Dylan Wiliam (@dylanwiliam)

Why and How Assessment for Learning Works

www.dylanwiliamcenter.com

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Formative assessment

• One principle about learning“If I had to reduce all of educational psychology to just one principle, I would say this: The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him accordingly.”(Ausubel, 1968 p. vi)

• One fact about the worldStudents do not learn what we teach

Formative assessment as assessment3

• Assessment is a procedure for making inferences (Cronbach, 1971)

• Four elements of educational assessment– Designing ways in which we can get evidence relevant to

student learning– Collecting the evidence– Interpreting the evidence– Using the evidence

Formative and summative assessment4

• The formative-summative distinction is a classification of the kinds of inferences being made– Summative: inferences regarding an individual’s current,

or future, status– Formative: inferences regarding the kinds of

instructional activities likely to improve learning• No such thing as a formative or a summative

assessment• And “prepositional permutations” are not helpful

An inclusive definition5

An assessment functions formatively:“to the extent that evidence about student achievement is elicited, interpreted, and used by teachers, learners, or their peers, to make decisions about the next steps in instruction that are likely to be better, or better founded, than the decisions they would have taken in the absence of the evidence that was elicited.” (Black & Wiliam, 2009 p. 9)

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What is learning

• A change in the capacity of an organism to respond to stimuli in valued ways as a result of experience

• A change in long-term memory– The fact that learners know something now does not

guarantee that they will know it in six weeks’ time, but– The fact that they don’t know it now probably does

mean that they will not know it in six weeks’ time

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But what, exactly, is formative assessment?

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Where the learner is going

Where the learneris now

How to get the learner there

Teacher

Peer

Student

Unpacking Formative Assessment

Clarifying, sharing, and

understanding learning

intentions

Engineering effective discussions, tasks, and activities that elicit evidence of

learning

Providing feedback that moves learners

forward

Activating students asresources for one another

Activating students asowners of their own learning

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Two creation myths for formative assessment

• Bottom up, from feedback research• Top down, from EEF toolkit• Meta-analysis (Kingston & Nash, 2011; 2015)

Relevant studies

• Fuchs & Fuchs (1986)• Natriello (1987)• Crooks (1988)• Bangert-Drowns, et al. (1991)• Kluger & DeNisi (1996)• Black & Wiliam (1998)• Nyquist (2003)• Dempster (1991)• Dempster (1992)

• Elshout-Mohr (1994)• Brookhart (2004)• Allal & Lopez (2005)• Köller (2005)• Brookhart (2007)• Wiliam (2007)• Hattie & Timperley (2007)• Shute (2008)• Kingston & Nash (2011)

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Educational Endowment Foundation toolkit

Intervention Cost Quality of evidence

Extra months of learning

Feedback ££ ★★★ +8Metacognition and self-regulation ££ ★★★★ +8Peer tutoring ££ ★★★★ +6Early years intervention £££££ ★★★★ +6One to one tuition ££££ ★★★★ +5Homework (secondary) £ ★★★ +5Collaborative learning £ ★★★★ +5Phonics £ ★★★★ +4Small group tuition £££ ★★★★ +4Behaviour interventions £££ ★★ +4Digital technology ££££ ★★★★ +4Social and emotional learning £ ★★★★ +4

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Recent meta-analytic findings

Content area N 95% confidence interval for effect size

Lower Mean Upper

Mathematics 19 0.14 0.17 0.20

English Language Arts 4 0.30 0.32 0.34

Science 17 0.06 0.19 0.31

Total 40

Mean effect size ≈ 0.20

A big effect size

Equivalent to a 50% to 70% increase in the rate of learning

Kingston and Nash (2011, 2015)

Consequences of the definition13

• Formative assessment is not a thing• Anyone—teacher, peer, learner, can be the agent of

formative assessment;• The focus is on decisions, rather than data;• The next steps in instruction indicated may not be

the best, or even successful;• The assessment need not actually change the

decision made.• And, therefore, formative does not mean optimal,

or even good

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Critiques of formative assessment

• The measurement issue• The definitional issue• The domain dependency issue• The effectiveness issue• The professional development issue• The system issue

Bennett (2011)

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A simple choice

• Keep searching for new ideas about what might and might not work, or

• Focus on making sure that we are what we already know will help students learn more is being done in our classrooms