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Literacy assessment in the early years of schooling in an era of neoliberalism
Abstract
This paper explores the literature related to literacy assessment in the early years of schooling in an era of neoliberalism and reports on a key aspect of a study which focused on the literacy assessment practices of early years teachers and literacy leaders in Australian Catholic schools within the Melbourne archdiocese. Background: The study was undertaken in a period following the Melbourne Catholic Education system’s devolution of literacy assessment responsibility to schools after a long period of mandated literacy assessment (1998–2012) but also occurred within a neoliberal high-stakes assessment environment, characterised by heightened levels of teacher accountability. Research Objectives: The intention of the research was to explore the literacy assessment beliefs and practices of teachers in early years classrooms (F–2), to explore the impacts of assessment devolution and the implications in terms of the literacy assessment practices in the early years in Australian Catholic primary schools in the Melbourne Archdiocese. Methods: A predominantly qualitative case study approach consisting of two phases was used to explore literacy assessment in the early years of schooling. Phase 1 consisted of an online questionnaire comprising both open and closed questions, which was completed by 76 literacy leaders from 76 Catholic schools in the Melbourne archdiocese. The questionnaire was designed to elicit information on schools’ literacy assessment practices in the early years and if these had changed since a Catholic Education Melbourne (CEM) policy change in 2012 allowing schools greater autonomy over literacy assessment in the early years. Phase 2 involved semistructured interviews with 23 early years teachers and seven literacy leaders from eight diverse schools to investigate their literacy assessment practices in greater detail and identify how they responded to the opportunities that came with devolved decision-making.
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Serious damage to teacher professionalism is being triggered by the current performance dominated culture caused by neoliberal global conditions (performativity) in Australian schools. Many teachers are feeling severely compromised in their ability to offer quality teaching to their students. It is imperative that education policy makers and school leaders are informed on the latest research and literature around this topic. This will help to instigate plans to move forward in a more positive way. This paper explores the relationships between the qualities of a professional teacher and the negative effects of performativity and proposes a rebalancing framework. Three significant elements of teachers’ professionalism are identified as essential components of a professional teacher: knowledge, autonomy and responsibility. The negative effects of performance culture on these three aspects are discussed and three compromising factors are identified: lack of autonomy, stifled creativity and breach of trust. Finally, evolving from the analysis of relevant research and literature, a conceptual framework is proposed. With a recurring theme of establishing a balance between control and collaboration, this rebalancing framework focuses on the interconnecting elements of leadership, professional learning and responsible, informed accountability.
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/AUZ48QRGK5REUDCY5VAE/full?target=10.1080/1359866X.2019.1644611
Exploiting the potential that Assessment for Learning (AfL) offers to optimise student learning is contingent on both teachers’ knowledge and use of AfL and the fidelity with which this translates into their daily classroom practices. Quantitative data derived from the use of an Assessment for Learning Audit Instrument (AfLAI) with a large sample (n = 594) across 42 primary schools in the Republic of Ireland serve to deprivatise teachers’ knowledge and use of AfL and the extent to which AfL is embedded in their work. The data confirm that there is urgent need for high-quality teacher professional development to build teacher assessment literacy. However, fiscal constraints coupled with the fractured nature of current provision renders it impossible to offer sustained support on a national scale in the immediate term. In response, this paper proposes the adoption of a design-based implementation research approach to site-based collaborations between researchers, teachers and other constituent groups, such as that engaged in by the authors over recent years, as a mechanism for addressing teachers’ needs in a manner that also supports other participants’ professional interests.
This study used qualitative interviewing with teachers at three high schools to answer research questions about teachers' assessment knowledge, school-specific assessment cultures, and teachers' perceptions of the assessment literacy of other key stakeholders. Data analysis revealed shared knowledge and practices across schools—use of formative assessment to guide instructional decision making; reliance on collaborative processes as the basis for cultivating school-wide assessment practices; and the belief among teachers that students, parents, and school administrators often hold naive views about the relative primacy of summative over formative assessment. Data analysis also identified distinctive features of the assessment culture at each of the schools.
