Aligning Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment: Session 2

1. Aligning Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment: Session 2 Professor Bob Lingard School of Education The University of Queensland Presentation, MYSA, Testing Times Seminar, 27 April, 2010

2. Structure of session • Draw upon the Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study (QSRLS) – government commissioned research (Australian). • What difference can schools/teachers make? • Outline QSRLS. • 3 Message systems: curriculum, pedagogies and assessment. • Need to align the three message systems. • Centrality of teachers to student learning. • Centrality of teacher learning to student learning. • Backward mapping from desired student outcomes. • Productive pedagogies (and productive assessment). • Findings re pedagogies: praise teachers for supportive pedagogies; need for more connected, more intellectual demanding pedagogies; and those which work with and value difference. • Concluding remarks: need to emphasise teachers and pedagogies: intellectually demanding, connected, supportive and work with and value difference; quality of pedagogy is a social justice issue; schools as learning communities; alignment issue.

3. Sociological Explanations of Schools and Social Class Inequality • 1960s deficit and difference explanations. • 1960s: James Coleman (1966), schools and teachers. • Reproduction theory: Bourdieu and Passeron (1977), Bowles and Gintis (1976). • 1990s: school effectiveness and school improvement. • 1990s: US school reform. • Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study (QSRLS).

4. Bourdieu • In fact, to penalize the underprivileged and favour the most privileged, the school has only to neglect, in its teaching methods and techniques, and its criteria when making academic judgements, to take into account the cultural inequalities between children of different social classes. In other words, by treating all pupils, however unequal they may be in reality, as equal in rights and duties, the education system is led to give its de facto sanction to initial cultural inequalities. (Bourdieu, P. (1976) The school as a conservative force: scholastic and cultural inequalities. In R. Dale, G. Esland and M. MacDonald (eds.) Schooling and Capitalism: a sociological reader. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. p. 113)

5. Centrality of explicitness to pedagogy & assessment • Meaning? • Middle Years?

6. Structural versus Pedagogical Change The relationship between changes in the formal structure and changes in teaching practice is necessarily weak, problematic and indirect; attention to structural change often distracts from the more fundamental problems of changing teaching practice. There probably is no single set of structural changes that schools can make that will lead predictably to a particular kind of teaching practice. It is just as plausible for changes in practice to lead to changes in structures as vice versa. The transformation of teaching practice is fundamentally a problem of enhancing individual knowledge and skill, not a problem of organisational structure; getting the structure right depends on first understanding that problem of knowledge and skill. (Elmore, Peterson and McCarthey, 1996, PP.237-241)

7. A Flying Start for Queensland Children • Objective 2: Improving transitions from primary to secondary and supporting adolescent development. • Read p.15.

8. Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study (QSRLS) • Framed by Reproduction theory, Coleman, Post- school effectiveness and school improvement, school reform

9. Classroom Practices School Organisational Capacity External Supports Four Levels of School Restructuring(Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study) QSRLS Backward mapping Student Outcomes Classroom Practices Classroom Practices School Organisational Capacity External Supports

10. Centrality of teachers • Changing practice is primarily a problem of teacher learning, not a problem of organization… School structures can provide opportunities for the learning of new teaching practices and new strategies for student learning, but structures, by themselves do not cause learning to occur…School structure follows from good practice but not vice versa. (Elmore, Peterson and McCarthey, 1996, p.149)

11. References: school reform • Fred M. Newmann and Associates (1996) Authentic Achievement: Restructuring Schools for Intellectual Quality, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass. • Valerie E. Lee with Julia B. Smith (2001) Restructuring High Schools for Equity and Excellence What Works, New York, Teachers College Press

12. Main References from QSRLS • Lingard, B., Hayes, D., Mills, M. and Christie, P. (2003) Leading Learning Making Hope Practical in Schools, Maidenhead, Open University Press. • Hayes, D., Mills, M., Christie, P. and Lingard, B. (2006) Teachers & Schooling Making a Difference, Sydney, Allen & Unwin.

13. References: Publications from the QSRLS • Lingard, B., Hayes, D. and Mills, M. (2003) ‘Teachers and Productive Pedagogies: Contextualising, Conceptualising, Utilising’, Pedagogy, Culture and Society, Vol 11, No 2, pp.399-424. • Lingard, B., Mills, M. and Hayes, D. (2000) ‘Teachers, School Reform and Social Justice’, The Australian Educational Researcher, Vol 27, No 3, pp.93-109. • Lingard, B., Hayes, D. and Mills, M. (2002) ‘Developments in School-Based Management: The Specific Case of Queensland, Australia’, Journal of Educational Administration, Vol 40, No 1, pp.111-122. • Lingard, B. and Christie, P. (2003) ‘Leading Theory: Bourdieu and the Field of educational leadership’, International Journal of Leadership in Education, Vol 6, No 4, pp. 317-333.

14. Other publications derived from QSRLS • B.Lingard (2005) Socially Just Pedagogies in Changing Times, International Studies in Sociology of Education, 15 (2), pp.165-186. • B.Lingard, M.Mills and D. Hayes (2006) Enabling and aligning assessment for learning: some research and policy lessons from Queensland, International Studies in Sociology of Education, 16 (2), pp.83-103. • B.Lingard (2007) Pedagogies of Indifference, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 11 (3), pp.245-266. • B.Lingard (2008) Pedagogies of Indifference: Research, Policy and Practice in B.Lingardet al. (eds) Transforming learning in Schools and Communities, London, Continuum Books.

