DIMBOOLA MSC WEDNESDAY AUGUST 31ST 2005

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DIMBOOLA MSCWEDNESDAY AUGUST 31ST 2005

• Victorian Essential Learning Standards

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OUR EDUCATIVE PURPOSE
Values
What is it powerful to learn?
What is powerful learning and what promotes it?
Victorian Essential Learning Standards
Principles of Learning and Teaching
How do we know if it has been learnt?
Assessment and Reporting Advice
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Session 1

• Pedagogy
• What is powerful learning
• and what promotes it?

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Pedagogy

• What is powerful learning?

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VICTORIAN ESSENTIAL LEARNING STANDARDS

• What standards should students be able to achieve
  at different stages?

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What happens in the classroom?

• Victorian Essential Learning Standards
• Stages of Learning
• Level Statements
• Strands
• Domains and Dimensions
• Learning Focus Statements
• Standards

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Teaching and Learning

• Domains and Dimensions
• Learning Focus Statements
• Standards

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Discipline Based Learning

• The Arts
• English and LOTE
• Humanities (Economics, Geography, History)
• Mathematics
• Science

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Teaching and Learning

• Specific teaching of the activities in the
  Learning Focus Statements is required.

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Discipline Based Learning

• Investigating
• Learning Focus Statements
• in discipline-based Domains

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Some non-disciplinary Domains

• Interpersonal Development
• Personal Learning
• Communication
• Thinking

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Non-disciplinary Domains

• Investigating
• Learning Focus Statements

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Non-disciplinary Domains

• Schools will need to consider how they are
  planning to cover teaching and learning specified
  in non-disciplinary domains.

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Pedagogy

• What promotes powerful learning?
• How does learning happen?
• How do we plan for optimum learning?

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Pedagogy

• Pedagogy includes the ways in which teachers
  interact with students how they question and
  respond to questions how they use students
  ideas and respond to students diverse
  backgrounds.

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Pedagogy

• Who decides what is taught?
• Who decides how and when it is taught?
• Who decides who decides?

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Intelligence

• The old notion of an unchangeable intelligence
  fixed at birth has gone
• Replaced by evidence of the possibilities of
  increasing intelligence in response to
  stimulating learning environments

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Educationthe moral purpose

• To improve learning outcomes for ALL students

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Principles of Learning and Teaching

• How well do you know your PoLT?

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How People LearnNational Research Council

• Students come to the classroom with
  preconceptions about how the world works.
• If their initial understanding is not engaged
  they may fail to grasp the new concepts and
  information taught, or they may learn for a test
  but revert to their preconceptions outside the
  classroom.

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How People Learn

• To develop competence in an area of inquiry
  students must
• Have a deep foundation of factual knowledge
• Understand facts and ideas in the context of a
  conceptual framework
• Organise knowledge in ways that facilitate
  retrieval and application

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PoLT Principle 1

• The learning environment is supportive and
  productive
• Positive relationships
• Respect
• Student self-confidence
• Student success

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Implications for Teaching

• Teacher expertise in content and in strategies of
  teaching
• is crucial

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Implications for Teaching

• Teachers must draw out and work with the
  pre-existing understandings that their students
  bring with them.
• Teachers must teach some subject matter in depth,
  providing many examples in which the same concept
  is at work, and providing a firm foundation of
  factual knowledge.

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Implications for Teaching

• Depth of pedagogical content knowledge is crucial

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Teaching and Learning Resource

• On-line resource
• Copies in your folder
• Reminders about variation in teaching practice

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Pedagogy

• Principles of Learning and Teaching (PoLT)
• Principles
• Components
• PoLT unpacked
• Planning grid for your use today

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Sample Units

• Units available at Levels 1 to 6
• Cross disciplinary in content
• Excellent templates for planning
• Include structured planning, resources,
  assessment possibilities
• Cover the what and the how of teaching and
  assessment

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Session 2

• Assessment

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OUR EDUCATIVE PURPOSE
Values
What is it powerful to learn?
What is powerful learning and what promotes it?
Victorian Essential Learning Standards
Principles of Learning and Teaching
How do we know if it has been learnt?
Assessment and Reporting Advice
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Reporting

• Student Reporting package
• English, Maths 2006
• 2007, 2008 other Domains
• A to E (well above, above, at, below, well below
  the expected standard)
• www.sofweb.vic.edu.au/studentreports

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Assessment

• Each set of standards describes a range of things
  that a student should know, understand and be
  able to do.
• It cannot be considered that a student knows or
  understands something unless they are able to use
  that knowledge, or apply that skill, in a range
  of contexts, including those that are new to
  them.
• Achievement of a standard has to be demonstrated
  across a range of tasks and situations allowing
  the teacher to make an on-balance judgment
  regarding performance over time.

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Assessment

• Assessment of students must . evaluate
  knowledge, skills and behaviours in an integrated
  way, rather than treating each and every standard
  as discrete.

