Assessment AS Learning Assessment for Metacognition and SelfRegulation

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• Assessment AS Learning Assessment for
  Meta-cognition and Self-Regulation
• Lorna Earl, Ph.D.

• Yonge St. Suite 240 Toronto ON M4N 3S1
• aporia_at_attglobal.net www.aporia.ca
• tel 4 1 6 . 6 8 6 . 2 2 7 9 fax 4 1 6 .
  6 8 6 . 4 1 6 2

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Setting the Stage

• I look at losing as research, not failure.
• Billie-Jean King (tennis star)

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• For students to be able to improve, they must
  develop the capacity to monitor the quality of
  their own work during actual production. This in
  turn requires that students possess an
  appreciation of what high quality work is, that
  they have the evaluative skill necessary for them
  to compare with some objectivity the quality of
  what they are producing in relation to the higher
  standard, and that they develop a store of
  tactics or moves which can be drawn upon to
  modify their own work.
• Sadler, 1989

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• The student knows more than the teacher about
  what and how he has learned even if he knows
  less about what was taught.
• Elbow

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Meta-cognition and Self-Regulation

• Human beings can
• reflect on their own thinking processes through
  internal conversations monitoring their own
  understanding, predicting their performance,
  deciding what else they need to know, organizing
  and reorganizing ideas, checking for consistency
  between different pieces of information and
  drawing analogies that help them advance their
  understanding.
• can stand back, monitor activities and make
  significant conscious and deliberate choices
  about their beliefs and their behaviour -
  learning and altering their responses based on
  new ideas or understanding.

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Conceptual change

• Rather than transforming evidence that exists in
  the world to fit established mental structures
  (conceptions), the mental structures themselves
  shift (or accommodate) to take new evidence into
  account.

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Becoming Meta-cognitive

• Like all complex learning, self-regulation
  requires years of practice, concentration, and
  coaching. It does not have a beginning and an
  end but rather continues to develop and to be
  honed across disciplines and contexts (Costa,
  2006).
• And, it doesnt happen by chance. If students
  are to become meta-cognitive thinkers and problem
  solvers who can bring their talents and their
  knowledge to bear on their decisions and actions,
  they have to develop these skills of
  self-assessment and self-adjustment, so that they
  can manage and control their own learning.

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Organizer

• Idea
• Examples
• Questions

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Rich Assessment Task
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Example

• The Pool Table Task

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Pause for Thought

• What mathematical content knowledge did this
  teacher need to have to design this task? To
  learn from this task?
• What are the patterns of prior learning that he
  would be looking for in his students thinking?

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Fostering Meta-cognition (Earl, 2003)

• Habits of Mind for Self-Regulated Thinking
• Examples of What Good Work Looks Like
• Real Involvement and Responsibility
• Targeted Feedback
• Discussion, Challenge and Reflection
• Practice, Practice, Practice
• An Environment of Emotional Safety

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Habits of Mind for Self-Regulated Learning
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Self Regulation Questions (for students and
teachers)

• Am I aware of my own thinking about what I am
  trying to accomplish?
• Have I made a plan for what I want to accomplish?
• Have I collected all the resources for what I
  want to accomplish?
• Am I aware of how well I am doing and if I need
  to change any of my actions or attitudes?
• Am I evaluating how well this is going and what I
  would do differently next time?

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What Good Work Looks Like
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Science Exemplar
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Comprehension (Reading to Learn) Grades 3 -
6 (Figure 2)
elements of text
Text Awareness
cause effect
compare contrast
predicting
sequencing
hypothesizing
drawing conclusions
Thinking Skills
evaluating
attributing
inferring
brainstorming
grammatical structure
summarizing
Automaticity
organizing information
classifying
Orthographic Knowledge
Semantic
technical vocabulary
background knowledge
word patterns
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Wine Aroma
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Pause for Thought

• What knowledge and resources do you need to
  design high quality assessment tasks that make
  student learning visible and move their learning
  forward?

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Real Involvement and Responsibility
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Example

• Student led parent conference

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Pause for Thought

• How did this teacher scaffold students
  meta-cognition?
• What were the students responsibilities?
• Who else had responsibility?

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Targeted Feedback
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"Closing the Gap Prompts" (adapted from Clarke,
2001)
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Pause for Thought

• How do you intentionally plan and target various
  levels of feedback based on assessment of student
  thinking?

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Discussion, Challenge and Reflection
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Practice, Practice, Practice
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Senior Science Questioning
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Senior Science Questioning

• How are these students practicing self-reflection
  and self-regulation?

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An Environment of Emotional Safety
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Making the Change

• Changing Minds
• Schools are for learning
• Assessment is a significant part of learning
• Changing Practices
• Learning at the core
• Teaching each student just in time to maximise
  learning and minimise misconceptions
• Feedback for learning
• Communication to ourselves, to students, to
  parents, to the community

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If its not about learning, what should it be
about?

• In a fast changing world, if you cant learn,
  unlearn and relearn, youre lost. Sustainable and
  continuous learning is a given of the
  twenty-first century.
• Stoll, Fink and Earl (2003)

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• If you make a change and it feels comfortable,
  you havent made a change.
• Lee Trevino

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• Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful and
  committed citizens can change the world. In
  fact, it has never happened any other way.
• Margaret Mead