Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
interesting to show
that you have learned
something':
Building and assessing learner
autonomy within the Key Stage 3
history classroom
Oliver Knight is an experienced Advanced Skills Teacher Assessment is an ideological battleground,
who has taught in four different secondary schools, three fought over by educational theorists, government
of therTi multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-cultural and advisers and classroom practitioners. Positions
at least two wrestling with significant problems arising range from a desire to use assessment to maintain
tbe status quo and churn out Homo Sovieticus to
from social deprivation. Here he critically reflects upon his
tbe goal of constructing a new type of learner, a
own learning journey as he grappled with his desire to
Homines Novi, constructed tbrough autonomy
build autonomous learners. Attached to this desire to build and self-regulation. But tbe debates in educational
learner autonomy was his anguish at the state of current circles bave complex fault-lines; it is not a simple
assessment practices as they were not aligned with his dichotomy of extremes. It seems tbat tbose in
aspirations and vision for his pupils. The article starts with government strategy or management circles
an attempt to build a conceptual framework within which imagine tbat they are doing one tbing whilst
to analyse orthodoxies in assessment practices. In particular, actually doing another. Anyone who has been
he points out how 'AfL' has, in many schools, turned into tbrougb a recent Ofsted inspection will be aware
a set of procedures, rather than a process. The principles it of the drive to get pupils to set and monitor their
was designed to enshrine have been lost. He then explains own targets and to be involved in the assessment
process. It is easy to dress that up in tbe language
how he has used this framework to experiment with learner
of autonomy. My experience from several schools,
autonomy, giving an example from his practice as Head of
however, is tbat it leads to a reductive, teacber-led
History. Knight hopes this article will launch an extended approach that focuses on the 'critical steps' tbat a
dialogue between teachers on how best to enable pupils pupil migbt need to make to 'reacb' tbe next level
to become autonomous, lifelong learners - a professional- descriptor instead of developing pupil autonomy
academic dialogue that explores ways of taking assessment or 'deep' learning about tbe structure of a subject.'
beyond the repetition of procedures that some theorists, Tbus, not only is assessment a disputed practice,
managers and policy-makers expound. Teaching Histoty but the attachment of quite different meanings to
115, Assessment Without Levels Edition presented many particular terms often masks or distorts the lines
practical approaches to assessing without recourse to Level of debate. Tbus the dispute is not always visible,
Descriptions, Knight goes well beyond this, with a more lurking as it does under an imagined consensus
around Assessment for Learning (AfL).^
radical theoretical framework, one that he is exploring
through research into his own classroom practice.
Tbe value and meaning that a teacher attaches to tbe
word 'assessment' and its attendant processes will
always be derived from tbe conceptual framework
within which it is placed. Any analysis of tbe word
Oliver Knight is an Advanced Skills Teacher at must be seen as being a part of the values, assumptions
Drayton Manor High School, and tbeorecaltrameworkofthe practitioner. lames
argues that as our understanding of learning changes
(11-19 comprehensive), Ealing, London.
so then, in turn, must our conceptualisation and
development of assessment practices. When learning was largely Thus there is a distinction between seeing AfL as a series of
seen as being a private and individual affair, classical test theory procedures and seeing AfL as a. process. Much AfL in schools
was dominant Our understanding of learning has moved on, has become procedure-led. In many instances it has even
however. Where learning is now seen as an interactive event turned into a series of tick-sheets to enable school senior
and the role of language in constructing learning is taking on managers to complete their Ofsted 'Self-Evaluation Form'.
greater importance, our assessment practices shift in order to For me as a teacher, AfL - when constructed within a socio-
recognise the importance of the processes involved in acquiring cultural framework oflearning - ought to become a powerful
and constructing knowlec^e.^ If leamir^ is a socially constructed means of developing real learner autonomy and transcending
activity, this will have implications for assessment. the ever-shifting requirements of the education system.