Teacher assessment literacy is a phrase that is often used but rarely defined. Yet understanding teacher assessment literacy is important in an international curriculum and assessment reform context that continues to challenge teachers’ assessment practices. In this article situated examples of classroom assessment literacies are analysed using Bernstein’s (Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research and critique, Taylor and Francis, London, 1996; Br J Sociol Educ 20(2):157–173, 1999) theoretical tools of vertical and horizontal discourses, classification and framing. Drawing on a sociocultural view of learning, the authors define teacher assessment literacies as dynamic social practices which are context dependent and which involve teachers in articulating and negotiating classroom and cultural knowledges with one another and with learners, in the initiation, development and practice of assessment to achieve the learning goals of students. This conceptualisation of assessment literacy aims to make explicit some underpinning theoretical constructs of assessment literacy to inform dialogue and decision making for policy and practice to benefit student learning and achievement.
Drawing on previous research that focused upon the formation and mediation of teacher professional identity, this paper develops a model for conceptualising teacher professional identity. Increasingly, technical-rational understandings of teachers’ work and ‘role’ are privileged in policy and public discourse over more nuanced and holistic approaches that seek to understand teacher professional identity – what it is to ‘be’ a teacher. This article seeks to offer an alternative view, presenting the idea that an understanding of the processes by which teacher professional identity is formed and mediated is central to understanding the professional learning and development needs of teachers and advancing a richer, more transformative vision for education. I argue that instrumentalist notions of teachers’ work embedded in neo-liberal educational agendas such as those currently being advanced in many western countries offer an impoverished view of the teaching profession and education more broadly, and suggest that the concept of teacher professional identity holds the potential to work as a practical tool for the teaching profession and those who work to support them in the development of a more generative educational agenda.
No Child Left Behind and other education reforms promoting high-stakes testing, accountability, and competitive markets continue to receive wide support from politicians and public figures. This support, the author suggests, has been achieved by situating education within neoliberal policies that argue that such reforms are necessary within an increasingly globalized economy, will increase academic achievement, and will close the achievement gap. However, the author offers preliminary data suggesting that the reforms are not achieving their stated goals. Consequently, educators need to question whether neoliberal approaches to education should replace the previously dominant social democratic approaches.
High‐stakes, standardized testing has become the central tool for educational reform and regulation in many industrialized nations in the world, and it has been implemented with particular intensity in the United States and the United Kingdom. Drawing on research on high‐stakes testing and its effect on classroom practice and pedagogic discourse in the United States, the present paper applies Bernstein’s concept of the pedagogic device to explain how high‐stakes tests operate as a relay in the reproduction of dominant social relations in education. This analysis finds that high‐stakes tests, through the structuring of knowledge, actively select and regulate student identities, and thus contribute to the selection and regulation of students’ educational success.
Outcomes and findings from an evidence‐based approach to targeting primary school students’ developmental reading comprehension levels for effective learning are described. Nineteen schools participated in a literacy assessment project designed to monitor and improve the reading comprehension achievement levels of their students. The project integrated a developmental approach to learning and teaching, information derived from standardised reading comprehension assessments, and professional development for teachers. Reading comprehension achievement across the schools increased at a higher rate than typically expected. Teacher discourse about teaching and learning changed from discrete skill and resource focused, to developmentally focused. The centrality of a professional learning team approach to change for the student, teacher and school is discussed.
A great deal of educational policy proceeds as though teachers are malleable and ever-responsive to change. Some argue they are positioned as technicians who simply implement policy. However, how teachers go about their work and respond to reform agendas may be contingent upon many factors that are both biographical in nature and workplace related. In this paper we discuss the work of middle school teachers in low-socioeconomic communities from their perspectives. Referring to reflective interviews, meeting transcripts and an electronic reporting template, we examine how teacher participants in a school reform project describe their work – what they emphasise and what they down-play or omit. Using Foucaultian approaches to critical discourse analysis and insights from Dorothy Smith's (2005) Institutional Ethnography, we consider the ‘discursive economy’ (Carlson, 2005) in teachers’ reported experiences of their everyday practices in northern suburbs schools in South Australia in which a democratic progressive discourse exists alongside corporate and disciplinary discourses.
