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Using assessment to improve learning:
why, what and how?
Dylan Wiliam
Institute of Education
Cambridge Assessment Network seminar on
Assessment for Learning:
Cambridge, UK; September 2006
Overview of presentation
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Why raising achievement is important
Why investing in teachers is the answer
Why assessment for learning should be the focus
How we can put this into practice
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Raising achievement matters
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• For individuals
– Increased lifetime salary
– Improved health
• For society
– Lower criminal justice costs
– Lower health-care costs
– Increased economic growth
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Where’s the solution?
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• Structure
– Small schools
– Big schools
• Alignment
– Curriculum reform
– Textbook replacement
• Governance
– Specialist schools
– Vouchers
• Technology
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It’s the classroom
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• Variability at the classroom level is up to 4 times
greater than at school level
• It’s not class size
• It’s not the between-class grouping strategy
• It’s not the within-class grouping strategy
• It’s the teacher
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Teacher quality:
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• A labour force issue with 2 solutions
• Replace existing teachers with better ones?
– No evidence that more pay brings in better teachers
– No evidence that there are better teachers out there deterred
by certification requirements
• Improve the effectiveness of existing teachers
– The “love the one you’re with” strategy
– It can be done
– We know how to do it, but at scale? Quickly? Sustainably?
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Learning power
environments
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• Key concept:
– Teachers do not create learning
– Learners create learning
• Teaching as engineering learning environments
• Key features:
– Create student engagement (pedagogies of engagement)
– Well-regulated (pedagogies of contingency)
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Why pedagogies of
engagement?
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• Intelligence is partly inherited
– So what?
• Intelligence is partly environmental
– Environment creates intelligence
– Intelligence creates environment
• Learning environments
– High cognitive demand
– Inclusive
– Obligatory
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Motivation: cause or effect?
high
arousal
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Flow
anxiety
challenge
control
worry
relaxation
apathy
boredom
low
low
competence
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high
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1990)
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Why pedagogies of
contingency?
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• Several major reviews of the research
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Natriello (1987)
Crooks (1988)
Kluger & DeNisi (1996)
Black & Wiliam (1998)
Nyquist (2003)
• All find consistent, substantial effects
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Cost/effect comparisons
Intervention
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Effect
(sd)
Cost/yr/
classroom
Class-size reduction (by 30%)
0.1
£20k
Increase teacher content knowledge by
1 sd
0.1
?
0.2~0.3
£2k
Formative assessment/
Assessment for learning
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Five key strategies…
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• Clarifying and understanding learning intentions and
criteria for success
• Engineering effective classroom discussions that
elicit evidence of learning
• Providing feedback that moves learners forward
• Activating students as instructional resources for
each other
• Activating students as the owners of their own
learning
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…and one big idea
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• Use evidence about learning to adapt instruction to
meet student needs
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Keeping Learning on Track
(KLT)
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• A pilot guides a plane or boat toward its destination
by planning a route, taking constant readings and
making careful adjustments in response to wind,
currents, weather, etc.
• A KLT teacher does the same:
– Plans a carefully chosen (possibly differentiated) route
ahead of time (in essence building the track)
– Takes readings along the way
– Changes course as conditions dictate
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Formative assessment &
Assessment for Learning
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Assessment for learning is any assessment for which the first priority in its
design and practice is to serve the purpose of promoting pupils’ learning.
It thus differs from assessment designed primarily to serve the purposes of
accountability, or of ranking, or of certifying competence. An assessment
activity can help learning if it provides information to be used as
feedback, by teachers, and by their pupils, in assessing themselves and
each other, to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are
engaged.
Such assessment becomes ‘formative assessment’ when the evidence is
actually used to adapt the teaching work to meet learning needs.