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Assessment

• Assessment FOR Learning
• Assessment AS Learning
• Assessment OF Learning

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What are summative and formative assessment?
The garden analogy

• If we think of our children as plants
• Summative assessment of the plants is the process
  of simply measuring them. It might be interesting
  to compare and analyse measurements but, in
  themselves, these do not affect the growth of the
  plants.
• Formative assessment, on the other hand, is the
  equivalent of feeding and watering the plants
  appropriate to their needs - directly affecting
  their growth.

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Formative and summative assessment

• Formative assessment takes place during the
  course of teaching and is used essentially to
  feed back into the teaching and learning process.
  
• Formative and summative assessment are
  interactive. They seldom stand alone in
  construction or effect.
• Gipps, McCallum Hargreaves (2000)

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Feedback

• Assessment and Reporting are essential elements
  of the learning and teaching process and are
  vital to the way students think about themselves
  and are engaged in the process of learning.
• Assessment for learning occurs when teachers use
  inferences about student progress to inform their
  teaching.
• Assessment as learning occurs when students
  reflect on and monitor their progress to inform
  their future learning goals.
• Assessment of learning occurs when teachers use
  evidence of student learning to make judgements
  on student achievement against goals and
  standards.

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Formative and summative assessment, cont

• The vast majority of genuine formative assessment
  is informal, where feedback and response is
  interactive and timely.
• It is widely and empirically argued that
  formative assessment has the greatest impact on
  learning and achievement.

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Formative Assessment

• Innovations that include strengthening formative
  assessment produce significant and substantial
  learning gains for all students
• Improved formative assessment helps low achievers
  even more than it helps other students

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Formative and summative assessment

• Assessment is primarily concerned with providing
  teachers and/or students feedback information.
• It is not the instrument that is formative or
  summative, it is the timing of the interpretation
  and thus the distinction between them is not that
  helpful.
• John Hattie, University of Auckland (1999)

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Inhibiting factors include

• A tendency for teachers to assess quantity and
  presentation of work rather than quality of
  learning.
• Greater attention given to marking and grading,
  much of it tending to lower self esteem of
  students, rather than providing advice for
  improvement.
• A strong emphasis on comparing students with each
  other, which demoralises the less successful
  learners.

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Traps for formative assessment in secondary
schools

• Believing that assessment is designed to trick
  or trap students and so find out what they
  dont know.
• Not knowing our curriculum documents and the
  difference between achievement objectives and
  learning outcomes.
• Lack of understanding of the principles and
  theory of assessment makes it difficult to decide
  what and how to assess.
• Assessing behaviour rather than quality of work.
• Confusing student self assessment with evaluation
  of the student or of the teachers unit of work.
• Assuming students will understand how to self
  assess without teaching them.
• Hawk and Hill (2001)

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Hawk and Hill (2001)

• The feedback teachers give needs to be of a high
  quality.
• When feedback is given in writing, some students
• have difficulty understanding the points the
  teacher is trying to make
• are unable read the teachers writing
• cant process the feedback and understand what to
  do next.
• Asking a student to tell you what they think you
  are trying to say to them is the best way to
  check this out.

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Wiliam (1999)

• Findings from Ruth Butlers research on 132 year
  7 students
• Students given only marks made no gain from the
  first to the second lesson.
• Students given only comments scored on average
  30 higher.
• Giving marks alongside comments cancelled the
  beneficial effects of the comments.
• Research conclusion
• If you are going to grade or mark a piece of
  work, you are wasting your time writing careful
  diagnostic comments.

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Clarke (2001)

• Findings from Clarke's research
• Teachers give
• their students too many criteria making it very
  difficult for specific feedback to be given
• too much information in their marking which
  students find overwhelming and difficult to take
  in.
• Clarke suggests
• When giving written feedback that teachers
  highlight three successes in the students work
  and one area where some improvement is necessary.

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Research indicates that improving learning
through assessment depends of five, deceptively
simple, key factors

• The provision of effective feedback to the
  students.
• The active involvement of students in their own
  learning.
• Adjusting teaching to take account of the results
  of assessment.
• A recognition of the profound influence
  assessment has on the motivation and self esteem
  of the students, both of which are crucial
  influences in learning.
• The need for students to be able to assess
  themselves and understand how to improve.

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The most powerful moderator that enhances
achievement is feedback

• The simplest prescription for improving education
  must be dollops of feedback
• .providing information about what a student does
  and does not understand, and what direction the
  student must take to improve.
• Hattie (1999)

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Useful assessment web-sites

• www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/education/publications/blackb
  ox.html
• http//cms.curriculum.edu.au/assessment/default.as
  p

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Student goals

• Are we working with our students to set
• PERFORMANCE GOALS
• or
• LEARNING GOALS?

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Assessment Key Questions

• What are we assessing?
• How are we assessing?
• How are we consciously planning to include all 3
  kinds of assessment in a consistent way?