Link-up 2006: A twilight videoconference series focussing on assessment Session 1: How do we manage the assessment myths? Wednesday 19 April: 4.30pm – 6.30pm
MYTH: ‘You just have to dumb down the curriculum and assessment for educationally disadvantaged students.’
Christine Ludwig’s speaking notes [email protected]
I would like to debunk this myth by talking about who these educationally disadvantaged students might be and then what kinds of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment we should really be considering for these students? Which kids? First we should consider what the data tell us. The results of the 2003 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) – conducted by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) – established that Australia was one of the top-performing countries in the world in reading and that Queensland outperformed a number of developed countries. However, Australia has been described by the OECD as providing high quality but inequitable programs in relation to the teaching of reading. The OECD study found that the reading ability of Australia’s poorest students lagged behind the richest students by three years by the age of 15 – a large gap that does not exist in more equitable OECD countries. Our most socio-economically disadvantaged students also lag about 1½ years behind the reading ability of the poorest students in Canada, Finland, Japan and South Korea. Despite our claims as an egalitarian society, Australia’s performance in educating its socio-economically disadvantaged students was of a similar standard to the entrenched class societies of the UK or US. Secondly we should consider the term ‘educationally disadvantaged’. We need to focus on the word ‘educationally’ and reframe our thinking in terms of how we might be educationally disadvantaging our students through our curriculum, teaching and assessment practices – instead of focusing on ‘disadvantage’ as an intrinsic attribute of students, their families and their communities, that can lead us to make assumptions about their potential to achieve. Research has shown that all parents value education. It also tells us that parents of socio-economically disadvantaged students do not attribute their children’s levels of achievement to their socio-economic status. However, schools designated as disadvantaged often attribute poor literacy achievement to the students’ background and not the students’ school experience. (Freebody, Ludwig and Gunn, 1995) Tagging poor achieving students as having learning difficulties is nebulous. Poverty is the most significant factor impacting on learning outcomes. We need to take into account the way poverty intersects in complex ways with for example, gender, ethnicity, location and disability. The Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study (QSRLS) found that educationally disadvantaged students, particularly socio-economically disadvantaged and indigenous students, were least likely to be provided with opportunity to participate in intellectually challenging and quality tasks. The focus was on basic skills, drilling and skilling (for example, using worksheets with more of the same). Therefore the students who need quality most don’t get it.
Christine Ludwig 1 We need to eliminate the culture of blame – that is sheeting educational malaise to the students’ backgrounds and their families and communities rather than reconsidering the quality of our educational provision, namely our curriculum, teaching and assessment. Intellectual quality, authentic curriculum, and explicit teaching and assessment What kind of curriculum? International research shows that a curriculum with high levels of intellectual quality, connectedness, explicit teaching and scaffolded learning and assessment is intrinsically a matter of equity and social justice and leads to learning and improvement. All students have a right to have access to the intended and enacted curriculum – essentials; outcomes; rich tasks. Parents of students who are educationally disadvantaged expect their children to have access to and success in that curriculum – not something special or different or ‘dumbed down’. We need a curriculum that is aligned with pedagogy and assessment in which the focus of assessment is the focus of our teaching and planning. Even early prevention and intervention is not enough. Pull out programs and grab bag approaches are not enough. Inoculation is not enough. Students need explicit teaching in the mainstream classroom as they move through schooling. We need a curriculum that is connected to the available framework (eg syllabuses, essentials), to the real world, to the students. We need a curriculum which shunts back and forth between high intellectual challenge, connectedness and explicitness. What kind of assessment? Effective assessment is assessment that informs and directs teacher and student efforts in learning and learning improvement. A number of recent research projects focussing on the alignment of curriculum pedagogy and assessment for young people found that students engage and achieve best: when intellectually challenging, well-designed and quality assessment tasks are negotiated with the students when students are involved in negotiating criteria and standards or at least when they are made explicit when students have ownership when students know what the expectations are when students can set their own goals when the students have the opportunity to self-assess and/or provide feedback to their peers when students know what they have to do to improve. What can we do in order to NOT educationally disadvantage our students? Research tells us that target group approaches: are empirically unfounded can lead to deficient understandings can create pedagogical mismatches. Research also tells us that we need to provide localised responses to students in diverse school communities. In order to NOT educationally disadvantage our students, we need to: make sure we align our assessment, pedagogy and assessment make no assumptions about prior learning unless we have gathered evidence about prior knowledge and skills and students’ readiness to proceed.
Christine Ludwig 2 make sure our tasks are intellectually challenging with expectations of success and connected with student and community interests and experiences make sure we scaffold the learning and be explicit in our teaching (that is, be explicit about the concepts and language students need to complete tasks successfully) make sure our criteria and standards are explicit and transparent. When teachers reflect on their practice in this way, they often report that they are compelled to review their early assumptions about their students’ readiness to proceed and scaffold their learning towards higher expectations. ‘Being able to recognise what a child can do depends on what one is prepared to look for’ (McNaughton, 1995). ‘The more implicit the school’s curriculum, pedagogy and assessment which presupposes prior attainment the more locked out will be the outsider. This enables the possessor of the prerequisite cultural capital to continue to monopolise that capital’ (Walton, 1993).
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