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Second Edition Mary Jane Drummond Drummond final 27/1/04 8:38 Page 1 C M Y CM MY CY CMY K Assessing Children’s Learning Second Edition Mary Jane Drummond From a review of the first edition: Assessing ‘Not all education books are worth a tired teacher’s spare time. This one is.’ The Times Educational Supplement In this second edition Mary Jane Drummond continues to examine some of the important questions that teachers Children’s and other educators ask themselves as they assess children’s learning across the curriculum. Updated to keep abreast with changes in assessment practice, this book comes with a new afterword, which reflects critically on recent developments. The book offers an alternative to objective, mechanical Learning approaches to assessment; it shows assessment as a process in which teachers look at children’s learning, strive to understand it, and then put their understanding to Second Edition good use. It invites teachers to consider the choices they make in the process of assessment, and to acknowledge their right, their responsibility and their power to act in the interests of children. Mary Jane Drummond The Author Mary Jane Drummond is a Lecturer at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education. David Fulton Publishers London www.fultonpublishers.co.uk Composite Assessing Children’s Learning Second Edition Mary Jane Drummond Other titles of interest: Monitoring, Assessment, Recording, Reporting and Accountability (2nd edition) Planning, Teaching and Class Management in Primary Schools (2nd edition) Professional Values and Practice for Teachers and Student Teachers David Fulton Publishers Ltd The Chiswick Centre, 414 Chiswick High Road, London W4 5TF www.fultonpublishers.co.uk First published in Great Britain in 1993 by David Fulton Publishers Second edition 2003 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Note: The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. David Fulton Publishers is a division of Granada Learning Limited, part of Granada plc. Copyright © Mary Jane Drummond 2003 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1–84312–040–2 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Typeset by FiSH Books, London WC1 Printed and bound in Great Britain by The Thanet Press, Margate. Contents Acknowledgements iv Learning from Jason 1 2 Looking at Learning: Introductory 12 3 Looking at Learning: What Is There to See? 24 4 Looking at Learning: Learning to See 45 5Ways of Seeing: Trying to Understand 66 6 Understanding Ourselves 92 7Trying to Understand: Making it Work 119 8 Practices and Principles 142 9 Rights, Responsibilities and Power 157 Conclusion 175 Afterword to the Second Edition 180 Bibliography 197 iii Acknowledgements I am very grateful to the teachers who generously allowed me to quote from their observations and case studies: Jenny Colls Shelagh MacDonald Maggie Ellis Jennifer Pozzani Geoff Fisher Margaret Prosser Sheila Gapp Maxine Purdy Ann Lawson Mary Rosenberg Ann Le Gassick Michael Tennant Thank you for helping me to learn about children’s learning. CHAPTER 1 Learning from Jason In February 1985, a class of seven- and eight-year-olds, in their first year of junior schooling, were taken into the school hall where they sat at individual tables to take a mathematics test (NFER 1984). The headteacher read out the questions, and the pupils wrote the answers in their individual test booklets. One of those children was Jason, aged seven years, six months, who had spent two and a half years in the infant department. There are 36 questions in the test and Jason answered them all. One of the answers was correct, giving Jason a raw score of two, and a standardised score of 81, a ‘moderately low score’, according to the teacher’s guide to the test. A teacher in Jason’s school showed me his test booklet, and I date my interest in assessment from that day. In the analysis of Jason’s test performance that follows, we will be able to see some obvious inadequacies in the use of formal group testing as a way of assessing individual children’s learning. But I will also argue that the test booklet does tell us some very important things about Jason’s learning, and about other children’s learning, that must be taken into account in a full understanding of the process of assessment. Jason’s test responses show us, first of all, what he has failed to learn about mathematics. More significantly, they give us an indication of the gap that yawns between what his teachers have taught him and what he has learned. In other words, the test booklet forces us to look critically at the relationship between teaching and learning. Furthermore, Jason’s case-study invites us to explore the interplay of the rights and responsibilities of teachers and learners. But first, what has Jason learned during his eight terms in school? He has learned how to take a test. His answers are written neatly, with the sharpest of pencils. When he reverses a digit and sees his mistake, he 1 crosses it out tidily. He places his answers on the line or in the box as instructed, though he often adds some more digits in other empty spaces, as if he interpreted a space as an invitation to write. (See questions 19 and 22 in figure 1.1.) He has learned to copy numbers and letters neatly and accurately, even though this is not what is being asked of him. (See questions 5 and 6 shown in figure 1.2.) Assessing Children’s Learning Assessing Children’s Figure 1.1 In question 5, Jason has been asked to rank the four amounts of money in order, from the smallest to the largest. In question 6, he has been asked (A) who is the shorter of the two children, and (B) by how many centimetres. Jason has simply copied the print from the question into the space provided for the answer. He has learned to listen and to follow instructions carefully, as closely as he can, though his short-term memory does sometimes let him down. In question 1, for example, he was asked to write in numerals the number two hundred and fifty-two. As we can see, (figure 1.3), he has almost done so, writing two, a hundred, and forty-two. He has learned to stay with a task and complete it. Other pupils in the same class answered only a few of the test questions, leaving many items blank. Others scrawled and smudged their responses: Jason’s presentation is exemplary. 2 Learning from Jason Learning from Figure 1.2 Figure 1.3 He has not, it is apparent, learned very much mathematics. He has learned that in a mathematics test, he is required to write numbers, which he does, with one exception. (See question 14 below, in figure 1.11.) There is no evidence that he has learned the value of the numbers that he writes. So, for example, in question 4, he is asked to calculate the 3 Assessing Children’s Learning Assessing Children’s Figure 1.4 weight of the parcel on the left, if the scales balance (figure 1.4). He has responded by writing four digits in the space provided. I am certain that he has not calculated – or miscalculated – that 9182g + 50g = 500g, or that 500g – 50g = 9182g. He has simply written some numbers in the appropriate place for an answer. He uses the same approach in question 7, question 9, and question 17 (figure 1.5). Figure 1.5 4 Question 7 is a simple division problem; question 9 asks how much more money is needed to buy the football, and in question 17, the pupils are required to give the age of a child born on 8 April 1970 on 8 April 1983. Another child in Jason’s class interpreted this question as a subtraction problem; working from left to right he seems to have thought to himself: ‘8 from 8 is 0, put down 0); April from April is 0, put Learning from Jason Learning from down 0; 1983 from 1970’ – here the answer trails away as the pupil realises he cannot complete the problem. Jason frequently writes the number 8, and it is tempting to speculate about the reason for this. (See questions 21, 23 for example.) Is it a satisfying number for him to write? Has he recently mastered the art of forming it with a single stroke? Or is it possible that he has noticed the front cover of his test booklet (figure 1.7), and that he has seized on this bold and impressive numeral as a possible clue to what is being asked of him? Figure 1.6 Figure 1.7 5 He uses the same configurations of numbers several times, suggesting that he is not attending to or discriminating between the meaning of the context of the different questions (figure 1.8). Assessing Children’s Learning Assessing Children’s Figure 1.8 But sometimes, it seems, there may be other reasons for his responses; in question 28, for example. It seems just possible here that Jason has read off the length of the rod on the ruler as nearly 8, and interpreted the half-centimetre mark on the ruler as figure 1. How long is the rod? It could be that Jason said to himself ‘8, and back a bit to this 1 here.
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