This blog is mostly aimed at teachers and those interested in participating in the SSAT EFA programme. If that’s not you though, don’t let it stop you from reading.
“This strategy is at the heart of AfL” – at least that’s what the leader’s agenda states for this workshop! I started thinking about this more deeply and reflected that very often it is the teacher who takes responsibility for identifying the current level of understanding a student has and what they will do to move the student forwards. Imagine if we could provide the learner with a set of academic tools that helps them do that for themselves. Students would still need appropriate guidance and structure, but these strategies would make them more independent, work towards positive intrinsic motivation and empower lifelong learning.
As with most ideas, one solution does not fit all, and all the better if we can empower learners with a range of techniques that might be suitable for different situations and subjects. The provided handout for the workshop included a lot of ideas that CRA has already embedded and continues to work on. These include ideas such as end-of-lesson summaries, question strips, sharing exemplars, and evaluating exam answers using the mark scheme.
I am particularly interested in students being able to summarise their learning, but this can only happen after significant input and experience of knowledge. Novice learners, i.e., those new to a subject or topic area, would be unlikely to be able to write an in-depth synopsis simply due to a lack of experience. Care needs to be taken in giving learners tasks that pose challenge but are not so hard that they are unachievable and demotivating. Therefore, for science, a summary exercise might be better placed after a set of lessons or as an end-of-topic activity. Learning from the English faculty, it is clear that this skill needs to be taught explicitly with initial scaffolding that gradually falls away. The English team has been working on summaries over the past 18 months and is now seeing real understanding from students who can more critically evaluate source material and write with clarity to express their reasoning and understanding.
I am hoping I can find some time to find out more about the strategies used by my colleagues as there seems little point in reinventing the wheel. I wonder if the skills will transfer from English to science successfully.
The idea of transfer; “the degree to which a behaviour is repeated in a new situation” seems simple enough but in practice is difficult to spot and plan for (Detterman, 1996, p. 4). Barnett and Ceci (2002), codify transfer into categories such as ‘knowledge’, ‘task’, ‘functional’, and ‘format’. However, learning involves transfer all the time – we expect our students to demonstrate their learning by recalling and applying substantive and disciplinary knowledge to new situations in every lesson. Where Barnett and Ceci (2002) suggest transfer can also be ‘physical’ and across ‘time’, Salomon and Perkins, (1989) suggest these are trivial and what we might simply refer to as just ‘learning’. I query how we can measure that difference and appreciate that the degree of difficulty for transfer will be unique for every learner based on their current schema and personal experiences. Detterman (1996, p. 17) cites a large body of evidence considering that transfer cannot be taught but rather people become experts through “time, basic ability, and the opportunity to learn a large body of exemplars by experience.”
Where much of the evidence relates to content, it will be interesting to see if it applies to skills in my context. I will report back at a later date.
General references
Embedding formative assessment from the EEF – Embedding Formative Assessment | EEF (educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk)
Charles Read Academy – Charles Read Academy – Home
References cited in the blog
Barnett, S. M., & Ceci, S. J. (2002). When and where do we apply what we learn?: A taxonomy for far transfer. Psychological bulletin, 128(4), 612.
Detterman, D. K. (1996). The case for the prosecution: transfer as an epiphenomenon, in Detterman, D. K., & Sternberg, R. J. (Eds.), Transfer on trial: intelligence, cognition, and instruction, (pp. 1-24). New York, NY: Ablex Publishing.
Salomon, G., & Perkins, D. N. (1989). Rocky roads to transfer: Rethinking mechanism of a neglected phenomenon. Educational psychologist, 24(2), 113-142.
Formative Assessment Journey 