This paper is the latest in a short series on the origins, processes and effects of performativity in the public sector. Performativity, it is argued, is a new mode of state regulation which makes it possible to govern in an ‘advanced liberal’ way. It requires individual practitioners to organize themselves as a response to targets, indicators and evaluations. To set aside personal beliefs and commitments and live an existence of calculation. The new performative worker is a promiscuous self, an enterprising self, with a passion for excellence. For some, this is an opportunity to make a success of themselves, for others it portends inner conflicts, inauthenticity and resistance. It is also suggested that performativity produces opacity rather than transparency as individuals and organizations take ever greater care in the construction and maintenance of fabrications.
Constrained skills theory is a reconceptualization of reading development that suggests a continuum of skills, with some, such as letter knowledge and decoding abilities, more tightly constrained than others, such as phonological awareness and oral reading fluency. The most constrained skills consist of a limited number of items and thus can be mastered universally within a relatively short time frame. The least constrained skills, vocabulary and comprehension, are learned across a lifetime, broad in scope, variable among people, and may influence many other skills. This article addresses the important implications of this theory for classroom practice, curricula, and assessment. Finally, cautions are issued regarding the potential to overemphasize the assessment and instruction of constrained abilities in an effort to enhance the likelihood of the successful long-term acquisition of unconstrained abilities.
The emphasis has to be on development, and teachers need to be clear about the difference between deficit and developmental
learning approaches. Clinical and deficit approaches sometimes focus on the things that people cannot do and hence develop
a ‘fix-it’ approach. ‘It is a myth that intervention is only needed for the struggling student’ (Tayler, 2007, p. 4). Developmental
models not only build on and scaffold existing knowledge bases of every student, but they also have to be clinical in that
they focus on readiness to learn and follow a generic thesis of developing the student. They ought not entertain a deficit
thesis of focusing on and emphasising ‘cures’ for learning deficits. In order to become a specialist in developmental learning,
teachers need to have expertise in developmental assessment because it is integral to the formulation of personalised learning
plans.
Assessment is a major component of education, significant in directing what is identified as valued student learning. This paper is framed within an understanding of imperative and exhortative policy. Two paradigmatically different, and potentially contesting, assessment policy directions in Australian education – educational accountability to monitor school and teacher performance, and teacher assessment practices to improve learning (assessment for learning [AfL] or formative assessment) – are examined for their impact on teacher professionalism. Both approaches have official endorsement in Australian policy. Mandated participation in national tests is indicative of educational accountability assessments under national direction. While also endorsed nationally, AfL implementation is reliant on state and territory direction. Our examination reveals tensions in the alignment of both policies. This is evident in the impact of accountability assessment on AfL implementation, in particular, teachers’ understandings of valued assessment evidence. We conclude that a paradigmatic shift to support student learning in Australian schools is a policy imperative that includes the need for professional development and learning support for teachers.
This paper examines processes of datafication in early childhood education (ECE) settings for children from birth-five years in England and how this relates to increased formalisation. Unusually, ECE in England includes a standardised curriculum and formative and statutory assessments; thus it has been described as subject to both datafication and ‘schoolification’, a term used to describe the adoption of school-like practices and values in ECE. Using interview data from ECE settings over the last decade and a theoretical framework drawing on Foucault and Deleuze, the paper sets out the ways in which settings in schools and nurseries are subject to the demands of data, and how this produces data-driven subjectivities for both teacher and child. These developments are then linked to aspects of ‘schoolification’ including more formal teaching, a focus on literacy and mathematics, and use of ‘ability’ grouping.
Butler-Kisber, L. (2018). Qualitative inquiry: Thematic, narrative and arts-based perspectives (2nd ed.). London: Sage.
This is an approachable guide to a range of inquiry perspectives grounded theoretically and illustrated with many examples. It explores the traditional approaches of constructivist grounded theory (constant comparison) and phenomenological inquiry as well as narrative and the varied artful approaches that continue to push the boundaries of qualitative research.
