Learning and Assessment Course

1. MA Education
Learning & Assessment
Monday 27th February 2017

2. Last time…
• Surface and Deep Learning
• Learning Theorists
• Fight vs Flight - why is this relevant to our
classrooms?
• Gardner - Multiple intelligences
• Claxton​ - the 4 Rs
In pairs, what can you remember..?

3. Learning Outcomes
Be able to…
• Explain why we assess and the potential barriers to
effective assessment.
• Evaluate the different types of assessment and
consider the different roles they have in our
educational contexts.
• Research and create effective assessments, with clear
success criteria, that take account of different starting
points and address multiple intelligences.

5. 3 rules to spark learning…

6. 3 rules to spark learning…

7. 3 rules to spark learning…

9. What does Guy Claxton say?

10. ‘We want our learners to have competence, confidence and self-
esteem so that they can become better learners and better young
adults both within the school and when they leave’.
‘Good learners stick with things when they are difficult, they ask
questions and they say if they don't understand something. They are
good at sharing with other people, and they like to sit down and think
things through.’

11. Resilience – this is the emotional aspects of learning and being able to persist when
things get difficult, managing distractions, noticing and persevering.
Resourcefulness – the cognitive aspects of learning and being able to deploy a variety
of learning strategies such as questioning, making learning links, imagining, reasoning
and capitalizing on all the tools available to help us with our learning.
Reflectiveness – this is the strategic aspect of learning. To be able to think about
learning and about how we may develop as learners. Within this aspect we focus on
planning where we are going with our learning, what we will need and the action we
will take to get there. We will also look at revising and being flexible in our approach to
learning and getting to know ourselves as a learner – how we learn best and being able
to talk about the learning process.
Reciprocity – this is the social aspect of learning. It focuses on interdependence
knowing when it’s best to learn on our own or with others. Collaboration, empathy and
listening and imitation are all aspects covered in learning about reciprocity.

12. “Weighing the pig doesn’t fatten it”
Black and Wiliam (1998)

13. (Derek) Rowntree (1987: 1)
says of assessment:
if we wish to discover the truth
about an educational system, we
must look to its assessment
procedures.' In addition,
‘assessment is important
because students cannot avoid
it’.

14. (David) Boud (1995: P35) says:
'Students can, with difficulty,
escape from the effects of poor
teaching, they cannot (by
definition if they want to graduate)
escape the effects of poor
assessment'.

15. Assessment
• What will effective
assessment produce?
• What goes into good
assessment?
• What are the barriers to
good assessment?

16. Why Assess ?
• To match learning experiences to the learner’s needs
• To seek to measure progress
• To generate effective ‘feedback’ to learners
• To enable relative and absolute judgements
• To ‘build-in’ a competitive dimension into the learning
environment for students
• To measure competencies across a wide range of skill-sets
• To rank student performance
• To discover future potential of the learner

17. Why Assess ?
• Assessment without purpose
• Unclear assessment focus/objectives
• Overuse (too frequent in the learning cycle)
• Inappropriate and unreliable assessment methods
• Demotivating for less successful learners
• Potential for ‘Unhealthy’ levels of competition to develop in the learning
environment
As Long (2000: 47) notes, “assessment is…a major part of the educational
process, and without it, teaching would be a rather unfocused activity. The
fact remains, however, that a great deal of testing is implemented with only
limited justification”.
Can you identify any potential constraints/difficulties relating to assessment?

18. Types of
Assessment
Diagnostic
Used to diagnose the level of learning that has been achieved
by students.
Generally used at the beginning of a course to determine the
level at which teaching or support may be required.
Can be used at the end of a lecture, or a series of lectures, to
see if students have comprehended the information
conveyed.
Diagnostic assessment does not provide a tool to enhance
student learning unless it has an element of feedback within
it, unless it becomes formative.

19. Types of
Assessment
Formative
This occurs during a course, and provides feedback to
students to help them improve their performance
The feedback need not necessarily be derived from the
tutor, but can be from students' peers or external
agents. Involving students in peer assessment aids
students in understanding and using the assessment
criteria (Bradford, 2003).
'Giving feedback on another student's work, or being required
to determine and defend one's own, not only increases a
student's sense of responsibility and control over the subject
matter, it often reveals the extent of one's misunderstandings
more vividly than any other method' (Ramsden, 1992).

20. Types of
Assessment
Summative
May or may not include feedback
The main difference between this form of assessment and that
which is purely formative is that grades are awarded.
The grade will indicate performance against the standards set for
the assessment task, and can either be part of in-course
assessment, or assessment at the end of a course or module.
Boud (2000:160) says that assessment activities 'have to
encompass formative assessment for learning and summative
for certification'. Brown et al., (1997) provide a list of weak
practice in assessment. This of course can also act as a
checklist against which assessment programmes can be
evaluated.

21. What can we assess ?
• Factual InformationKnowledge
• ‘How’ to do thingsSkills
• The Ability to use
information
Understanding
Fleming and Chambers (1983) found that nearly 80 per cent of all
questions in school tests dealt only with factual information. It seems
that this penchant for factual information is due to ‘the ease of using
simple knowledge-based assessments, since tests which incorporate
children’s use of skills and understanding tend to be time-consuming
to design and implement’ (Long, 2000: 47).

22. What can we assess?
•Factual InformationKnowledge
•‘How’ to do thingsSkills
•The Ability to use
informationUnderstanding
Anything missing?
APTITUDE
Aptitude assesses the potential for future attainment

24. You are an Ofsted inspector…
What you expect to see / hear / experience in:
1. An outstanding school’s approach to
assessment?
2. The approach to assessment of a school that
Requires Improvement?

25. Your own research
Create questionnaires for…
1. Senior leaders
2. Teachers
3. Students
…in order to gather information on a school’s
approach to assessment and to help you
consider how to improve.

26. Assessment in our own context
• What does the research say makes the
greatest difference to learning? (Hattie
2003; 2009; 2012)
• How well do students “know how well
they are performing and what they need
to do to improve”? (Attfield)

27. Homework…
1). Your reflections:
3 rules to spark learning
Why we assess
Barriers to assessment
Types of assessment
‘Outstanding’ assessment
2). Creating an assessment task
Working with another member of your Department, write or adapt an
assessment that takes into account Multiple Intelligences, including clear
success criteria.
Reflect on how this collaborative approach strengthened the clarity of the
work.
All material to be posted to your blog