Sustaining the development of formative assessment with teacher learning communities

Dylan Wiliam

Keynote presentation

Bedfordshire Headteachers’ Conference, November 2008

www.dylanwiliam.net

Overview of presentationWhy raising achievement is important

Why investing in teachers is the answer

Why formative assessment should be the focus

Why teacher learning communities should be the mechanism

How we can put this into practice

Raising achievement mattersFor individuals Increased lifetime salary Improved healthLonger life

For societyLower criminal justice costsLower health-care costs Increased economic growth

…but what is learned matters too…Which of the following categories of skill is disappearing from the work-place most rapidly?

1. Routine manual

2. Non-routine manual

3. Routine cognitive

4. Complex communication

5. Expert thinking/problem-solving

…but what is learned matters too…

Autor, Levy & Murnane, 2003

…now more than ever…

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Dropout

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Source: Economic Policy Institute

Successful education…The test of successful education is not the amount of knowledge that a pupil takes away from school, but his appetite to know and his capacity to learn. If the school sends out children with the desire for knowledge and some idea how to acquire it, it will have done its work. Too many leave school with the appetite killed and the mind loaded with undigested lumps of information. The good schoolmaster is known by the number of valuable subjects which he declines to teach.

(Sir Richard Livingstone, 1941)

The only 21st century skillSo the model that says learn while you’re at school, while you’re young, the skills that you will apply during your lifetime is no longer tenable. The skills that you can learn when you’re at school will not be applicable. They will be obsolete by the time you get into the workplace and need them, except for one skill. The one really competitive skill is the skill of being able to learn. It is the skill of being able not to give the right answer to questions about what you were taught in school, but to make the right response to situations that are outside the scope of what you were taught in school. We need to produce people who know how to act when they’re faced with situations for which they were not specifically prepared.

(Papert, 1998)

Where’s the solution?Structure

Small secondary schools Larger secondary schools

Alignment Curriculum reform Textbook replacement

Governance Specialist schools Academies

Technology Computers Interactive white-boards

School effectivenessThree generations of school effectiveness researchRaw results approaches

Different schools get different results Conclusion: Schools make a difference

Demographic-based approaches Demographic factors account for most of the variation Conclusion: Schools don’t make a difference

Value-added approaches School-level differences in value-added are relatively small Classroom-level differences in value-added are large Conclusion: An effective school is a school full of effective classrooms

Teacher quality matters…

Barber & Mourshed, 2007

Teacher qualityA labor force issue with 2 (non-exclusive) solutionsReplace existing teachers with better ones?

Important, but very slow, and of limited impact Teach First Gradually raising the bar for entry to teaching

Improve the effectiveness of existing teachers The “love the one you’re with” strategy It can be done

Provided we focus rigorously on the things that matter Even when they’re hard to do

20-25%Total “explained” difference

<5%Further professional qualifications (MA, NBPTS)

10-15%Pedagogical content knowledge

<5%Advanced content matter knowledge

The ‘dark matter’ of teacher qualityTeachers make a differenceBut what makes the difference in teachers?

Cost/effect comparisonsIntervention Extra months of

learning per yearCost/yr

Class-size reduction (by 30%) 4 £20k

Increase teacher content knowledge from weak to strong

2 ?

Formative assessment/Assessment for learning

8 £2k

The formative assessment hi-jack…Long-cycle Span: across units, terms Length: four weeks to one year Impact: Student monitoring; curriculum alignmentMedium-cycle Span: within and between teaching units Length: one to four weeks Impact: Improved, student-involved, assessment; teacher cognition about learningShort-cycle Span: within and between lessons Length:

day-by-day: 24 to 48 hours minute-by-minute: 5 seconds to 2 hours

Impact: classroom practice; student engagement

Unpacking formative assessmentKey processesEstablishing where the learners are in their learningEstablishing where they are goingWorking out how to get there

ParticipantsTeachersPeersLearners

Aspects of formative assessment

Where the learner is going

Where the learner is How to get there

TeacherClarify and share

learning intentions

Engineering effective discussions, tasks and

activities that elicit evidence of learning

Providing feedback that moves learners

forward

PeerUnderstand and share learning

intentions

Activating students as learningresources for one another

LearnerUnderstand

learning intentionsActivating students as owners

of their own learning

Five “key strategies”…Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning intentionscurriculum philosophy

Engineering effective classroom discussions, tasks and activities that elicit evidence of learningclassroom 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 learningmetacognition, motivation, interest, attribution, self-assessment

(Wiliam & Thompson, 2007)

…and one big ideaUse evidence about learning to adapt teaching and learning to meet student needs

Keeping Learning on Track (KLT)A pilot guides a plane or boat toward its destination by taking constant readings and making careful adjustments in response to wind, currents, weather, etc.