Justifications for promoting learner autonomy in language learning are manifold. As teachers have a central role in developing learner autonomy and given the influence teachers’ beliefs have on their practices (Borg, 2006), it is essential to gain insight into their views regarding learner autonomy (Borg & Al-Busaidi, 2012). Similarly, learners’ perceptions concerning language learning influence their openness to the ideas presented in the language classroom (Cotterall, 1995). Furthermore, as mismatches between teachers’ and students’ beliefs could have a negative impact on learners’ motivation, understanding the relationship between teachers’ and students’ beliefs might lead to more successful learning. The present study explored language teachers’ and learners’ beliefs and classroom practices concerning learner autonomy in a Hungarian secondary school. Mixed methods were used: attitude-questionnaires and interviews revealed what language teachers (n=9) understood by learner autonomy and in what ways they claimed that they incorporated it in their practice. The study also looked into language learners’ beliefs (n=100) and reported autonomous behaviours. A questionnaire explored to what extent students felt responsible for their autonomy in language learning. Furthermore, classroom observations helped to gain insight into teachers’ classroom practices and language learners’ autonomous behaviours. Finally, the study revealed correspondences and mismatches between teachers’ and students’ autonomous beliefs. The findings of the study have pedagogical implications for practicing teachers and teacher educators as their awareness should be raised about the importance of learner autonomy to help them shape their learners’ learning experiences positively regarding autonomy development.
This paper examines how policy pressure for increased performance on standardised measures of student achievement influenced the teacher learning practices that arose in a school setting in Queensland, Australia. Drawing upon research and theorising of governing by numbers, and applications to the governance of education, and particularly teachers’ learning, the research analyses how a group of Year 3 teachers collaborated to better inform themselves about the nature of their students’ learning. The research reveals that the governance of teachers’ learning under current policy conditions was manifest through both teachers’ compliance with and critique of a strong focus upon school, regional, state and national data – specifically, students’ attainment in ‘leveled’ readers and other school-based standardised measures of reading and mathematics, and school, state and regional results on national literacy and numeracy tests. There is little research that highlights the tensions around these numbers as governing technologies in relation to specific formal, ongoing instances of teacher professional development practices. The research cautions against the influence of such governing processes for how they potentially narrow teachers’ attention to more standardized measures of students’ learning, even as teachers may critique these more reductive effects.
This paper explores the dynamic to education system reform in England, highlighting the challenges the range of policy tools in use have created for policymakers, practitioners and researchers alike. Taking literacy policy in England as a ‘telling case’, I will argue that far from holding the answer to successful system reform, high-stakes testing and the migration of system-level data into the public domain create a series of challenges for politicians that they cannot satisfactorily solve. In turn, policymakers' attempts to manage the problems away are further compounding the difficulties teachers face. As policymakers' commitments to bringing about well-motivated change waver, research and practitioner communities need to work more closely together to successfully reimagine a purposeful and engaged literacy curriculum for all.
How does literacy develop in children’s early years, and what programs or practices promote adequate literacy for all children? These are the questions Catherine Snow and Timothy Matthews tackle in this article. Fundamental literacy skills can be grouped into two categories, Snow and Matthews write. The first category is constrained skills, which are readily teachable because they’re finite: for example, the 26 letters of the alphabet, or a set of 20 to 30 common spelling rules. These skills have a ceiling; young children can and do achieve perfect performance. As they grow older, though, children need to understand words rarely encountered in spoken language and to integrate new information they encounter with relevant background information. Vocabulary and background knowledge are examples of unconstrained skills-large domains of knowledge acquired gradually through experience. Unconstrained skills are particularly important for children’s long-term literacy success (that is, success in outcomes measured after third grade). Compared to constrained skills, they’re also more strongly predicted by children’s social class or their parents’ education, and more difficult to teach in the classroom. And because of their open-ended nature, unconstrained skills are also much harder to test for. Snow and Matthews write that a drop in literacy scores we see as US children move from elementary to middle school suggests that our schools may be focusing too much on constrained skills—and too little on unconstrained ones-in the early grades. The authors review promising programs and practices for enhancing both constrained and unconstrained skills, ranging from comprehensive school-improvement programs to efforts to improve curricula and teachers’ professional development-although they note that vast differences in programs’ scope, cost, targets, and theories of change make comparing them difficult. Another challenge is that it’s hard to maintain quality and consistency when implementing complex programs over time. Snow and Matthews suggest that to improve young children’s success with literacy, it might be better to introduce and evaluate promising practices that can be mixed and matched, rather than complex programs that are implemented as a package. © 2016, Center for the Future of Children. All rights reserved.
