Pathway to Practice for Evidence

PATHWAY 7: EVIDENCE

We reject overdependence on narrow methods of assessment. All learners and schools must have the opportunity to demonstrate progress using rich and diverse data and methods. 

Thinking about it...

Working on it...

Living it...

Transforming it...


We are beginning to develop an emerging sense of awareness that our current approaches to gathering and analyzing evidence of learning are just not getting us to where we want to be.

We dutifully administer and analyse several recognized external tests, and they do serve some useful purposes in revealing trends, but they give us a partial picture at best.

Compounding our sense of professional unease is the experience of having our best efforts towards more personalized, student-centred approaches running up against ‘the test’.

Even more troubling is the observation that our students have begun to associate our best efforts at formative assessment as ‘not on the test, so doesn’t matter’.

We’re beginning to think of the processes of gathering, analyzing and communicating learning evidence as somewhat akin to genre writing, with any given genre having its own purpose, audience and medium. 

We just feel we can do better.

 

We feel we are making real progress in puzzling our way towards a more professionally satisfying approach to ‘evidence work’, namely one that will have a bigger impact on student learning.
We’re conducting a review of all aspects of assessment, recording and reporting using that ‘genre’ lens.

Another complementary filter is to begin to distinguish between the learner’s actual ‘achievement’, in terms of ‘how they did in the assessment’, and how much growth they showed since any earlier ‘baseline’ assessment. That really seems to be where we can see our own ‘added value’ more clearly.

We’re also trying to work out how to factor in things like learning dispositions and how they affected the learning process along the way.

We still have a long way to go but we’re now beginning to think about this whole evidence ‘minefield’ in clearer, more informed ways.We’ve realized that how we think about it is critical to what we do about it.

We’re feeling encouraged by these emerging perspectives and motivated to push forward.


We feel that we’ve arrived at a good place. 

We have developed a balanced ‘basket’ of strategies for serving different assessment purposes, for different audiences, using different ‘tools’.

We do due diligence in terms of administering external, normed assessments, for the purposes for which they were designed and we learn what we can from them.

We are feeling particularly pleased at the ways in which we have managed to complement this ‘functional’ evidence-gathering with new approaches that invite our learners to share their informed reflections on their own growth using well-documented evidence that they have curated as they have learned.It really helps that we share a common learning language with our students.

We have managed to balance evidence of performance (the point arrived at), progress (the distance travelled) and process (the influencing factors e.g. learning dispositions).

We now feel that we can genuinely use evidence to provide feedback to learners to improve their learning and to us, as learning professionals, to inform our practice.

Not only that, but we have engaged all learning stakeholders in our journey to this place, so that there is a much deeper shared understanding of the why, how and what of assessment of, for and as learning.

We’re even applying this new thinking to our own growth as a school, and with the support of our accrediting agencies, producing an evidence-based improvement plan for ourselves.

Onward and upward!

 

 

Having come this far, what if…?

Connecting It…

Our drive to develop new systems of evidence-gathering is part of our ADAPTIVE CHANGE process as we reduce our reliance on the embedded practice of testing as the major means of evidence gathering. We are determined to increase the CAPACITY of our learners to provide their own evidence of learning, of ourselves to master innovative forms of assessment, and of our parents to participate in the learning process through better informed learning conversations. As we build capacity among all stakeholders we transform a transactional relationship among stakeholders into a transformative one, building a learning community in the true sense. This was helped enormously by the fact that we have a shared definition of LEARNING throughout the community, equipping learners to self-assess with greater clarity and confidence. The focus on character in our learning definition means that we are heavily focussed on gathering evidence of learner WELL-BEING, a particular emphasis for our school given the stresses of working through the current pandemic. Perhaps the clearest epiphany for us throughout this process was that our earlier, narrower forms of evidence-gathering were heavily skewed towards one kind of learning, perhaps even one kind of learner. By broadening, enriching, even democratizing the ways in which our learners can demonstrate what they have learned, we feel we have created a fairer, more EQUITABLE learning culture, where all learners can thrive on their own terms.

 

 

PRINCIPLE 7: EVIDENCE

Planning Our Own Path

WHERE DO WE WANT TO BE?

WHAT WILL BE EVIDENCE OF SUCCESS?

WHERE ARE WE NOW?

HOW WILL WE CLOSE THE GAP?

WHAT?

WHO?

WHEN?