Embedding formative assessment with teacher learning communities

1. Embedding formative assessment with teacher learning communities Dylan Wiliam SouthwarkHeadteachers’ Conference 19 November 2010 www.dylanwiliam.net

2. Science Design Overview: science and design • We need to improve student achievement • This requires improving teacher quality • Improving the quality of entrants takes too long • So we have to make the teachers we have better • We can change teachers in a range of ways • Some will benefit students, and some will not. • Those that do involve changes in teacher practice • Changing practice requires new kinds of teacher learning • And new models of professional development.

3. Raising achievement matters… • For individuals • Increased lifetime salary (13% for a degree) • Improved health (half the number of disabled years) • Longer life (1.7 years of life per extra year of schooling) • For society • Lower criminal justice costs • Lower health-care costs • Increased economic growth (Hanushek & Wößman, 2010) • Present value to UK of raising PISA scores by 25 points: £4trn • Present value of ensuring all students score 400 on PISA: £5trn

4. Impact of education on health Proportion of adults reporting good health, by level of education (OECD, 2010)

5. Which of the following categories of skill is disappearing from the work-place most rapidly? • Routine manual • Non-routine manual • Routine cognitive • Complex communication • Expert thinking/problem-solving

6. …but what is learned matters too… Autor, Levy & Murnane, 2003

7. …now more than ever… Source: Economic Policy Institute

8. In fact low skill jobs are vanishing… Over the last eight years, the UK economy has shed 400 no-qualification jobs every day Beyond Leitch (Patel et al., 2009)

9. …and recessions accelerate the trend… Beyond Leitch (Patel et al., 2009)

10. The world’s leading manufacturers

11. Where’s the solution? • Structure • Smaller/larger high schools • K-8 schools/”All-through” schools • Alignment • Curriculum reform • National strategies • Governance • Charter schools and private schools • Specialist schools and academies • Technology • Computers • Interactive white-boards • Workforce reforms • Classroom assistants

12. School effectiveness • Three generations of school effectiveness research • Raw results approaches • Different schools get different results • Conclusion: Schools make a difference • Demographic-based approaches • Demographic factors account for most of the variation • Conclusion: Schools don’t make a difference • Value-added approaches • School-level differences in value-added are relatively small • Classroom-level differences in value-added are large • Conclusion: An effective school is a school full of effective classrooms

13. Impact of background on development (Feinstein, 2003)

14. Meaningful differences • Hour-long samples of family talk in 42 US families • Number of words spoken to children by adults by the age of 36 months • In professional families: 35 million • In other working-class families: 20 million • In families on welfare: 10 million • Kinds of reinforcements: positive negative • professional 500,000 50,000 • working-class 200,000 100,000 • welfare 100,000 200,000 (Hart & Risley, 1995)

15. Raw scores • Controlling for social class % Public schools perform better Private schools perform better

16. CVA and raw results in England 1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 % of cohort reaching proficiency in 5 subjects including English and Mathematics 0.2 960 1000 1040 1080 School contextualized value-added (CVA) score

17. Differences in CVA are often insignificant… Middle 50%: differences in CVA not significantly different from average (Wilson & Piebalga, 2008)

18. …are transient… Future school effects for the 2014 cohort based on 2007 data with 95% confidence intervals (Leckie & Goldstein, 2009)

19. …and are small • Proportion of 16-year olds gaining 5 GCSE grades at grade C or higher • 7% of the variability in the proportion achieving this is attributable to the school, so • 93% of the variability in the proportion achieving this is nothing to do with the school • So, if 15 students in a class get 5 A*-C in the average school: • 17 students will do so at a “good” school (1sd above mean) • 13 students will do so at a “bad” school (1sd below mean)

20. Information for parents • Choosing schools on the basis of school performance data (Allen & Burgess, 2010) • Compared with random choice, the use of information increases the chance of getting the best school by: • Best CVA: 33% • Best % 5A*-C: 92% • Best capped GCSE points: 104% • Impact of getting the best school over the average: • One grade higher in 3 subjects out of 8 • 10% of students will cross a “threshold” such as 5xA*-C

21. It’s the classroom… • In the UK, variability at the classroom level is at least 4 times that at school level • It doesn’t matter very much which school you go to • But it matters very much which classrooms you are in… • It’s not class size • It’s not the between-class grouping strategy • It’s not the within-class grouping strategy

22. … and specifically, it’s the teacher… Barber & Mourshed, 2007

23. Teacher quality and student learning

24. Teachers make the difference • The commodification of teachers has received widespread support: • From teacher unions (who understandably resist performance-related pay) • From politicians (who are happy that the focus is on teacher supply, rather than teacher quality) • But has resulted in the pursuit of policies with poor benefit to cost • To see how big the difference is, take a group of 50 teachers • Students taught by the best teacher learn twice as fast as average • Students taught by the worst teacher learn half as fast average • And in the classrooms of the best teachers • Students with behavioral difficulties learn as much as those without • Students from disadvantaged backgrounds do as well as those from advantaged backgrounds

25. …so we have two choices… • A classic labour force issue with 2 (non-exclusive) solutions • Replace existing teachers with better ones • Improve the effectiveness of existing teachers

26. The ‘dark matter’ of teacher quality • Teachers make a difference • But what makes the difference in teachers?

27. Impact on achievement • Raising the bar for entry into the profession so that we no longer recruit the lowest performing 30% of teachers would increases the proportion of students passing an examination by less than 3% • One student per class, in thirty years…

28. Or make the teachers we have better… • Improve the effectiveness of existing teachers • The “love the one you’re with” strategy • It can be done • Provided we focus rigorously on the things that matter • Even when they’re hard to do

29. People like neuroscience • Descriptions of 18 psychological phenomena • Examples: mutual exclusivity, attentional blink • Designed to be comprehensible without scientific training • Each phenomenon was given four possible explanations • Basic (without neuroscience) • Good explanation (provided by the researchers) • Bad explanation (e.g., circular reasoning) • Enhanced (with neuroscience explanation) • Good explanation • Bad explanation • Added neuroscience did not change the logic of the explanation • Participants randomly given one of the four explanations • Asked to rate this on a 7-point scale (-3 to +3).

