evidence-based decision making: ‘micro’ issues

Evidence-based decision making: ‘Micro’ issues

Rama Mathew

Delhi University, Delhi

Micro issues in evaluation

Evaluation in education functions at two levels: • Macro level: decisions about pass/fail, attendance,

teacher-pupil ratio, mid-day meals, teacher qualifications etc.

Product oriented, high-stakes, summative• Micro level: how are students progressing in the

classroom? The kind of support needed based on feedback

Process oriented, low stakes, formative

April 21, 2023 2Rama Mathew

Why we need to do FA

• FA supports and assists learning: it provides feedback and correctives at each stage in the teaching-learning process

• FA can tell what students know and can do, and can do with some difficulty and therefore instruction can be modified accordingly


Who is involved in FA?

• The teacher and students

Because both are part of the teaching-learning process

• If students are to develop into lifelong, independent, self-directed learners, and take ownership of their learning, they need to be included. This way they will be motivated to learn.


FA is assessment for learning

• Assessment for learning (AfL)

• Assessment of learning (AL)

• Monitoring learner progress is AfL


What AfL is not• More frequent summative assessments• All testing a teacher does in the classroom • Filling up forms on how ‘good’ each student is on

various dimensions• Labelling certain students or excluding them

from future learning experiences • A test. FA produces not a score but an insight

into student understanding• Something that interferes with students’ learning


What is learning? • Learning occurs when students are ‘thinking, problem

solving, constructing, transforming, investigating, creating, analyzing, making choices, organizing, deciding, explaining, talking and communicating, sharing, representing, predicting, interpreting, assessing, reflecting, taking responsibility, exploring, asking, answering, recording, gaining new knowledge, and applying that new knowledge to new situations.’ Cameron, Tate, Macnaughton and Politano 1998, p.6)


Definition of AfL

• Assessment for Learning is part of everyday practice by students, teachers and peers that seeks, reflects upon and responds to information from dialogue, demonstration and observation in ways that enhance ongoing learning.

(AfL experts, Dunedin New Zealand, 2009)

April 21, 2023 Rama Mathew 8

Keeping Learning on Track (ETS 2010)

• The idea is of students and teachers to use evidence ….to adapt teaching and learning to meet immediate learning needs minute-by-minute and day-by-day


Any assessment involves four activities

1. Designing opportunities to gather evidence

2. Collecting evidence

3. Interpreting it

4. Acting on interpretations


Key strategies for doing AfL

• Sharing learning expectations (clarifying intentions, and criteria for success)

• Questioning (to engineer effective classroom discussions, questions that elicit evidence of learning and making inferences from that evidence)

• Feedback

• Self-and peer-assessment



Processes involved in FA

Action taken by teacher/ learner to bridge the gap

Assess status of goals

Present state of learners’ ability

self-/peer and teacher assmnt through spontaneous and planned obsrvn of individual students/pairs/ groups, asking questions, maintaining records of how students progress from one activity to another

Set new goals by negotiating

• Monitoring progress is research-based teaching (Stenhouse 1975:141) and is the business of the teacher.


Challenges and issues

• Assessment reforms would have to address all three components simultaneously, i.e. teaching, learning and assessment. A ‘vision’ of a whole-curriculum reform should be conceptualised, concretised and supported.

• Physical and infrastructural facilities


Challenges and issues

• Need for orientation in pre-service and in-service teacher workshops to the characteristics of FA and how it could be translated into classroom processes

• Teachers need time and space to develop a sense of ownership and to articulate and critique their own implicit constructs and interpretations.


Future directions

• Case studies to be carried out that look closely at what strategies teachers adopt to monitor progress, students’ language learning processes and the kind of fine-tuned support they need, especially low-achievers.


Future directions

• There are very few research-based, empirical accounts by teachers themselves of how they monitor students’ progress in their classrooms; it is usually the assessment expert who does research.


Can all learning be evidence based?

• Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

Albert Einstein


References

• ‘Assessing ESL in South Asia’. In A. J. Kunnan (Ed.) The Companion to Language Assessment, California: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,2014, DOI: 10.1002/9781118411360. wbcla104.

• ‘Monitoring progress in the classroom’. In A. J. Kunnan (Ed.) The Companion to Language Assessment, California: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2014, DOI: 10.1002/9781118411360.wbcla073 (Co-author M. Poehner).


Thank you [email protected]


evidence-based decision making: ‘micro’ issues

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