School context: School B is a large independent high school in a metropolitan area. The school has an academic focus. This research focus aligned with how the whole school was rethinking the role of formative assessment. A number of the teachers had volunteered to be involved in writing teams or in trialling new ideas for the new senior assessment system, and had taught in other systems with external exams, so they felt informed and ready for change. The teachers engaged in four inquiries as part of this action research project.
Collaborative planning for a big purpose. The play ‘The Crucible” was the focus of the teaching during term 2, leading to an unseen essay exam that was designed to be similar to an assessment task that would occur in the new Senior syllabus. The teachers were feeling positive about the new syllabus;
I think there is a lot of fear surrounding it, but for me I think it’s great because it’s actually asking for mastery, it’s asking for depth.
The assessment task and the unit plan were already designed by the head of department, and teachers were able to access one another’s resources and ideas from previous years using the school’s online learning management system. Each teacher then adapted the unit depending on their own interests and their knowledge of students.
The teachers created an argument for the validity of the design using track-change commentary throughout the unit plan. This was then shared with the researchers for peer review.
Feedback from expert peer reviewers. School B Feedback from the university team was summarised in an email to the teachers at the end of term one so that the teachers had time to read, reflect and make any adjustments they thought might be helpful.
It was quite good to have some encouragement and positive feedback as well, to be told that yep, you’re doing the right thing. I mean for me, I’m only a second year teacher, so for me to hear from people saying yep, you’re on the right track, this is good, this is good, it made go oh yes, I’m doing things right. It’s great.
We definitely agree that we will change the language around all students… it was nice to have a think about that and think about how we can change it…It was also I think very interesting the parts that we didn’t necessarily agree with.
The teachers used the feedback from the university team review to reflect on their own practices, but also to recognise how their assessment designs were being shaped by conditions that had previously been invisible to them.
I went into it feeling free and oh, we’ve got all this time and we can do all these things. Then the term turned out the way it was and then we got this and I thought oh, wait a minute, there’s things that we can’t change and there’s things that we can’t do.
The task was designed by the head of department and common across multiple classes, so the teachers did not feel they had the permission to make changes to the task. However, in discussing the big idea for the unit, they resolved that their big purpose for the unit was to
help them be more critical and to get them to analyse in depth…and not just blindly trust.
This big purpose would be emphasised through the skills, through becoming more familiar with criteria, as well as linking it to the current and historical issues of their world.
Student feedback on key formative pedagogic moments Each teacher created short video clips of key learning moments where students were developing critical or creative agency. Through their deliberate noticing of these events, the teachers became more aware of how they were reflecting on their practice through the student performances.
My Year 11s, they’ve just done a half draft for their assessment and I notice some of the girls were doing the same things as a pattern. So that was definitely – that gets me to reflect on what I’m doing and I start going back and looking at my plan and think, did I actually teach them this thing that they’re all forgetting to do? So it definitely helps that. Assessment does help me reflect.
Collaborative formative assessment activities prompted informal discussions between students. The teachers and students reflected that this type of discussion where students led the thinking and questioning was an unusual pattern of interaction, and it led to . Listening to the surface or deep way that students were engaging with ideas enabled the teachers to adapt their next steps in teaching;
It really gave me an understanding of which students were going down which paths, so that I could hone in on those students that perhaps weren’t looking deeper enough. I could prompt them a bit more or I could point them to that part on the wall …where others were working a bit more closely with the text.
Reflecting on and sharing outcomes with teachers from another school.
Meeting with teachers from another school provided the opportunity to share ideas and recognise how different approaches were possible when studying the same unit. Differences in school cultures, flexibility in planning, and approaches to differentiation were valuable to share.
