark of assessment for learning.Here the judgment of where the students have reached is used to decide the next steps. This decision requires a clear grasp on the part of the teacher of the goals of the activity and of the course of progress towards them. Both this and the interpretation of evidence are helped by the teacher having access to indicators of progression.Once the next steps have been identified the teacher decides how to help the students take them.This cannot be planned in detail in advance, since the purpose of assessing within teaching is to guide decisions about how to help learning. However, teachers can, of course, be equipped with a range of strategies –a tool-box, if you like – from which they select according to the nature of the step that needs to be taken. The outcome of the process is the next learning experience, activity step B in Figure 1, which takes students further towards achievement of the goals. The process then continues in a cycle, leading to C, and so on. This is, of course, a model and although described as a series of separate actions, in practice the processes within the cycle often run together.
In all steps there is a role for the students, which makes the teacher’s task easier. Through participating in the decisions students will understand what they need to do and will be committed to making the effort that is required.
III. Helping teachers to develop skills of using assessment to help learning
As Black and Wiliam (1998b) noted, using assessment in this way requires a considerable change in practice for many teachers. It is essential that they understand the ‘why’ as well as the ‘how’ of practising formative assessment, for it requires commitment to a view of learning, just as does inquiry based teaching. For many teachers, particularly with limited training and large classes, direct instruction of material that students are expected to rote learn is the extent of their practice. What is needed is for them to be convinced of the value of alternative practice and the best way is for them to experience it. So professional development in formative assessment needs to be designed to start from teachers’ existing ideas of assessment and provide evidence and experience to help them develop the necessary understanding and the pedagogic skills to practise it. In other words, this means a workshop approach where teachers experience formative assessment and recognise how this can engage learners (including themselves) in their own learning. (See, for example, Harlen, 2003)
There is no room here to consider the range of strategies and tools that are helpful for each stage of the formative assessment cycle (this can be found, for example, in Harlen, 2005). What can be done here is to focus on aspects of practice that are relevant at several stages in the cycle: teachers’ questioning; a view of progression; feedback to students; and involving students in self-assessment.
IV. Teachers’ questioningQuestioning is the most frequently used form of teachers’ communication with students. It has key roles in both gathering evidence about students’ ideas and skills and in helping development. Three aspects of questions that contribute to their effectiveness are form, content and time for answering. In relation to the form of the question, there is world of difference between asking ‘Why does changing the length of a guitar string change the sound it makes?’ and asking ‘Why do you think changing the length of a guitar string changes the sound it makes? The first asks for the answer, whilst the second asks for the student’s ideas. This small change in wording can have a big impact on how students respond. Similarly the content of the question must reflect whether the interest is in how the student is understanding an event or how the student would investigate it, for instance by asking ‘What could you do to find out …?’
The third point about questioning is the importance of giving students time to answer. Research (Budd Rowe, 1974) shows that, after asking a question, teachers frequently wait no longer than one second before intervening again if no answer is forthcoming. When they were advised to increase the ‘wait’ time to eight seconds after asking questions that required explanations, the students’ answers were longer and more thoughtful. The ‘wait’ time, is necessary not only to allow for the students to think and to formulate their answer but to convey the message that the teacher is really interested in their ideas and will listen to them carefully.It also slows down the discussion, giving the teacher time to phrase thoughtful questions and the students time to think before answering. The whole exchange is then more productive in terms of giving teachers access to students’ real understanding and not just their first superficial thoughts.
In order to use evidence to help students’ learning it is essential to have a view of the progression in that learning. As an example, the following is a set of progressive indicators of development in planning investigations:
Things students do that indicate development of the process skills of planning scientific investigations
- Suggest a useful approach to answering a question or testing a prediction by investigation, even if details are lacking or need further thought
- Make suggestions about what might happen when certain changes are made
- Identify the variable that has to be changed and the things which should be kept the same for a fair test
- Identify what to look for or measure to obtain a result in an investigation
- Select and use equipment and measuring devices suited to the task in hand
- Succeed in planning a fair test using the support of a framework of questions or planning board
- Spontaneously structure a plan so that variables are identified and steps taken to make results as accurate as possible.