This paper considers the effect of recent education policy on assessment practices in English primary schools and how these affect relationships between teachers and pupils in an increasingly market-driven school system. Previous research has focused largely on the effect of markets at a systemic level, but less attention has been paid to how marketisation plays out in teachers' work at classroom level. Similarly, research on assessment has tended to examine teachers' practices in relation to pupils' learning rather than examining it in terms of the role it plays in teachers' professional working lives. This paper brings these ideas together, using the latter as the context for understanding the former. In particular, it focuses on recent policy changes to the way schools in England are evaluated, moving from final attainment to pupils' progress ‘in-year’, and considers their potential for altering the dynamics within schools rather than just between them. It draws on a small-scale, interpretive, empirical study involving interviews with primary teachers in England. Data from this study are used to illustrate how tensions can arise for teachers and how internal market competition can be set up between them in which pupils' achievements become a commodity to be made use of, encouraging teachers to consider pupils' achievements as private, rather than public, goods. The paper thus provides a starting point for exploring the effect of market-orientated education policy on teachers' assessment practices at the in-school level and briefly examines some of the implications of this effect.
Do private and philanthropic solutions to the problems of education signal the end of state education in its ‘welfare’ form?
Within the current standards-based framework of early primary education, teachers must negotiate the integration of assessment with traditional, developmental orientations to teaching and learning. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine teachers’ approaches to early primary assessment within five different school contexts: public, independent, Froebel, Waldorf, and Montessori. Data were collected from 12 kindergarten to Grade 2 teachers through in-depth interviews followed by ethnographic observations of eight classrooms. Data were thematically analyzed to identify core approaches to assessment across the contexts related to the following themes: (1) diverse conceptions of assessment, (2) commitments to student-oriented assessment, (3) knowing children through a practice of observation, and (4) assessment of academic standards. Underpinning these assessment themes was the fundamental commitment of early-primary educators to whole-child teaching and assessment. The article concludes with suggestions for future research that explore the intersection between teaching and assessment in play-based pedagogical contexts, alternative educational approaches, and systems of high accountability, with the aim of supporting teachers in bridging developmental and academic priorities in the early primary grades.
The impact of an assessment policy upon teachers' self-reported assessment beliefs and practices: A quasi-experimental study of Indian teachers in private schools. Gavin T L Brown Abstract India has engaged in a policy reform seeking to increase the formative use of assessment in the hope of reducing negative effects of public examinations on students. The 2005 Curriculum Framework has been implemented within the context of significant privatisation of schooling around the country. This study examined the beliefs of teachers about the purpose of assessment because they are the main agents of the policy reform. A large-scale survey of secondary school teachers predominantly in private schools asked them to indicate how much they agreed with multiple purposes concerning either internally-determined school-based assessments (n=812) or externally-mandated public examinations (n=883) and how they practiced assessment. Structural equation modeling identified a well-fitting model in which there were eight statistically significant paths from Beliefs to Practices and which was strictly equivalent between conditions. While teachers in both conditions endorsed most strongly the improvement purpose, there were statistically significant differences in mean score between conditions for three of the purposes and for one practice. While differences accounted for just 3% of variance in factor means, they were in the hypothesised direction in which internal school-based assessment generated more endorsement of the improvement purpose and diagnostic practice. Greater use of diagnostic practices (an ambition of the Indian Curriculum Framework) depends, in part, on teachers believing in the positive role of internal, school-based assessment and emphasis on educational improvement as the legitimate purpose of assessment is to be encouraged.
This research evaluated the psychometric properties of Friedman's (1999) Teacher Work-Autonomy Scale (TWA) to determine whether it was an acceptable instrument to measure U.S. teacher autonomy in the present educational context. A second purpose was to ascertain the current status of teachers’ perceptions of their autonomy from a sample of U.S. teachers. Four hundred seventy-seven teachers from three public schools in Michigan participated in this study for a response rate of 30%. Factor analysis confirmed the multifaceted nature of teacher autonomy; however, somewhat different factor structures were found for the elementary and secondary teachers in this study, in comparison to that of Friedman. The TWA, without major modifications, appeared to be a valid and reliable instrument for use with a U.S. secondary sample but with limitation with an elementary sample. Elementary and secondary teachers perceived autonomy in the different factors in identical order, but with significant differences between their scores. Differences in school structure and conceptions of autonomy may have contributed to grade-level discrepancies. The findings suggest that administrators may be able to enhance teacher autonomy by releasing some of their power to include teachers in school leadership, specifically in the two areas teachers perceived with lowest autonomy: school finances and professional development.
