ALAN COOPER
Formative assessment: It’s all about process Move from facilitator to coach to mentor – and see your students learn.
A theoretical overall process would follow this sequence: Phase One - Self Management with the teacher as facilitator, developing collegiality where the students are at the novice stage and rely on the teacher’s external voice to drive the learning. Phase two - Self Management where the students are moving beyond the novice stage and toward the expert, thus shifting to an internal voice to drive the learning with the teacher as coach. Phase Three – Self Management where the students are at the expert level, able to self manage comprehensively with the teacher as mentor.
Teachers Matter
This process is sequential and incremental, therefore the moving from one stage to the next is dependent on mastery before moving on. If this means some progress quickly and others linger at the elementary stage, so be it. Research tells us that the late achievers will catch up to at least the mid group, if not the high flyers, provided they are given the necessary time to achieve. That they must be allowed the time to do this is non negotiable.
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Establish rapport Phase one is the catalyst for ongoing success and continual improvement. Either it will set the stage for ongoing success or for failure. This means that the teacher’s actions - the teacher’s behaviours - are predictive of future student success or otherwise and predictive of future teacher success, too. The relationship that is developed between teacher and student throughout this process is crucial. Empathetic listening and
an appropriate voice is the starting point. As well the teacher needs to be adept at playing the appropriate role. Some students will require a nonauthoritarian approach with a conversational voice; some will want to be directed with an imperative voice. A delicate touch is needed. The direction for this comes from being aware of each student’s attitude. What does their expression, their words, their body language tell you? An action research project I have conducted as to what students decreed to be a good teacher, had comments like, “He knew when I was having a bad day.”
PHOT P HOT TO: CATH ATHY AT Y YEU Y LET
There is a growing understanding of the importance of teacher effectiveness as a key variable in learning. Formative feedback — the on-the-job evaluation — is an important part of this effectiveness. This timing is crucial. It will have the greatest impact when it is done simultaneously with the student’s learning process. It must also be ongoing and done regularly.
The aware teacher not only treats each s t u d e n t d i f f e r e n t l y, but also from time to time the same student differently. Thus careful selection by the teacher of the syntax that they are using, as well as their body language, and expressions, are an important part of establishing the needed rapport. Teacher radar needs to be constantly deployed. Being on automatic leads to failure. The teacher must also be aware of each student’s body language, expressions and syntax too. I well remember an embarrassing moment when a middle of the road student, who I was providing with formative assessment, rather angrily demanded to know why I was always criticising him. If I had been awake to that student’s body language, expressions and
syntax I would have been able to foresee the problem and act to head it off. Because I was on automatic, trouble arrived. Phase one in practice – Teacher as facilitator The students are learning to make notes, using Mike McClintock’s A Fly Went By as the example to work on. This is a year 7 class doing the work. This particular poem was chosen because of the low level content ensuring that the level of difficulty was not going to be an unintended problem interfering with the learning the new skill. As well the nature of the poem tended to add a level of enjoyment to the lesson.
