Cirriculum and Assessment

                       One of the my main interest since I started the PME course has been the structure and philosophies behind cirriculum and assessment. This has many interesting facets in how it is applied and the sometimes overwhelming stumbling blocks it comes into contact with.

                      To critically describe or discuss an assessment approach one must look at pedagogy as a whole. Pedagogy is the ‘overarching concept’ in how a child or student learns. In Eager to Learn pedagogy is broken into three main components; curriculum, methodologies and ‘techniques for socialising children in the repertoire of cognitive and affective skills required for successful functioning in society that education is designed to promote’. This last statement is key to understanding where many of the approaches differ and dispute with each other. The assessment approach I have chosen for this critical discussion is assessment for learning or AFL. To discuss this model one must look at it’s antithesis, assessment of learning or AOL for short. One must also look at curriculum models these assessment approaches would utilise. AFL works in a scaffold manner. Whether at Level 3 learning or at Level 10 learning the scaffold can always go higher. AFL would support the Learning for Life ideology. The idea that one is never done learning. AOL on the other hand would support a block type of learning. AFL is formative and AOL is summative. This means that AFL builds on previous learning and doesn’t apply all value to an overall or ‘ending’ score as AOL does. This would promote growth and progress in the student. AFL would champion praxis as curriculum or process as curriculum to a lesser extent as it’s chosen curriculum model. AOL would be more comfortable with a curriculum base like transmission. The difference between praxis and transmission is that transmission uses the ‘banking’ model, as Freire would call it. This is a model, where visualised, the student is like an empty passive receptacle and the teacher is the expert at the top of the class pouring out information and filling up the empty vessels, (students), with it. In the praxis model the teacher is more of a facilitator. This approach would let the child learn through his/her interactions with the world around them. This curriculum would be based on the philosophies of Buber and championed by the likes of Paulo Freire. Buber would argue that a teacher should go beyond this and become one of the elements that the child has to come to understand and use, so to speak. In the book Inside Education by Dr. Stephen O’ Brien whilst speaking to Eoin Jackson about the XLC project in Waterford he is heard to remark, ’ Too much focus is put in schools on teaching and not on learning and how students learn best’. This is where I see the divide and the contention between the two opposing curriculum approaches and in turn the assessment of outcomes.

               ‘I defend the duty of the teachers to teach the cultivated pattern, and I defend the rights of the kids or of the adults to learn the dominant pattern’, Paulo Freire.

                      In this statement Freire is speaking about learning a language pattern. If we are to think of the pattern not as a language but just as an educational pattern this statement reflects where we are with AFL vs AOL. AOL is a product of the Central Bureaucratic Model. It’s assessment is summative. It’s examining bodies are external and formal. The present Leaving Certificate and Junior Certificate are AOL. AFL is a Local Professional Model. This is the model that the new Junior Cycle is based upon. It’s assessment is formative. It’s examining bodies are internal. It is informal with a continuous assessment approach. AFL has been introduced successfully as a model in many of our surrounding countries. The reasoning behind us being late in the game is well accounted for in Assessment in Ireland by Anne Looney. She theorises it’s the cause of our nation being a young one.

                          Although at this point the AFL ideology is championed in college and especially in art college summative assessment still haunts the outcome of every course available to us in our universites. The testing model that is based on pure formative assessment would seem to be very elusive. I know through my own, not very long-lived practice, that applying a rubric with grades for each box and applying it evenly across the class is a lot more straight forward and easier to control than applying an individual rubric to each student. Even applying the same rubric to each student differently would cause me to be taking into account all the classwork from the semester from each student and then assessing their progress. Even as an art teacher I am currently using the AOL approach of assessing more. Where normally art teachers use formative assessment or AFL as an approach to most of the subject’s problems and solutions. In my case I have to face the reality that a grade is needed at the end of term and the school’s prescribed approach to this is an in class test. This I would hope changes with the introduction of the new Junior Cycle. Yet I still have my reservations about the assessment properties of the new Junior Cycle. The approach makes sense to facilitate learning throughout the three years but even though marks are replaced at the end of those three years with comments these comments are still of a summative form. The designed plan seems to disguise itself as a system that will assess progress. When dissected though, the teacher will still have to impose a rubric that will assess criteria that will have to be met. This would not resemble formative assessment unless the criteria is personalised to each student. Here I can see where teachers would have their problems with such an approach. The comments that the teachers are to give are; ‘Yet to meet expectations’, ‘In line with expectations’, ‘Above expectations’ and ‘Exceptional’ with a fifth, Below expectations that would be more designed for absenteeism than anything more than this. The problem with this is that if a teacher is to approach an exercise, say in my subject, art, like colour theory. If an individual based rubric is not implemented for each student than an overall rubric would have to be. If a teacher is now to apply the comment approach to assessment that is outlined for the Junior Cycle. Student A, a high achieving student might tick all the boxes in the rubric. This may be only ‘In line with expectations’ though. Student B, a student who has a problem with colour theory and applying it well may tick more boxes than is expected. This, using the language we are given should be ‘Above expectations’. That is if we are to mark on progress. At the end of the assessment though Student A has ticked nearly all the boxes and Student B only some. Marking on progress would be deemed unfair in this instance. This is where I see the problem of duality. The comments at their present standing seem to only take the place of marks or grades. This approach would only seem to step away from summative if the rubrics one applies are based on individual students and their present levels of understanding at the time of assessment. Otherwise the teacher would have to apply the same rubric differently to each student to account for differentiation in the classroom. This may be possible for Classroom Based Assessment but would not carry over to Subject Learning and Assessment Reviews or for the main Junior Cycle assessment. In this case if individual rubrics are not implemented and differentiation is not taken into account while applying the rubric then we are faced with the four main comments merely taking the place of our grading system. Also, if we are to look at how formative assessment works;

