Assessment for Learning in the 21st Century: Dylan Wiliam's Insights

1. NIACE Annual Disability ConferenceLondon: 29 September 20083rd Tomlinson Memorial Lecture: Assessment for learning: why it matters for all studentsDylan WiliamInstitute of Education, University of London www.dylanwiliam.net

2. Raising achievement matters… • For individuals • Improved control over one’s life • Increased lifetime salary • Improved health • Longer life • For society • Improved ‘pro-social’ behaviour (e.g., participation in democracy) • Lower criminal justice costs • Lower health-care costs • Increased economic growth

3. 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

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

5. …more now than ever

6. There is only one 21st century skill • So the model that says learn while you’re at school, while you’re young, the skills that you will apply during your lifetime is no longer tenable. The skills that you can learn when you’re at school will not be applicable. They will be obsolete by the time you get into the workplace and need them, except for one skill. The one really competitive skill is the skill of being able to learn. It is the skill of being able not to give the right answer to questions about what you were taught in school, but to make the right response to situations that are outside the scope of what you were taught in school. We need to produce people who know how to act when they’re faced with situations for which they were not specifically prepared. (Papert, 1998)

7. Preparation for future learning (PFL) • Cannot be taught in isolation from other learning • Students still need the basic skills of literacy, numeracy, concepts and facts • Learning power is developed primarily through pedagogy, not curriculum • We have to change the way teachers teach, not what they teach

8. Teachers make a difference • Students taught by the best teacher in a group of 50 learn in 6 months what students taught by the average teacher take a year to learn • For students taught by the least effective teacher in a group of 50, the same learning will take two years

9. …but more for some than others Impact of teacher quality on student outcomes (Hamre & Pianta, 2005))

10. Advanced content matter knowledge • <5% • Pedagogical content knowledge • 10-15% • Further professional qualifications (MA, NBPTS) • <5% • Total “explained” difference • 20-25% The ‘dark matter’ of teacher quality • Teachers make a difference • But what makes the difference in teachers?

11. Learning power environments • Key concept: • Teachers do not create learning • Learners create learning • Teaching is the engineering of effective learning environments • Key features of learning power environments: • Create student engagement (pedagogies of engagement) • Well-regulated (pedagogies of contingency)

12. Why pedagogies of engagement? • Intelligence is partly inherited • So what? • Intelligence is partly environmental • Environment creates intelligence • Intelligence creates environment • Learning environments • High cognitive demand • Inclusive • Obligatory

13. high arousal Flow anxiety challenge control worry relaxation apathy boredom low low competence high Motivation: cause or effect? (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990)

14. How do students make sense of this? • Attribution (Dweck, 2000) • Personalization (internal v external) • Permanence (stable v unstable) • Essential that students attribute both failures and success to internal, unstable causes. (It’s down to you, and you can do something about it.) • Views of ‘ability’ • Fixed (IQ) • Incremental (untapped potential) • Essential that teachers inculcate in their students a view that ‘ability’ is incremental rather than fixed(by working, you’re getting smarter)

15. Prediction is hard, especially about the future… Source: Autumn package (2001), DfES

16. Why pedagogies of contingency? • Several major reviews of the research… • Natriello (1987) • Crooks (1988) • Kluger & DeNisi (1996) • Black & Wiliam (1998) • Nyquist (2003) • … all find consistent, substantial effects

17. The AfL hi-jack continues… • Long-cycle • Span: across units, terms • Length: four weeks to one year • Medium-cycle • Span: within and between teaching units • Length: one to four weeks • Short-cycle • Span: within and between lessons • Length: • day-by-day: 24 to 48 hours • minute-by-minute: 5 seconds to 2 hours

18. Unpacking formative assessment • 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

19. Aspects of formative assessment

20. 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)

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

22. Practical techniques: eliciting evidence • Key idea: questioning should • cause thinking • provide data that informs teaching • Getting away from I-R-E • basketball rather than serial table-tennis • ‘No hands up’ (except to ask a question) • class polls to review current attitudes towards an issue • ‘Hot Seat’ questioning • All-student response systems • ABCD cards, Mini white-boards, Exit passes

23. Practical techniques: feedback • Key idea: feedback should • cause thinking • provide guidance on how to improve • Comment-only marking • Focused marking • Explicit reference to scoring guides and mark schemes • Suggestions on how to improve • Not giving complete solutions • Re-timing assessment • (eg three-quarters-of-the-way-through-a-unit test)

24. Practical techniques: sharing learning intentions • Explaining learning intentions at start of lesson/unit • Learning intentions • Success criteria • Intentions/criteria in students’ language • Posters of key words to talk about learning • e.g., describe, explain, evaluate • Planning/writing frames • Annotated examples of different standards to ‘flesh out’ mark schemes (e.g. lab reports) • Opportunities for students to design their own mark-schemes and tests

25. Practical techniques: activating students • Students assessing their own/peers’ work • with scoring guides • with exemplars • “two stars and a wish” • Training students to pose questions/identifying group weaknesses • Self-assessment of understanding • Traffic lights • Red/green discs • End-of-lesson students’ review

26. Putting it into practice

27. Implementing AfL requires changing teacher habits • Teachers “know” most of this already • So the problem is not a lack of knowledge • It’s a lack of understanding what it means to do AfL • That’s why telling teachers what to do doesn’t work • Experience alone is not enough—if it were, then the most experienced teachers would be the best teachers—we know that’s not true (Hanushek, 2005; Day, 2006) • People need to reflect on their experiences in systematic ways that build their accessible knowledge base, learn from mistakes, etc. (Bransford, Brown & Cocking, 1999)

28. Teacher learning takes time • To put new knowledge to work, to make it meaningful and accessible when you need it, requires practice. • A teacher doesn’t come at this as a blank slate. • Not only do teachers have their current habits and ways of teaching—they’ve lived inside the old culture of classrooms all their lives: every teacher started out as a student! • New knowledge doesn’t just have to get learned and practiced, it has to go up against long-established, familiar, comfortable ways of doing things that may not be as effective, but fit within everyone’s expectations of how a classroom should work. • It takes time and practice to undo old habits and become graceful at new ones. Thus… • Professional development must be sustained over time

29. 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

30. Design and intervention Our design process cognitive/affective insights synergy/ comprehensiveness set ofcomponents Teachers’ implementation process set of components synergy/ comprehensiveness cognitive/affective insights

31. Summary • Learning power is developed more by how—than by what—we teach • Teaching is the engineering of effective learning environments • Effective learning environments involve • Pedagogies of engagement • Pedagogies of contingency • Personalisation • Mass customization (rather than mass production or individualisation) • Diversity • A valuable teaching resource (rather than a challenge to be minimized) • Assessment is the bridge between teaching and learning, and thus the central process of teaching (as opposed to lecturing).