30. Sample explanations

31. Seductive allure (Weisberg et al., 2008)

32. Brains recognizing words Group-level activations for recognition of words versus a baseline condition (Miller, et al., 2002)

34. Dissociation in the brain representation of Arabic numbers between native Chinese speakers and native English speakers (Tang et al., 2008)

35. Educational productivity 1996-2008 Source: Office for National Statistics

36. Pareto analysis • Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) • Economist, philosopher, etc., associated with the 80:20 rule • Pareto improvement • A change that can make at least one person (e.g., a student) better off without making anyone else (e.g., a teacher) worse off. • Pareto efficiency/Pareto optimality • An allocation (e.g., of resources) is Pareto efficient or Pareto optimal when there are no more Pareto improvements

37. Schools are rarely Pareto optimal • Examples of Pareto improvements • Less time on marking to spend more time on planning questions to use in lessons • Increased use of peer assessment • Larger classes with reduced teacher contact time • Larger classes with increased teacher salaries • Obstacles to Pareto improvements • The political economy of reform • In professional settings, it is incredibly hard to stop people doing valuable things in order to give them time to do even more valuable things • e.g., “Are you saying what I am doing is no good?” • e.g., “I care about my kids”.

38. Cost/effect comparisons

39. Relevant studies • Fuchs & Fuchs (1986) • Natriello (1987) • Crooks (1988) • Bangert-Drowns, et al. (1991) • Kluger & DeNisi (1996) • Black & Wiliam (1998) • Nyquist (2003) • Dempster (1991, 1992) • Elshout-Mohr (1994) • Brookhart (2004) • Allal & Lopez (2005) • Köller (2005) • Brookhart (2007) • Wiliam (2007) • Hattie & Timperley (2007) • Shute (2008)

40. The formative assessment hi-jack… • Long-cycle • Span: across units, terms • Length: four weeks to one year • Impact: Student monitoring; curriculum alignment • Medium-cycle • Span: within and between teaching units • Length: one to four weeks • Impact: Improved, student-involved, assessment; teacher cognition about learning • Short-cycle • Span: within and between lessons • Length: • day-by-day: 24 to 48 hours • minute-by-minute: 5 seconds to 2 hours • Impact: classroom practice; student engagement

41. Formative assessment: a new definition • “An assessment functions formatively to the extent that evidence about student achievement elicited by the assessment is interpreted and used to make decisions about the next steps in instruction that are likely to be better, or better founded, than the decisions that would have been taken in the absence of that evidence.

42. Unpacking assessment for learning • Key processes • Establishing where the learners are in their learning • Establishing where they are going • Working out how to get there • Participants • Teachers • Peers • Learners

43. Aspects of assessment for learning

44. Five “key strategies”… • Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning intentions • curriculum philosophy • Engineering effective classroom discussions, tasks and activities that elicit evidence of learning • classroom discourse, interactive whole-class teaching • Providing feedback that moves learners forward • feedback • Activating students as learning resources for one another • collaborative learning, reciprocal teaching, peer-assessment • Activating students as owners of their own learning • metacognition, motivation, interest, attribution, self-assessment (Wiliam & Thompson, 2007)

45. …and one big idea • Use evidence about learning to adapt teaching and learning to meet student needs

46. Keeping learning on track • A good teacher • Establishes where the students are in their learning • Identifies the learning destination • Carefully plans a route • Begins the learning journey • Makes regular checks on progress on the way • Makes adjustments to the course as conditions dictate

47. Supporting change with teacher learning communities

48. A model for teacher learning • Content, then process • Content (what we want teachers to change) • Evidence • Ideas (strategies and techniques) • Process (how to go about change) • Choice • Flexibility • Small steps • Accountability • Support

49. Choice • Belbin inventory (Management teams: why they succeed or fail) • Eight team roles (defined as “A tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way.”) • Company worker; Innovator; Shaper; Chairperson; Resource investigator; Monitor/evaluator; Completer/finisher; Team worker • Key ideas • Each role has strengths and allowable weaknesses • People rarely sustain “out of role” behavior, especially under stress • Each teacher’s personal approach to teaching is similar • Some teachers’ weaknesses require immediate attention • For most, however, students benefit more by developing teachers’ strengths

50. Flexibility • Two opposing factors in any school reform • Need for flexibility to adapt to local constraints and affordances • Implies there is appropriate flexibility built into the reform • Need to maintain fidelity to the theory of action of the reform, to minimise “lethal mutations” • So you have to have a clearly articulated theory of action • Different innovations have different approaches to flexibility • Some reforms are too loose (e.g., ‘Effective schools’ movement) • Others are too tight (e.g., Montessori Schools) • The “tight but loose” formulation: • … combines an obsessive adherence to central design principles (the “tight” part) with accommodations to the needs, resources, constraints, and affordances that occur in any school or district (the “loose” part), but only where these do not conflict with the theory of action of the intervention.