A KLT teacher does the same:Plans a carefully chosen route ahead of time (in essence building the track)Takes readings along the way Changes course as conditions dictate

Putting it into practice

Implementing formative assessment requires changing teacher habitsTeachers “know” most of this already

So the problem is not a lack of knowledge

It’s a lack of understanding what it means to do formative assessment

That’s why telling teachers what to do doesn’t work

Experience alone is not enough—if it were, then the most experienced teachers would be the best teachers—we know that’s not true (Hanushek, 2005; Day, 2006)

People need to reflect on their experiences in systematic ways that build their accessible knowledge base, learn from mistakes, etc. (Bransford, Brown & Cocking, 1999)

Teacher learning takes timeTo put new knowledge to work, to make it meaningful and accessible when you need it, requires practice.A teacher doesn’t come at this as a blank slate. Not only do teachers have their current habits and ways of teaching—

they’ve lived inside the old culture of classrooms all their lives: every teacher started out as a student!

New knowledge doesn’t just have to get learned and practiced, it has to go up against long-established, familiar, comfortable ways of doing things that may not be as effective, but fit within everyone’s expectations of how a classroom should work.

It takes time and practice to undo old habits and become graceful at new ones. Thus… Professional development must be sustained over time

Taking it to scale

Two opposing factors in any school reformNeed for flexibility to adapt to local conditions, resources, etc

Implies there is appropriate flexibility built into the reform

Need to maintain fidelity to core principles, or theory of action of the reform, if it is to achieve desired outcomes Implies you have a well-thought-out theory of action

“Tight but loose”Some reforms are too loose (e.g., the ‘Effective schools’ movement)

Others are too tight (e.g., Montessori Schools)

The “tight but loose” formulation

… combines an obsessive adherence to central design principles (the “tight” part) with accommodations to the needs, resources, constraints, and particularities that occur in any school or district (the “loose” part), but only where these do not conflict with the theory of action of the intervention.

Teacher learning communitiescontradict teacher isolation

reprofessionalize teaching by valuing teacher expertise

deprivatize teaching so that teachers’ strengths and struggles become known

offer a steady source of support for struggling teachers

grow expertise by providing a regular space, time, and structure for that kind of systematic reflecting on practice

facilitate sharing of untapped expertise residing in individual teachers

build the collective knowledge base in a school

How to set up a TLCPlan that the TLC will run for two years

Identify 8 to 10 interested colleagues Should have similar assignments (e.g. early years, math/sci)

Secure institutional support for: Monthly meetings (75 - 120 minutes each, inside or outside school time) Time between meetings (2 hrs per month in school time)

Collaborative planning Peer observation

Any necessary waivers from school policies

Signature pedagogies

In Law

In Medicine

A “signature pedagogy” for teacher learning?Every monthly TLC meeting should follows the same structure and sequence of activities

Activity 1: Introduction & Housekeeping (5-10 minutes)

Activity 2: How’s It Going (35-50 minutes)

Activity 3: New Learning about formative assessment (20-45 minutes)

Activity 4: Personal Action Planning (10 minutes)

Activity 5: Summary of Learning (5 minutes)

The TLC leader’s roleTo ensure the TLC meets regularlyTo ensure all needed materials are at meetingsTo ensure that each meeting is focused on AfL To create and maintain a productive and non-judgmental tone during

meetings To ensure that every participant shares with regard to their implementation

of AfL To encourage teachers to provide their colleagues with constructive and

thoughtful feedbackTo encourage teachers to think about and discuss the implementation of

new AfL learning and skillsTo ensure that every teacher has an action plan to guide their next stepsBut not to be the AfL “expert”

Peer observationRun to the agenda of the observed, not the observer

Observed teacher specifies focus of observation

Observed teacher specifies what counts as evidencee.g., teacher wants to increase wait-timeprovides observer with a stop-watch to log wait-times

The synergyContent: formative assessment

Process: teacher learning communities

Components of a model Initial workshopsMonthly TLC meetingsPeer observations ‘Drip-feed’ resources

Writings New ideas

SummaryRaising achievement is important

Raising achievement requires improving teacher quality

Improving teacher quality requires teacher professional development

To be effective, teacher professional development must addressWhat teachers do in the classroomHow teachers change what they do in the classroom

Assessment for learning + Teacher learning communitiesA point of (uniquely?) high leverageA “Trojan Horse” into wider issues of pedagogy, psychology, and curriculum