15. Authentic Pedagogy • Newmann’s research identified 4 elements of what was termed Authentic Pedagogy; • Higher order thinking • Depth of knowledge and understanding • Substantive conversation • Connectedness to the world beyond the classroom. • QSRLS Productive Pedagogies represent a refinement and expansion of these elements to a 20 item instrument consisting of 5 point scales, which measure performance on 4 domains and which represent a focus on both academic and social outcomes from schooling.

16. Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study (QSRLS) • Conducted by UQ for EQ – 1998 – 2000. Follow-up study, 2008-2009. • Commissioned to study the impact of school-based management on student outcomes. • Reconceptualised to ‘backward map’ from desired learning outcomes to classroom practices (pedagogies and assessment) (social as well as academic outcomes). • Concern about alignment of the 3 message systems: curriculum, pedagogy, assessment. • Focuses on classrooms • 24 schools, purposive sample • Teacher questionnaires • 975 lessons mapped – Maths, Science, English, Social Studies • Across years 6, 8 and 11, plus observed ‘outstanding teachers’ • Lessons coded on 20 elements (of Productive Pedagogies) • Productive pedagogies derived from ‘authentic pedagogy’ • Assessment work collected as well (tasks and student work) • Supportive school organisational capacity building: mobilising social capital.

17. The twenty elements of productive pedagogies • Problematic knowledge • Higher-order knowledge • Depth of knowledge • Depth of student understanding • Substantive conversation • Metalanguage • Connectedness to the world beyond the classroom • Knowledge integration • Background knowledge • Problem-based curriculum • Students’ direction • Explicit quality performance criteria • Social Support • Academic engagement • Student self-regulation • Cultural knowledges • Active citizenship • Narrative • Group identities in learning communities • Representation

18. Examples of elements of Productive Pedagogies • Substantive conversation: Does classroom talk break out of the initiation/response/evaluation pattern and lead to sustained dialogue between students, and between teachers and students? • Metalanguage: Are aspects of language, grammar and technical vocabulary being foregrounded? • Higher-order thinking: Are higher-order thinking and critical analysis occurring?

19. Dimensions of Productive Pedagogies

20. Central findings re pedagogies in approx 1000 classrooms • High levels of supportiveness: high mean and low standard deviation. • Low levels of intellectual demand and connectedness: low mean and high standard deviation. • Absence of working with and valuing difference: low mean and low standard deviation.

21. Other Findings • A lot of social support: social capital? Supportive pedagogies. • Not enough intellectual demand, connectedness and working with difference: need for focus on other forms of capital in addition to social capital. • Differences across curriculum areas. • Differences across year levels. • Teacher goals significant and perception of nature and location of teachers’ work. • Equity considerations; pedagogy as a social justice issue. • Too much curriculum content; less is more? • Non-alignment of assessment practices (particularly in primary schools). • Need for greater teacher assessment literacy, including consistency of teacher judgement; need for teacher networks within and across schools. • School size effects: implications in terms of social capital. • Primary and secondary differences. • School leadership: learning communities and pedagogical focus. • Need for teacher professional learning communities: significance of ‘we’.

22. Table 1.12 Correlations between productive classroom practices and student outcomes aggregated to the school level * Correlation is significant at the .05 level (2-tailed) ** Correlation is significant at the .01 level (2-tailed)

23. Explanations of ‘Findings’ • Extent of curriculum coverage • Curriculum pacing • Class size? • Teacher threshold knowledges • Systemic reforms: testing and accountability, social justice ones?, definition of teacher work (care and support) • Growing inequalities • Others?

24. Bernstein (1971) • ‘Education cannot compensate for society’. • BUT schools and teachers can make a difference. • Pedagogies and assessment practices are central to teachers making a difference. • Alignment issue: curriculum, pedagogy and assessment

25. Teachers with high ratings on the productive pedagogies measure differed significantly from those with low ratings particularly in terms of their: • Sense of responsibility • Efficacy in improving student learning outcomes • Broad Conceptions of their role as teacher – in school, community and society, and • Understanding of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment links and need for alignment

26. How do systems, universities & schools ensure such teachers? • Systems? • Schools? • Universities?

27. Alignment Curriculum Purposes Pedagogies Assessment Practices

28. Productive assessment • Assessment as learning, for learning, of learning • Formative and summative • Formative assessment and pedagogy • Black and Wiliam (1998): strengthening formative assessment which provides regular feedback enhances student learning (P. Black et al., 2003, Assessment for Learning) • Linked to substantive conversations • Explicit criteria • Purposes of assessment

29. Alignment of curriculum, pedagogy & assessment • How to ensure at school and classroom levels? • Relevance to middle years of schooling? • How to ensure alignment in context of NAPLAN?

30. Teacher learning and student learning • What is the relationship between the two? • How can both be enhanced? • Centrality of pedagogies: significance of for schools?