These indicators (based on Harlen, 2005) have been developed from what is known about progression from research and practice, but they are not by any means definitive.It is not likely that there is an exact and invariable sequence that applies to every student, but is it helpful to have a rough idea. Lists of indicators in this form can be devised for development of concepts and, indeed, attitudes. Examples of similar lists have been published in Australia (Masters and Forster, 1996) and developed in California (the Berkeley Evaluation and Assessment Research (BEAR) assessment system (Wilson, 1990; Wilson et al 2004).
The indicators of progression have two important functions. First, they focus attention on particular aspects of behaviour that signify a skill or attitude in action.Being prepared with what to look for makes observing much easier. Second, because they are arranged in a rough sequence of progressive development, they give an indication of where a student has reached. If a student shows evidence of the first few behaviours, but not of later ones, then the change from one set to the other shows where help is needed to make further progress, that is, their next steps. This is all that is needed for formative assessment.There is no need to identify levels or grades of attainment; indeed as we will see later, these interfere with the use of assessment to help learning.
VI. Feedback to studentsFigure 1 represents formative assessment as a cycle of events in which evidence is fed back into teaching and learning. This feedback helps to regulate teaching so that the pace of moving toward a learning goal is adjusted to ensure the active participation of the students. Feedback to the teacher is needed so that he or she can consider appropriate next steps and the action that will help the students to take them. Feedback to the students is most effective in promoting learning if it involves them in the process of deciding what the next steps should be, so that they are not passive recipients of the teacher’s judgments of their work.
Since much of the communication between teacher and students has to be through marking written work the form of the feedback given in this way is of considerable significance if students are to become involved in taking their next steps. Some of the most influential studies on feedback by marking have been carried out by Ruth Butler. In a controlled experimental study she set up groups that were given feedback in different ways (1987).One group of students was given marks or grades, only; another group was given only comments on their work and the third group received both marks and comments on the work. The results were the same for high and low achieving students. For all tasks and students, comments only led to higher achievement.
What this study shows is that students seize upon marks and ignore any comments that accompany them. They look to the marks for a judgement rather than at the comments that would help in further learning. When marks are absent they engage with what the teacher wants to bring to their attention. The comments then have a chance of improving learning as intended by the teacher.In order to do this, of course, the comments should be positive, non-judgemental and where possible identify next steps. Further, students should be expected to, and given time to, respond to comments and questions in the feedback on their work.
VII. Involving students in self-assessmentIn all stages of the formative assessment cycle there is a role for the students, which makes the teacher’s task easier. What student self-assessment means in operational terms is that students understand the goals of their learning, have a grasp of the quality or standard that is expected and are encouraged to reflect on their work to see how it matches the goals.None of these features is common in existing practice, but there are good examples of how they can be introduced, such as the following:
- Regularly discussing with students the purpose of activities and ensuring that students understand it by asking them what they are learning from an activity;
- Providing examples of other students’ (anonymous) work to discuss in terms of its strengths and weaknesses in order to identify the attributes of ‘good’ work;
- Brainstorming with the students, ideas about, for example, what a good report of an inquiry would contain and displaying these criteria in the classroom so that students use them when writing their reports; and
- Providing time for students to review and revise their work so that they are satisfied with it.
Teachers who involve students in self-assessment find it enables students to take ownership of their learning and see themselves as partners in the teaching-learning process, raising their self esteem. Students focus upon the next goal in their learning which they feel is being set by themselves, rather than being externally imposed.
Peer-assessment has been found to have even greater advantages for students’ learning. In the context of formative assessment this means something quite different from students marking each other’s books. In essence it means students helping each other with their learning, by deciding the next steps to take. Black et al (2002, p.10) described peer-assessment as ‘uniquely valuable because students may accept, from one another, criticisms of their work, which they would not take seriously if made by their teacher’.
It is important to note that these changes in questioning, in understanding progression, giving feedback and involving students in assessing their own learning, do not depend on having small classes or require ‘individualised instruction’. The engagement in learning that these changes can bring in the students is through each one understanding what they have to learn and how to go about it, often using other students to help them. There is evidence of students working in small groups who do not know the purpose of their activities (Harlen, 2001, p. 132) and, at the same time, successful strategies used in large classes where students discuss with each other what they are learning and consider how well they are doing it.The changes are to be brought about through professional development; although smaller classes will obviously help, they will not per se improve education.
