Learning Processes: Respond, Reflect, Review
A major strand in the development of learning will be seismic changes in the purposes and processes of assessment. This process is already underway.
There is increasing disillusion with summative assessment systems in which assessment is ‘done to’ students based on some external and often subjective assessment criteria applied at the end of the learning process.
More enlightened practitioners have moved some time ago to systems of assessment which involve assessment being ‘done with’ the student. These formative assessments are much more developmental in process and start to give the student an active input in the form of a development conversation regarding areas for improvement.
Few schools have successfully made the step to the new plane of assessment, ipsative assessment. Ipsative assessment models take the focus of assessment away from group performance and concentrates it on the specific and personalised development of the individual student. The focus is not group norms, but explicit improvement against previous performance. The metaphor is one of an athlete working with a coach to find the next few inches, the faster time, or the longer throw. Although individual teachers may encourage this assessment model with individual students in class, this is insufficient to embed it across the student experience in school.
Schools are reluctant to do the heavy lifting work required to re-design the whole of the assessment process to ensure it complements, rather than acts against ipsative assessment requirements in terms of performance standards and thresholds. It can be argued that there is little incentive for an individual school to depart radically from national expectations in terms of assessment, but the time for complacency is long gone.
Ipsative assessment and coaching models are fundamental to the move between the pedagogy of the past, where the teacher determines content and pace of learning, and the future where the student will organise the pace, direction and scope of their own learning. This is the horizon of heutagogy, where the student is master of their own learning and chooses methodologies which personalise the learning experience.
Key in this transformation is developing the critical faculties of learning, and listening for understanding is a paramount example. With this in mind I found this approach on Edutopia incorporates some very important elements of active listening…
Via: 60 second Strategy
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