This paper presents a study of teachers’ professional judgement in the area of summative assessment. It adopts a situated perspective on assessment practices in classroom and school settings. The study is based on interviews with 10 sixth-grade teachers and on the assessment documents they used when determining end-of-term grades in students’ report cards. The main findings from qualitative data analysis highlight both the individual cognitive and the socially situated aspects of teachers’ judgements. The findings are discussed with respect to three levels of teacher judgement and the implications for activities of social moderation.
This article highlights the practices of administrators and master teachers who are trying to balance the needs for accountability, prescribed curriculum, and learning standards with a broader view of education that gives equal importance to skills not so easily quantified by standardized tests. The author makes a case for the use of careful observation of children, and documentation and analysis of project-based activities as a way to create a more complete picture of a child's skills while at the same time, supporting the innate desire to learn with which all children start life.
• The research on teachers' beliefs, to our knowledge, spans more than 57 years and runs the gamut of research methodologies, theoretical perspectives, and identification of specific beliefs about any number of topics. In this chapter, we consolidate the topics of beliefs that have been addressed, reveal how teachers' beliefs are defined, and synthesize trends in empirical findings across research paradigms. We focus on empirical investigations of teachers' beliefs and seminal reviews. Previous reviews or commentaries on the field of teachers' beliefs have carved the field into manageable chunks to make meaning. For instance, Thompson focused on quantitative studies of teachers' beliefs related to mathematics, whereas Kagan reviewed longitudinal studies of preservice and novice teachers. In contrast, our perspective is broad and spans multiple disciplinary perspectives. On the basis of this analysis, we identified a pervasive concern related to a lack of agreement regarding the nature of teachers' beliefs. We also found that most studies either related teachers' beliefs to their practice or examined changes in teachers' beliefs, typically as the result of an intervention. In this chapter, we include a discussion of what teacher beliefs are in which we address findings related to the topic of teachers' beliefs as well as a consideration of how this construct is defined and characterized. We then discuss the research that relates teachers' beliefs to practice and studies of belief change. We offer recommendations for researchers, teacher educators, school leaders, and teachers. We conclude with open questions about the field. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)
• The research on teachers' beliefs, to our knowledge, spans more than 57 years and runs the gamut of research methodologies, theoretical perspectives, and identification of specific beliefs about any number of topics. In this chapter, we consolidate the topics of beliefs that have been addressed, reveal how teachers' beliefs are defined, and synthesize trends in empirical findings across research paradigms. We focus on empirical investigations of teachers' beliefs and seminal reviews. Previous reviews or commentaries on the field of teachers' beliefs have carved the field into manageable chunks to make meaning. For instance, Thompson focused on quantitative studies of teachers' beliefs related to mathematics, whereas Kagan reviewed longitudinal studies of preservice and novice teachers. In contrast, our perspective is broad and spans multiple disciplinary perspectives. On the basis of this analysis, we identified a pervasive concern related to a lack of agreement regarding the nature of teachers' beliefs. We also found that most studies either related teachers' beliefs to their practice or examined changes in teachers' beliefs, typically as the result of an intervention. In this chapter, we include a discussion of what teacher beliefs are in which we address findings related to the topic of teachers' beliefs as well as a consideration of how this construct is defined and characterized. We then discuss the research that relates teachers' beliefs to practice and studies of belief change. We offer recommendations for researchers, teacher educators, school leaders, and teachers. We conclude with open questions about the field. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)
This article discusses some procedural issues related to the mixed-methods sequential explanatory design, which implies collecting and analyzing quantitative and then qualitative data in two consecutive phases within one study. Such issues include deciding on the priority or weight given to the quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis in the study, the sequence of the data collection and analysis, and the stage/stages in the research process at which the quantitative and qualitative data are connected and the results are integrated. The article provides a methodological overview of priority, implementation, and mixing in the sequential explanatory design and offers some practical guidance in addressing those issues. It also outlines the steps for graphically representing the procedures in a mixed-methods study. A mixed-methods sequential explanatory study of doctoral students’ persistence in a distance-learning program in educational leadership is used to illustrate the methodological discussion.
