Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment

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Formative e-assessment some theoretical
resourcesDylan Wiliamwww.dylanwiliam.net
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Feedback

• Components of a feedback system
• data on the actual level of some measurable
  attribute
• data on the reference level of that attribute
• a mechanism for comparing the two levels and
  generating information about the gap between
  the two levels
• a mechanism by which the information can be used
  to alter the gap.
• To an engineer, information is therefore feedback
  only if the information fed back is actually used
  in closing the gap.

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Formative assessment

• Frequent feedback is not necessarily formative
• Feedback that causes improvement is not
  necessarily formative
• Assessment is formative only if the information
  fed back to the learner is used by the learner in
  making improvements
• To be formative, assessment must include a recipe
  for future action

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No such thing as formative assessment

• Descriptions of
• Instruments
• Purposes
• Functions

An assessment functions formatively when evidence
about student achievement elicited by the
assessment is interpreted and used to make
decisions about the next steps in instruction
that are likely to be better, or better founded,
than the decisions that would have been made in
the absence of that evidence.
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Some principles

• A commitment to formative assessment
• Does not entail any view of what is to be learned
• Does not entail any view of what happens when
  learning takes place

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Types of formative assessment

• Long-cycle
• Span across units, terms
• Length four weeks to one year
• Medium-cycle
• Span within and between teaching units
• Length one to four weeks
• Short-cycle
• Span within and between lessons
• Length
• day-by-day 24 to 48 hours
• minute-by-minute 5 seconds to 2 hours

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Unpacking formative assessment

• Key processes
• Establishing where the learners are in their
  learning
• Establishing where they are going
• Working out how to get there
• Participants
• Teachers
• Peers
• Learners

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Aspects of formative assessment
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Five key strategies

• Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning
  intentions
• curriculum philosophy (goals and horizons)
• Engineering effective classroom discussions,
  tasks and activities that elicit evidence of
  learning
• classroom discourse, interactive whole-class
  teaching
• Providing feedback that moves learners forward
• feedback
• Activating students as learning resources for one
  another
• collaborative learning, reciprocal teaching,
  peer-assessment
• Activating students as owners of their own
  learning
• metacognition, motivation, interest, attribution,
  self-assessment

(Wiliam Thompson, 2007)
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and one big idea

• Use evidence about learning to adapt teaching and
  learning to meet student needs

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Greshams law and assessment

• Usually (incorrectly) stated as Bad money drives
  out good
• The essential condition for Gresham's Law to
  operate is that there must be two (or more) kinds
  of money which are of equivalent value for some
  purposes and of different value for others
  (Mundell, 1998)
• The parallel for assessment Summative drives out
  formative
• Perhaps the most that summative assessment (more
  properly, assessment designed to serve a
  summative function) can do is keep out of the way

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Signature pedagogies
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in Law
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in Medicine
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Changing demands for skill

• Which of the following categories of skill has
  disappeared from the work-place most over the
  last forty years?
• Routine manual
• Non-routine manual
• Routine cognitive
• Complex communication
• Expert thinking/problem-solving

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Autor, Levy Murnane, 2003
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The regulation of learning

• Signature pedagogies
• Pedagogies of engagement
• Pedagogies of contingency
• Proactive
• Interactive
• Retroactive