ry131 Jun
experiments will go wrong, their ideas may temporarily Achievement objectives versus
break down and their thinking can only be forged through
reflection on challenging exploration and experiment. expressive objectives
Evidence of some forward, linear march, Burnham and There is much research that points to the limitations of
Brown argue, rigidly sought in the name of 'progress', will instructional objectives and the fact that the notion of raising
quickly become a mask for no progress. achievement might not be best characterised in terms of
achievement objectives. I argued above that assessment
through teacher-defined objectives can lead to a limited
A governing flaw in Black and construction of knowledge. Neither excellence nor pupil
autonomy are likely to come from the measurement of
Wiliam's argument performance against externally set objectives. But what is
Black and Wiliam place emphasis on this notion of a teacher to do if all goals and objectives are problematic?
appropriate goals as discernible stages in mapping out future How can any sort of learning journey or validity be posited,
progress and whilst this is intended to be emancipatory, I discerned or valued? One answer is to re-conceptualise the
would argue that it has an inbuilt flaw and that it has led idea of 'objectives'.
to the very reductionism we now see in so many school
assessment/monitoring policies. Black and Wiliam argue Elliott offers an interesting way forward here. Elliott argues
that the main feature of effective assessment is to realise that, even where there is an intention in the curriculum to foster
that the learners task is to close the gap between the present thinking and reasoning, any externally constructed learning
state of understanding and the learning goal, and that self- objectives will lead to pupils viewing learning as knowledge
assessment is essential if the learner is to be able to do this. transmission and the curriculum as fact. Elliott argues that
The teacher s role, for Black and William, is to communicate excellence is unlikely to conform to predictable outcomes
appropriate goals and to promote self-assessment as but is likely to transcend prescription and be demonstrated
students work towards them. In this process, feedback in through imagination and creativity. Instead, teachers should
the classroom should operate both from teacher to student be encouraged to use 'expressive objectives'. An expressive
and from students to the teacher. This feedback has to be objective identifies a situation in which pupils are to work, a
based upon a teacher's understanding of Vygotsky s theory problem with which they are to cope, a task with which they are
of the Zone of Proximal Development and constitutes a to engage. In other words, it is an invitation to explore, evocative
sophisticated level of differentiation at individual level.'^ rather than prescriptive. It encourages pupils to challenge their
preconception that what is worth knowing can be reduced to
On one level this links into the work of Torrance and objective statements and the idea that progression is linear
Pryor who argue that for feedback to be effective it must and aggregative. Expressive objectives are far more likely to
not be teacher dominated with a focus on pre-determined lead to self-efficacy and higher motivation. In other words, a
objectives. They argue that for formative assessment to move away from instructional objectives is more likely to lead
be effective it should essentially be focussed on the pupil to self-monitoring, self-evaluation and goal setting. Learning
experience. In other words it must involve pupils reflecting can be seen as renewal and as working towards a central goal
on what they have achieved and how they have achieved it.'^ - that of pupil autonomy This move away from instructional
I feel, however, that for Black and William, pupil autonomy objectives leads to what Dann describes as self-efficacy in that
is still taking place within an aggregative, summative the more capable pupils believe themselves to be, the higher
framework where learning goals are connected to externally the goals they set for themselves. '*
set objectives. For Black and William it would appear that
the process of formative assessment is still largely teacher- Ail this could be seen to fit into a polythetic framework of
controlled, with teachers providing feedback to pupils on how AfL as it is working towards pupil autonomy but consciously
well they have achieved particular objectives at a particular selecting different themes of competing learning ideologies
point in hand and what else they might need to do in order to to meet the long-term central aim.
improve. For all their emphasis on pupil involvement, pupil
sharing of goals, peer-assessment and so forth. Black and
Wiliam's structure remains set by teachers and controlled by Self-assessment -
teachers. Thus the now all-too-common micro-management
of assessment by many SMTs - requiring teachers to hnk lip-service or reality?
