Improving
progress through AfL
Over recent years, much
has been written about the role of Assessment for Learning (AfL) in improving
progress and how schools should use it to maximise achievement and learning
sustainability.
At the national level, following the findings
of the Assessment Reform Group (ARG) on the positive impact of formative
assessment on improving learning, the idea of AfL was embraced by the
Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA, 2006) who defined it as “the
process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners and their
teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to
go and how best to get there”.
Since then schools have
been trying to implement AfL into their everyday practice, with different
degrees of success regarding the various stages of implementation. At first, as with any new initiative, the
idea of AfL met with some scepticism from the teaching profession as the lack
of in-depth understanding of the theory and principles underpinning AfL, and
often inadequate training, meant that teachers often felt that it would mean
more work for them, especially regarding the expectations of giving feedback in
terms of comments for improvement. My
practical experience, lessons observations and academic research into the use
of AfL in everyday practice confirm that still in some settings today, where
AfL is being implemented, there appears to be only ritualised understanding of
the processes behind it and the principled understanding can be harder to grasp.
In providing
information for schools, the QCA (2006) adopted the main AfL principles, as
mentioned above, based on research-based evidence (Black and Wiliam). These principles recognise the importance of
assessment for learning to classroom practice and advocate that AfL should
become part of effective planning of teaching and learning, and a key
professional skill for teachers, because at the core of it is the involvement
of learners in their own learning processes.
Effective teaching
should provide pupils with constructive guidance on improvement to enable them
to become reflective and self-managing.
These principles are important because they summarise the essence of
assessment for learning and bridge the gap between educational research and the
actual practice by identifying for teachers what is crucial to assessment for
learning and why it is important to strive to make it part of effective
classroom practice. This type of
assessment is imperative for learners, because through their involvement, it
helps them to manage their own learning, which is a skill for life rather than
just for passing examinations (Stobart).
In order to have a better
understanding of principles which encourage pupils to learn and why some pupils
are more successful than others, extensive studies into the psychology of
learning focused on motivation and, in particular, on the association between
motivation and learning outcomes (Boekaerts, Dweck). Research indicates that motivational beliefs,
which act as a frame of reference for pupils’ feelings and actions in a given
subject or task, result from learning experiences and act as favourable
contexts for learning, where students are not motivated to learn in the face of
failure, but students who have positive beliefs about their capacity to learn
have higher achievements.
Learners who are
well-motivated are capable of using their self-regulatory skills effectively
for higher achievement, whereas learners who are not skilled, or not inclined,
to use self-regulatory skills, are poorly motivated and over-reliant on
teachers. Therefore the involvement of
students in their learning, e.g. through self-assessment, peer-assessment or
self-reflection, is a key element of the AfL practice, which can be overlooked
where learner autonomy becomes procedural, rather than an aim in itself, for
example through explicit learning objectives and time for self-evaluation.
Schools thus face a crucial
challenge of developing strategies of working successfully within the system of
high-stake tests, for certification and accountability purposes, and developing
self-regulated learners through formative practices.
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