IX. The relationship of formative assessment and summative assessment
This paper is concerned with the use of formative assessment to help learning, but this is just one purpose of assessment. The purpose of assessment that is more familiar to many teachers is for summarising achievement at certain times in order to give marks or grades as a basis for reporting to parents, other teachers, or for selection for employment or higher education.
In addition, the use of frequent summative assessment in the form of tests to monitor and evaluate the performance of schools has increased over the past 14 or so years - to epidemic proportions in parts of the USA and parts of the UK (particularly England). The reason is based on a claim that testing raises standards of achievement; indeed politicians can cite evidence that when testing programmes are introduced levels of performance on the tests of successive cohorts of students rise. This works, it is assumed, because teachers and students are motivated by the rewards, or more often by the penalties, to put effort into passing the tests (Kellaghan et al, 1996). Such arguments underpin most of the state-mandated testing programmes in the USA and the national tests for students at ages 7, 11 and 14 in England.
However, we have to look carefully at the evidence before accepting that these claims have any substance. First, we should ask: standards in what? The answer is to be found by looking at what is tested. Is it the full range of goals of education? Does it include those goals that are of particular importance for preparing future citizens in a fast changing world; goals such as problem-solving, critical and creative thinking, transferable higher level skills, the skills of learning how to learn? Second, in practice any rise in test scores lasts for a year or two, but then tapers off, suggesting that the initial increase of test scores is due to greater familiarity of teachers and students with the tests rather than increasing learning (e.g. Koretz et al, 1991; Linn, 2000; Kohn, 2000). Third, in relation to motivation we have to ask: what kind of motivation? All learning is motivated in some way, but motivation to do what is needed to pass a test is not the same as motivation to learn.There is firm research evidence that repeated testing and practising for tests is damaging to motivation to learn (Harlen and Deakin Crick, 2003). Moreover it is particularly damaging to lower achieving students and has the result of increasing the gap between higher and lower achievers.
High stakes tests are inevitably designed to be as ‘objective’ as possible since there is a premium on reliable marking in the interests of fairness. This has the effect of reducing what is assessed to what can be readily and reliably marked. Generally this excludes many worthwhile outcomes of education such as problem solving and critical thinking. However, even when test-constructors do try to include higher level thinking skills, the pressure on teachers of the high stakes attached to test scores can lead to training for the test, to the extent that students can pass any kinds of test, even those intended to assess higher cognitive skills, when they do not possess these skills (Gordon and Reese, 1997). Even when not teaching directly to the tests, research (Harlen and Deakin Crick, 2003) shows that teachers report changing their approach. They adjust their teaching in ways they perceived as necessary because of the tests, spending most time in direct instruction of facts to be tested and less in providing opportunity for students to learn through inquiry and problem-solving (Johnston and McClune, 2000). When teachers and schools are in the grip of summative testing, teachers make little use of assessment formatively, to help the learning process (Pollard et al., 2000; Osborn et al, 2000). In other words, high-stakes summative assessment squeezes out formative assessment. The opportunities for inquiry-based science are similarly occluded.
There is also a considerable volume of evidence that testing is having an impact on students’ enjoyment of, and willingness to continue, learning. These are important outcomes of education; for we have reached a stage where school education can itself no longer provide students with skills and knowledge to last for their life-time. Within a decade there will be the requirement for skills that we do not even recognise today (just as most of us would not have known what ‘surfing the net’ meant a little more than a decade ago). Thus schools must prepare students for continued learning throughout life and this means willingness to learn, enjoyment of learning, the development of higher-level skills and of understanding how to learn.
Using assessment to help learning by attention to the aspects discussed here can help us achieve the aims of continuing learning throughout life. We also need to conduct summative assessment in such a way that does not lead to the negative impact on students’ motivation for learning, on teachers’ teaching style and on the curriculum. This can happen through more use of teachers’ own assessment, using the skills developed for using assessment to help learning. This requires political willingness to put resources into training for teachers and putting quality assurance procedures in place, rather than into expensive testing programmes.