every aspect of every lesson to some prescribed goal or This brings us to the learner's role in the assessment process
stage was perhaps an inevitable result of Black and Wiliam's in terms of creating meaningful self-assessment rather than
assumptions concerning the need for a 'map' setting out a simply getting pupils to mark their own work! The importance
pupils' way ahead. Once this became tied to externally set of metacognition as a tool for assessment is highlighted in
objectives, the current distortions of Afl^ were inevitable. Sarig's work on academic literacy. Sarig sees academic literacy
as the creative and reflective manipulation of knowledge and
For me, a more powerful construct would be to take the the learners' reflection on the act of manipulation is central
view that formative assessment should be focussed on to progression.'" Hacker expands this notion: a definition of
pupil experience, moving beyond political concerns for metacognition should include at least these notions: knowledge
accountability and focussing on educational concerns for of one's own knowledge, processes and cognitive and affective
learning.'^ Black and William would appear to be working states; and the ability to consciously and deliberately monitor and
with a reductionist perspective in that the metanarrative of regulate ones knowledge, processes, and cognitive and affective
their theorisation is the political compliance of education. states.'" A nascent example of this kind of self-regulation
Outline the focus-temporal, conceptual, substantive. Pupils Text books and articles for information,
given outcome for final lesson: examples of success criteria for
modelling.
Create something that I can see, read or hear that proves
you have answered the enquiry question.
Pupils also discussed and created their own success criteria
through negotiation with the class and with me. Pupils choose
their own groups.
Pupil performances and evaluations against the success criteria. Inter-active whiteboard.
being fostered in the history classroom might be Burnham's Crucially, the student must somehow be centrally involved in
work on pupils generating their own enquiry questions and these feedback processes. As Donovan and Bransford point
building their own criteria for historical questions. She uses out, there is a diference between responding to feedback tbat
their reflection on the wording of their own enquiry questions someone else provides and actively seeking feedback in order to
as a way of enabling pupils to develop and demonstrate higher- assess ones current level of thinking and understanding.'*'
order understandings with the second-order concepts. Pupils
are encouraged to test the meaning and historical power of tbeir
questions. The whole class later works on a scheme of work
substantially framed by their own questions.''
Inside the Black Abyss
Now tbat I have tentatively set out a framework for critically
This focus on deliberately monitoring and regulating one's appraising and using AfL and how it might be applied within
own knowledge and processes links in well with the literacy tbe history subject domain, I will attempt to evaluate my recent
dimension of progression in history where students in history practice in the light of this framework- Tbe example I have
classrooms are often taLight to experiment with language, such selected is a series of Year 8 history lessons designed around
as different ways of expressing the same point to construe the central premise 'Create something interesting to show you
different meanings, different modes of analysis or different ways have learnt something?^ As in so much current history teaching
of showing narrative significance within an account.^" Since practice, the lessons were built around a social-constructivist
the history-literacy revolution of the 1990s when many history theory of learning whereby learning is viewed as being a social
educationalists began making the history-literacy relationship activity and knowledge is seen as being created and constructed
more explicit, many new theorists have arisen among history through interaction and experimentation rather than as being a
teachers. A clear example is the work of James Woodcock, given entity that is merely found and passed on. Many examples
where he sets out ways of breaking out of traditional preparation of such an overt, co constructed and experimental approach can
for causation examination answers by enabling pupils to be found in Teaching History and at history teacher conferences
experiment with a wide range of formulations for expressbig such as the H / ^ London History Forum." Where I chose to
causal thinking. His pupils find themselves making subtle innovate, however, was in bringing my assessment practices in
choices between similar words and judging tbeir explanatory line with this social-constructivist framework.
power within a causation context.^'
This was a unit of work on mid-seventeenth century conflict that
In my experience, pupils do need to be explicitly taught would take place over six lessons. The end product was presented
disciplinary concepts - such as causation and evidence - which simply as: Create something interesting to show you have learnt
allow them both to manipulate the substantive content and to something. Pupils would work in small groups and be given carte-
see how academic historians do the same. This approach also blanche to create something that I could 'see, read or hear that
allows learners to reflect upon this manipulation and to arrive at proves they have answered the enquiry question'^^ There was scope
the idea that history is a form, not a body, of knowledge. Such an to expand the number of lessons rather than rush the creative
approach is connected to a disciplinary perspective of historical process and limit reflection time. In the first lesson, pupils were
progression, in that the language pupils use enables them to given an overview of the new topic by watching a recording of
develop and play with more and less powerful ideas about the their Head of Year being interviewed in character as Charles I.
