As teachers, we ask a lot of assessments.
We think they will tell us how a pupil is doing against their peers and show progress from previous assessments. Mock exams and end-of-topic assessments lead to us believing a pupil is at a certain grade, and we try to extrapolate what this means for their future.
In reality, though, I think these kinds of summative assessments make for very poor diagnostic tools, and, actually, tell us very little. They rarely show why a pupil ended up with the grade that they did, beyond “they didn’t get enough marks”.
Luckily, most teachers don’t rely on these summative assessments for much more than fodder for school data machines. They faithfully throw in the latest collection of numbers as requested while getting on with the real assessments; the ones whose outcomes are never reported.
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Teachers assess constantly. We look at the work pupils produce as we circulate the room and get a sense of how they are doing, who is stuck and who needs additional challenge.
We ask questions and consider the responses before giving feedback on what has been said. We carry out low-stakes formative assessments to test what pupils have learned: do they know this specific piece of information? Can they carry out this particular process?
We carry this information around with us, and it becomes a form of tacit knowledge about our classes. It’s hard to put our finger on exactly what it all means, but it’s a sense of where pupils are at with the curriculum we have taught.
While this is all reassuring, assessment that becomes a part of our informal and automated process can also create problems. When we don’t reflect on what we’ve learned, we risk missing out on the most important part of the assessment process: taking action.
Why we need to reflect - and respond - to assessments
What we need is an opportunity to take stock of what we have learned and then implement a structured approach to making changes.
For example, a quiz on prior learning is a common way to start a lesson. The main goal of this is to practise retrieving information and form links between prior knowledge and the next lesson. It also tells us, or at least tells our pupils, what they do and do not know.
Feedback is given after the quiz, as we go through the right answers. This, we hope, will make the answers stick. But actually, students can get the same type of question wrong time after time because they have a fundamental misunderstanding of something linked to that information.
So while the quiz doesn’t tell us exactly what the problem is, it does diagnose that there is a problem. The next stage, then, is crucial: we need to respond by providing something to close this gap.
We could ask pupils who got a certain question wrong to do a certain task or to revisit a lesson or some materials and look at it again. Video lessons like those produced by Oak National Academy can also help here: it takes a matter of moments to say that if a pupil gets question one to five wrong, they need to return to a particular video.
Whatever method we use, if we identify a gap then we need to have a plan to close it, or there is no point in identifying the gap in the first place.
Often with assessment, we put the expectation on students to respond. But often, it’s a response from us that’s needed. Identifying that most of the class are struggling with something should lead to a change in our plans to address this issue.
At other times, we may not be responding in the moment but changing our plans for the future. We may adjust the way we teach a particular topic, to improve explanations or change the activities, so that we don’t run into the same problems again.
Responsive teaching is key, but the stumbling block is the same one we face with so much good teaching practice: time. It takes time to plan how best to respond to what we have learned, and it takes time to reflect on the way we teach.
If we don’t find this time, however, the time we have spent assessing is wasted. Perhaps we need fewer assessments, and use the time we gain for more response instead?
Mark Enser is head of geography and research lead at Heathfield Community College. His latest book, The CPD Curriculum, is out now. He tweets @EnserMark