Black et al., 2002
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Types of formative
assessment
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• Long-cycle
– Focus: across units, terms
– Length: four weeks to one year
• Medium-cycle
– Focus: within and between teaching units
– Length: one to four weeks
• Short-cycle
– Focus: within and between lessons
– Length:
• day-by-day: 24 to 48 hours
• minute-by-minute: 5 seconds to 2 hours
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Putting it into practice
A model for teacher learning
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• Content (what we want teachers to change)
– Evidence
– Ideas (strategies and techniques)
• Process (how to go about change)
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Choice
Flexibility
Small steps
Accountability
Support
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Content: strategies and
techniques
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• Distinction between strategies and techniques
– Strategies define the territory of AfL (no brainers)
– Teachers are responsible for choice of techniques
• Allows for customization/ caters for local context
• Creates ownership
• Shares responsibility
• Key requirements of techniques
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embodiment of deep cognitive/affective principles
relevance
feasibility
acceptability
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Design and intervention
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Our design process
cognitive/affective
insights
synergy/
comprehensiveness
set of
components
Teachers’ implementation process
set of
components
synergy/
comprehensiveness
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cognitive/affective
insights
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Techniques for embedding
the strategies in practice
Questioning in Science
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What can we do to preserve the ozone layer?
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
Reduce the amount of carbon dioxide produced by cars and
factories
Reduce the greenhouse effect
Stop cutting down the rainforests
Limit the numbers of cars that can be used when the level
of ozone is high
Properly dispose of air-conditioners and fridges
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Questioning in English
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Which of these is a good thesis statement?
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
H.
The typical TV show has 9 violent incidents
There is a lot of violence on TV
The amount of violence on TV should be reduced
Some programs are more violent than others
Violence is included in programs to boost ratings
Violence on TV is interesting
I don’t like the violence on TV
The essay I am going to write is about violence on TV
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Practical techniques
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• Feedback
– Not giving complete solutions
– Three-fourths-of-the-way-through-a-unit test
• Sharing learning intentions
– Annotated examples of different standards to ‘flesh out’
assessment rubrics (e.g. lab reports)
– Opportunities for students to design their own tests
• Students as owners of their own learning
– Red/green discs
• Students as instructional resources for one another
– Pre-flight checklist
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Putting it into practice
Why research hasn’t
changed teaching
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• The nature of expertise in teaching
• Aristotle’s main intellectual virtues
– Episteme: knowledge of universal truths
– Techne: ability to make things
– Phronesis: practical wisdom
• What works is not the right question
– Everything works somewhere
– Nothing works everywhere
– What’s interesting is “under what conditions” does this work?
• Teaching is mainly a matter of phronesis, not
episteme
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Knowledge ‘transfer’
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to
Tacit knowledge
Explicit knowledge
Dialogue
Tacit knowledge
from
Explicit knowledge
Socialization
Externalization
sympathised knowledge
conceptual knowledge
Networking
Sharing experience
Internalization
Combination
operational knowledge
systemic knowledge
Learning by doing
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After
Nonaka & Tageuchi, 1995
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Supporting Teachers and Schools to Change
through Teacher Learning Communities
Implementing AfL requires
changing teacher habits
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Teachers “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 AfL
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)
• People need to reflect on their experiences in systematic ways
that build their accessible knowledge base, learn from mistakes,
etc. (Bransford, Brown & Cocking, 1999)
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That’s what TLCs are for:
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TLCs contradict teacher isolation
TLCs reprofessionalize teaching by valuing teacher expertise
TLCs deprivatize teaching so that teachers’ strengths and
struggles become known
TLCs offer a steady source of support for struggling teachers
They grow expertise by providing a regular space, time, and
structure for that kind of systematic reflecting on practice
They facilitate sharing of untapped expertise residing in individual
teachers
They build the collective knowledge base in a school
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The synergy
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• Content: assessment for learning
• Process: teacher learning communities
• Components of a model
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Initial workshops
Support for TLC leaders
Monthly TLC meetings
Peer observations
‘Drip-feed’ resources
• Web-site
• Writings
• New ideas
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Summary
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• Raising achievement is important
• Raising achievement requires improving teacher quality
• Improving teacher quality requires teacher professional
development
• To be effective, teacher professional development must address
– What teachers do in the classroom
– How teachers change what they do in the classroom
• AfL + TLCs
– A point of (uniquely?) high leverage
– A “Trojan Horse” into wider issues of pedagogy, psychology, and
curriculum
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Questions?
Comments?
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