                    ‘Pupils must be given the means and opportunities to work with evidence of their difficulties. For formative purposes, a test at the end of a unit or teaching module is pointless; it is too late to work with the results. We conclude that the feedback on tests, seatwork, and homework should give each pupil guidance on how to improve, and each pupil must be given help and an opportunity to work on the improvement.’

            This must apply to the high achiever also, therefore implementing this change would suggest that you give the high achiever or Student A an ‘In line with expectations’ comment or apply a more developed rubric for this student.

             Another solution to avoid this conundrum would be to implement a Student Growth Model as Georgia Department of Education have. This is a model that shows a student’s progress. In Georgia they show this alongside the student’s academic achievement so that this value is taken into account also. Again, it is alongside the academic achievement so they are still not without summative assessment. This model may be more efficient though. This gives us a recent account of a student’s growth. If applied properly this would be a good indicator of the growth potential of a student. This would be closer to a balance between summative and formative. A University may be able to take a value from this regarding a student’s potential. The Student Growth Model or the Value Added Model or VAM for short is a model that garners a lot of research and development interest. This is the model I believe that the educators are looking for the world over. As Schafer, Lissitz, Zhu, Zhang, Hou and Li found in their research in Practical Assessment, Research and Evaluation, Vol 1, Evaluating Teachers and schools using growth models, in 2009, these models are still too unstable to use in high stakes teaching. There are too many variables, including teacher performance, environment, financial climate, etc. They do conclude that over the next 25 years these models will become more and more reliable and could one day be reliable enough to count on as an accurate measurement of a student’s potential. An argument would have to be made on how easily results from a model like this can be tampered with to suit a student or teacher, whichever the case may be. Also the model implemented in Georgia is a state model. This gives an overview of students in the area. I would be more of an advocate of the same concept but applied internally to each student. A detailed account of how the student has progressed throughout their time at the institution. 

The model I would envisage would be an individual model that would keep the same concept but use these different values for growth in different areas. This would give an overall view of the student but not necessarily give one form of intelligence more importance over another.

                       The battle of educare vs educere has been waged since the days Socrates was put to death for his controversial question asking, right through Kant questioning, ‘Can you teach autonomy?’, to the present day argument of praxis vs transmission and formative assessment vs summative.    The former, educare meaning to train or to mold, would use a curriculum such as transmission. The latter, educere, meaning to lead out, would champion praxis as it’s curriculum. Praxis would work on the belief that the student already has the knowledge. It is the teacher’s role to lead it out of them, not just hand it to them. This would be the Socratic method and Kant’s autonomy in the Age of Enlightenment. Art teachers, as afore mentioned are for the most part facilitators. Aside from the external assessment we do have our own problems implementing this ideology in our daily strategies. Many of the schools that we teach in still have to assign a grade to their students at the end of each term. My approach and problems that I have encountered are as follows.

                      As the Christmas approaches I have to now give a grade for the knowledge that my students are supposed to have gained over the past five weeks. I have all first years and the curriculum is very much sped through in order to cover as many of the basic principles of each discipline. Art class is much different in this respect to other subjects as it is many subjects being taught under the same umbrella. This rush through the fundamentals causes many problems and I know from personal experience that what you learn in these early years lays the foundation for years of learning to come. For example if you approach painting or graphic design without properly engaging with composition this can cause problems with the learning scaffold you are trying to build. This rush also does not give time to explore a curriculum like praxis as praxis takes time. The art room should be ripe for this but as a student teacher I feel I am not yet in a position to argue with the school’s or my cooperating teacher’s approach. I am introducing AFL where I can. This I have to do while also considering the mark the students will have to receive. The above rubric for colour theory I have applied to two of my classes. I gave a hand – out of this rubric as homework for self - assessment. The students understood the instructions well and I believe it will enhance the student’s knowledge of their own understanding yet I still have to apply a mark for this as part of their Christmas assessment. The hand-out I gave to my students read like this;

Application of Paint	Paint is spread evenly and applied without mess and inside all of the lines	Some of the paint is uneven and goes outside of the lines	Paint is very messy and very little is kept inside the lines
Colour Mixing	All colours are mixed properly	Only some of the colours are mixed properly	Very few of the colours are mixed properly
Recognising Colours	All of the colours are placed in the right place	Only some of the coliours are placed in the right place	Very few of the colours are placed in the right place