past. The implications of all this for a successful assessment The video was paused at strategic places and issues discussed and
philosophy are complex. If we are to do justice to these different built upon. Questioning was not used as testing listening but as a
layers of thinking and meta-thinking, then at the very least one dialogue to expand and build upon tbe initial ideas put forward.
might suggest that feedback on multiple levels is necessary. Pupils discussed the enquiry question ' Why were brothers fitting
a. precise planning by the teacher and an intention a. flexible or complex planning which incorporates
to stick to it alternatives
b. recording via check lists and can-do statements b. open recording {narrative, quotations, etc)
c. closed or pseudo-open teacher questioning and c. primarily open tasks with questioning by teachers
tasks and learners directed at 'helping' rather than
d. focus on contrasting errors with correct responses testing
e. authoritative, judgementai or quantitative d. focus on miscues - aspects of work which yield
feedback insights into current understanding - and on
prompting metacognition
f. feedback focussed on performance and the
successful completion of task in hand e. exploratory, provisional or provocative feedback
aimed at prompting further engagement
g. formative assessment focussed on communicating
criteria usually closely related to those used in f. discussion prompting reflection on task and its
summative assessment context and constructing understanding of future
situations in which new knowledge might be
h. involvement of the learners as recipients of
applied
assessments
g. formative assessment focused on holistic view
i. analysing interaction of learners and the
of criteria and learners' understandings of how
curriculum from point of view of the curriculum
they fit into wider notions of knowledge and
j. may conform to either a behaviourist or a competence
constructivist view of education
h. involvement of learners as initiators of
k. intention to teach or assess the next assessments as well as recipients
predetermined thing in a linear progression
i. analysing interaction of learners and curriculum
I. interaction usually embedded within an Initiation- from point of view of both learners and
Response-Feedback (IRF) sequence curriculum
m. view of assessment as accomplished mainly by the j. conforms to socio-cultural view of education
teacher with acknowledgement of the context for the
assessment
k. intention to teach in the ZPD
I. on-going dialogue between and amongst learners
and teachers where learners initiate /question as
well as respond/reply
m. view of assessment as collaboration between &
amongst teachers and students
pedagogic principle that foregrounds the promotion of pupil within an aggregative, national summative framework. So,
autonomy." For Marshall and Drummond, for example, the although it is more spirit than the English lesson that Marshall
implementation of AfL in the classroom becomes more than and Drummond cite in their article, its long-term goal of
the application of certain procedures and revolves around learner autonomy is still only autonomy within the externally
the realisation of certain principles of teaching and learning. set, criterion-referenced framework of a teacher-led classroom.
These two 'styles' are labelled letter and spirit by Marshall What I mean by this is that whilst my pupils negotiated
and Drummond - the spirit fostering the future goal of pupil their own criteria and final product, I still felt that their own
autonomy wherehy knowledge is built through conversation 'assessment careers' held their reection back.^'' The pupils are
and uncertainty, the letter being procedural and formulaic, so used to seeing assessment as a tool for measurement and the
working within the short-term goal of summative progress. curriculum as something to be swallowed up that they failed
to see the long-term validity of this experience differently and,
Marshall and Drummond would probably label my lessons as whilst I have not yet seen the long-term eflects, I imagine that
demonstrating the spirit of AfL because pupils were involved their views of assessment and knowledge will change little.
in framing their own notion of quality, negotiating and refining So whilst, on the surface, one could argue that in my lessons
these within groups, applying these principies to a piece of work, pupils did become eager constructors of knowledge'^\ this
then using this understanding to reassess their own work in construction was still too reliant on the external criteria that
light of judgements about quality. Exchanges between pupils run through all of their curriculum experiences to really move
and between teacher and pupil were all understood in terms of pupils beyond seeing learning as a means to an end.
refinement of the central aim: understanding what constitutes
quality or a good answer. On the other hand, it is possible to 1 may he being too critical of myself here and Marshall and
argue that these lessons were still lettery in that they took place Drumniond might argue that the activities did create what