X. Conclusion
This paper has attempted to give a vision of how assessment can be used to help learning and, in particular, inquiry-based learning in science. We have seen that it involves for many teachers considerable change in practices but that the effort to do this can be repaid by gains in learners’ achievement, engagement in, responsibility for, and enjoyment of learning. At the same time there has to be a warning that the apparently attractive but fundamentally flawed approach to raising standards by frequent testing of every student has to be resisted. Such testing defeats attempt to use assessment for learning, which is the only way to improve the learning that is needed by future generations.
Assessment Reform Group (2002) Assessment for Learning: 10 Principles. Availablefrom the ARG website (www.assessment-reform-group.org.uk).
Black, P. and Wiliam, D (1998a) Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education, 5(1) 7 – 74.
Black, P and Wiliam, D (1998b) Inside the Black Box: raising standards through classroom assessment. King’s College London.
Black, P., Harrison, C., Lee, C., Marshall, B. and Wiliam, D. (2002) Working inside the Black Box King’s College London.
Black, P., Harrison, C., Lee, C., Marshall, B. and Wiliam, D. (2003) Assessment for Learning: putting it into practice. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Black, P and Lucas, A. (Eds) (1993)Children’s Informal Ideas in Science. London: Routledge.
Bransford, J.D., Brown, A.L., and Cocking, R. R. (Eds) (1999) How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Budd Rowe, M (1974) Wait time and rewards as instructional variables, their influence on language, logic and fate control. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 11 81-84.
Butler, R. (1987) Task-involving and ego-involving properties of evaluation: effects of different feedback conditions on motivational perceptions, interest and performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 79, 474-482.
Gordon S, Reese M (1997) High stakes testing: worth the price? Journal of School Leadership7: 345-368.
Harlen W. (2005) Teaching, Learning and Assessing 5 –12 4th Edition. London: Paul Chapman, Sage.
Harlen, W. (2003) Enhancing Inquiry through Formative Assessment. San Francisco: Institute for Inquiry, Exploratorium.
Harlen, W. (Ed) (2001) Primary Science, Taking the Plunge. 2nd Edition. Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann.
Harlen, W. and Deakin Crick, R. (2003) Testing and motivation for learning. Assessment in Education, 10 (2) 169-208.
Kellaghan, T., Madaus, G. F. and Raczek, A. (1996) The Use of External Examinations to Improve Student Motivation. Washington: American Educational Research Association
Kohn A. (2000) The case against standardized testing, Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH.
Koretz, D., Linn, R.L, Dunbar, S.B. and Shepard, L. A (1991) ‘The effects of high-stakes testing on achievement: preliminary findings about generalization across tests’. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, Il April.
Johnston J, McClune W (2000) 'Selection project sel 5.1: Pupil motivation and attitudes - self-esteem, locus of control, learning disposition and the impact of selection on teaching and learning'. In The Effects of the Selective System of Secondary Education in Northern Ireland: Research Papers Volume II, Bangor, Co Down: Department of Education, pp 1-37 ISBN 1 897 592 663.
Lave, J and Wenger, E (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Linn R. (2000) Assessments and accountability, Educational Researcher, 29, 4-16.
Masters, G. and Forster, M. (1996)Progress Maps. Victoria, Australia:Australian Council for Educational Research.
Osborn, M., McNess, E., Broadfoot, P, Pollard, A., and Triggs, P (2000) What Teachers Do: Changing Policy and Practice in Primary Education London: Continuum.
Pollard A, Triggs P, Broadfoot P, Mcness E, Osborn M (2000) What pupils say: changing policy and practice in primary education (chapters 7 and 10). London: Continuum.
Vygotsky, L. S (1962) Thought and Language. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Wilson, M. 1990. Measurement of developmental levels. In International encyclopedia of education: Research and studies. Supplementary volume, eds. T. Husen and T. N. Postlethwaite. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Wilson, M., C. Kennedy, & K. Draney. 2004. GradeMap (Version 4.0) [computer program]. Berkeley: University of California, BEAR Center.
