Making Judgements about Student Learning Dr Thelma Perso Director Curriculum Education Queensland

What is ‘making judgements’ about? Teachers make judgements all the time about student learning Many of these are based on assumptions about what they’ve been taught

Different types of judgements A.Diagnostic judgements: what do they know before I start teaching them? B.What do they know as a result of what I’ve taught them? (learning) C.How well have they learned it (quality of learning/standard)

Judgements about what they know (A & B) These require deep understanding by the classroom teacher about what we want them to know (ie. the intent of the curriculum) This will impact on the type of assessment used (formal or informal) to determine what they know

Judgements about how well they’ve learned it (C) This is an issue of quality of learning “If you really understand something you are able to explain, interpret and apply it” (Wiggins & McTighe 2005) These are higher-order meta-cognitive skills and indicate deep, as opposed to superficial learning In order to judge quality assessment tasks need to elicit these type of responses

A&B: Curriculum Intent A deep knowledge by the teacher of what students need to be able to know, understand and do. An example from the mathematics syllabus: AREA 4.1 “explain relationships between dimensions when investigating areas…”

What do they know? Year 7/8 teacher asks “what is area?” Student response: “length times width” Teacher question “(do I deeply know what area is myself well enough to know what this student response is telling me?”) I might probe this further or ask previous classroom teacher/s what students had been taught Have they been taught the concept or the method?

What they know – con’d Other diagnostic questions: - does this work for all rectangles? -will it work for other shapes? -so is this area after all? Questions for me: -can I define area? -do I really know what area is? My knowledge affects the way I assess it

Questions from a test on area 1.Find the area of this shape: 2.If the area of this square is 25 cm 2 what is the length of the sides? 3.What is the area of a rectangle that has a width of 8m and a length of 3.5m? 4.If the length of a rectangle is 15 cm and the area is 30 sq cm, what is its width? 2 cm 6 cm

Making judgements about learning Consider the previous test questions None of them give information about whether the student understands the concept of area; they provide information about whether the student can use a model used to calculate area only. None of these questions used enable decisions about learning relating to the syllabus intent, 4.1 apart form the learning of a method of calculation (a very small part of the intent)

What about quality? None of the questions provide any information about learning quality since there are no questions that demand higher-order cognitive processes such as explanation, interpretation or application.

Questions that test quality might include: - what is area? Use diagrams to explain your answer - explain how you might find the area of this shape: - If the perimeter of a rectangle is 24 m what might the are be? Explain your answer. - if the area of a shape is 16 sq metres, what might it’s dimensions be?

Judgements about learning and quality of learning depend on: 1.validity of assessment task (does it test what I want it to test?) 2.understanding of the intended curriculum

Teacher checklist How well do I know the subject matter? (content) Do I understand the concepts contained in the intended curriculum?...deeply? How well can I teach the intended curriculum so that students will learn what’s intended? (content pedagogic knowledge) Am I confident in my ability to assess the learning about these concepts? Do my assessment tasks give students the opportunity to demonstrate their learning and the quality of their learning?

Quality on a 5-point scale: A…… B………C………D………….E High level of superficial Knowledge,knowledge Application inwith Wide range significant of contexts, support independently

In conclusion…. All students must have the opportunity to learn and demonstrate their learning, and the extent of their learning, through rigorous and robust assessment that: 1.assesses the real intent of the curriculum thereby enabling teachers to judge whether students have learned it, and 2. enables teachers to judge the quality of the learning