Classroom teachers are in the front line of introducing students to formal learning, including assessments, which can be assumed to continue for students should they extend their schooling past the expected mandatory 12 years. The purpose of the present investigation was to survey secondary teachers’ beliefs of classroom and large‐scale tests for (a) providing information about students’ learning processes, (b) influencing meaningful student learning, and (c) eliciting learning or test‐taking strategies for successful test performance. Secondary teachers were surveyed because a majority of large‐scale tests are developed for secondary students (e.g., PISA, TIMSS). Results suggested that in comparison to large‐scale tests teachers believe classroom tests provide more information about student learning processes, are more likely to influence meaningful student learning, and are more likely to require learning over test‐taking strategies. The implications of these results for assessment literacy are explored.
In this paper, we adopt Bernstein’s notion of the pedagogic device to serve as a framework for explaining conflict and change in the field of literacy education across the past few decades, particularly in England, the USA and Australia. Following an overview of the pedagogic device and related constructs, we examine the relationship between the field of knowledge production and how this has been recontextualised into curriculum policy, firstly in the period when ‘progressivist’ pedagogy was in the ascendant, exemplified by the whole language movement, and then when a more ‘skills’ orientation took sway, with phonics as its touchstone. We argue that the pedagogic device provides a useful context for exploring how ideology operates both within fields and at the interfaces between fields. In particular, the sets of binary oppositions proposed by Bernstein can be used in crude form to describe the entrenched polarisations experienced in the field of literacy education – or they can be used in a more nuanced way to open up new possibilities for change.
This paper outlines an approach to improving learning and teaching that combines two strong research bases: The research on formative assessment or assessment for learning provides information about what to change; research on teacher learning communities guides decisions about how to change. In this paper we describe the content and process for one model of teacher professional development. Two case studies for two school districts engaged in this process of teacher change are then presented along with descriptions of the observed effects on both the participating teachers and their larger school contexts.
As a result of the standards‐based movement in education there is an increased need for teacher competency in the area of student assessment and evaluation. This study examines assessment education at one pre‐service teacher education program in Ontario, Canada. Through a questionnaire administered to 288 teacher candidates, this study identified teacher candidates’ perceived confidence levels in assessment practice, theory, and philosophy. These teacher candidates also provided their views towards assessment topics that it is important to include in a pre‐service educational assessment course. Descriptive statistics, factor analysis, and analysis of variance were used to analyse questionnaire responses. In general, findings support the need for direct instruction in assessment with specific topics identified (e.g. reporting achievement, modifying assessments, developing constructed‐response items, item reliability, validity, articulating a philosophy of assessment, etc.) as important to developing teacher assessment literacy.
In 2006–2007 a non-profit reading institute initiated a reading reform programme in the United States in which demonstration classrooms were established in 13 of the lowest performing schools in Mississippi, a state recognised for its high rate of poverty and low academic achievement. This qualitative study describes the experiences of 12 highly competent demonstration classroom teachers and their use of a scripted commercial programme Read Well as core instruction for kindergarten and first grade students who were struggling to learn to read and, at the same time, living with the devastating effects of poverty. Demonstration classroom teachers found the scripted programme inadequate in meeting the needs of all their students and found it necessary to alter their use of Read Well. This study demonstrates the need for educational policy-makers to consider social and cultural contexts of learners when determining what constitutes best instructional practice for teachers.
What are the areas of mismatch between the assessment problems teachers face and the type of assessment training they receive? How can the gaps be addressed in testing courses?
What should training for teachers look like? Do our assessment practices align well with what we would like our students to do? How can you self-assess assessment training at your institution?
The first task on our pilgrimage is to make a distinction between questions of governance which administrators ask and pedagogical questions which are the teacher's. To date policy initiatives have been directed by the governance questions such as: Under what regime will students learn more? Predictably, this has led to the answer better teachers which has led us to describe what teachers do so that we can make them accountable. Accountability of public servants is not the sin; rather it is the description of teaching that has been problematic because it has been construed as an unproblematic and relatively straightforward affair. Certainly, teachers plan, instruct, and assess but each of those visible behaviours is embedded in a kind of moral evaluative deliberation that is not easily discernible. Teachers ask pedagogical questions such as What ought I do to help students learn? What experiences are most worthwhile? What might be the long-term social consequences of a particular mode of instruction? The questions are not procedurally resolvable; these are the normative questions of teaching ignored in the governance mode.