For the self - assessment to have full effect as Paul Black and Dylan William point out in ‘Inside the Blackbox, Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment’ there should be no mark given. The idea behind the rubric is very beneficial but not realised to it’s full potential. The student’s will examine their own work and in turn discover where they have been correct and incorrect. Also, it gives students who are not great visualisers the chance to display their knowledge in another form.  This, though would be nowhere near where I’d like my assessment practice to be but it is one way of counteracting the system that is in place in the school. This approach has minor elements of Chomsky talking about leading out a piece of string for a student or Kant talking about teaching the autonomy of ethics by laying a good well remembered base structure. It would be more Dewey than Buber though. The outcome here is very defined  and I still must apply criteria to my rubric. If I am to do something similar for all exercises I will get the same results. I would prefer to see myself as a learning lifeguard. A facilitator who only intervenes when it is necessary. Not many of our school environments are currently conducive to methodologies like this.  The ideologies are paradoxical to the environment they are to be set out in, in a sense. You can have students discover for themselves but you also need structure to the learning and in turn marks or grades to assess value. For the above rubric there is almost too much structure. There is no room for creativity. Yet, creativity is again too much of a variable to include in high stakes teaching.

                    

                  Another issue I have faced in my own practice with educare vs educere arises in Art History and Appreciation. Discussions in these classes are quite vibrant and, seeing as I have only first years at the moment, quite imaginative. While teaching a class on composition through observational painting we were discussing Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’. The topic of our conversation was focal point. During the discussion one of the students argued that the focal point of the painting was the sky. All of the students agreed with this statement. This reaction delighted me as I now knew that the student’s understood what focal point meant as a concept. The ‘cultivated’ view on this is that this statement would be wrong. The focal point would be the face and the composition would keep you interested with leading lines that lead you back up to the horizon and back down to the face. The ‘dominant’ one here was that this statement was right. I chose to go with the latter but still live in fear of these students facing a question on focal point in ‘The Scream’ and approaching it with this point of view. A point of view just as valid as the ‘cultivated’ one, in fact probably even more so but yet would be seen as wrong in an examining board’s eyes. Learning had taken place but may not be seen as the ‘right’ type of learning for examination. Depending on what assessment approach is commonly used in this particular school the teacher would be faced with the same choice I was in what type of knowledge do the students need to pass their exams here. This is a very real concern for both students and teacher. The teacher could argue the point that the student’s skills for debate are enhanced but this would be of no good to the student if the answer is either A or B, with no room for the student to explain their choice.

The new Junior Cycle goes some lengths to provide space for a student to show elements of learning like this. I am not saying that it doesn’t. What I am saying is that there is that external examining board still applying their own criteria to what your students should have learned in this allocated time period. My fear is that the new Junior Cycle is just the paint job and reopening of the business that Simon Sinek would reference in his intensity vs consistency theory. That this is just a renaming ceremony and we’ll find ourselves still in the old pattern of learning and assessment

                The AFL approach is theorised and been proven in research studies by Black and William to be more effective by itself without summative assessment. Yet, presently we need summative assessment for bodies such as schools and universities. This is due to the fact that they are the hunting ground for society’s greatest assets, people. Also, the idea that our educational boards or bodies are free from coercing is another idealistic view. When in reality our universities and schools are coerced by funding bodies all the time. As Dr. Stephen O’ Brien points out in his article on the free market this type of ‘freedom’ is perfectly acceptable in the current free market.  ‘Why can’t parents have the freedom to choose their schools? Why can’t students invest in their own upskilling?............. Why can’t they evaluate their institution’s success against others?.’ UCC is currently the Irish Times University of the year. Undoubtedly a verdict gotten to by means of assessing some form of criteria. This in itself is summative assessment in a sense.  Also, one has to step back and look at one of the main components of pedagogy once more. The third, ‘techniques for socialising children in the repertoire of cognitive and affective skills required for successful functioning in society that education is designed to promote’ clearly denotes that education is designed to promote the right type of advancement for the student, as society sees it. Unfortunately, we are faced with finding this balance. We, as educators must find a safe place for students to explore yet also prepare them for proper integration into society. I don’t for one moment disagree with the theory that explicit AFL approach would be more than beneficial to students worldwide. If we listen to Chomsky talking about his early childhood education it is very much painted in this light. Chomsky grew up in a very learning supported environment though. Both of his parents worked in education so his childhood environment was conducive to this approach being nurtured. In reality and as a uniform approach across the board we may have to settle for a balance between formative and summative. This is presently what we have in our colleges and I believe the new junior cycle promises to introduce extra weight to the AFL in post primary. I am unsure how much weight though. The debate for me doesn’t lie in which to choose when it comes to teaching as it would be foolish for me to think I have full control over that. It lies in what the scales will look like. Presently without the introduction of Student Growth Models the scales are tipped in AOL’s favour. Our attention needs to shift from the proposed value of an examination outcome to a value in progress. Once this happens we will be looking at a different model. I will be curious to see what this model will look like and what kind of impact it will have on the capacity for learning and the room for assessment.