Formative assessment: It’s all about process

Move from facilitator to coach to mentor – and see your students learn.

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.

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.

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 fl yers, provided they are given the necessary time to achieve. That they must be allowed the time to do this is non negotiable.

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. 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.”

The aware teacher not only treats each student differently, 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.

Y ATHY ATH AT YEU Y Y LET T HOT PHOT P O: C O:C

The section being worked on:

The fl y said, “LOOK!

And you will see!

That frog!

That frog is after me!

The fl y went past!

The frog came fast…!

As the teacher cruises the room monitoring and giving feedback, she comes across this note that the student has written for the above. “He was obviously chasing the fl y fast.”

Before the student can proceed to the next verse unaware that for note taking she has written too much, the teacher intervenes. “You need more precision and accuracy here, what is the main idea? Work it out, and I’ll be back for you to tell me shortly.”

Here the external voice of the teacher is directing the student, but still giving that student the work to do. The teacher does not steal the learning opportunity from the student by giving the correct answer. True the student is working at the lower level of the hierarchy of thinking skills – remembering, understanding and applying – but that is not to diminish them. These are all foundation skills. Without foundation there is hollowness.

Beyond the skill of note taking these teacher actions are also building a growth mindset in the students: a belief that if they persist, if they put in the effort success will come.

A less skilled teacher may have stolen the learning opportunities from the student, and simply stated the answer for the student to write down, “You have too many words here, cross out all except, chasing the fl y.” The implication, for the student, when this happens is that the teacher knows the answer, but I (the student) do not. It does not take many examples like this for students to develop a fi xed mindset and come to believe that they are incapable of working things out for themselves, and come to rely on the teacher supplying the answer whenever they are challenged. Formative assessment can also be instigated even when taking a whole class lesson such as a mini lecture.

Each student is given a set of three paper or plastic cups on their desk. One of the cups is green, one is yellow, and one is red. These cups are stacked with green on the top, followed by yellow and then red on the bottom. Students use these cups during instructional periods, as traffi c lights. They put the yellow on the top when they are unsure or feel they need more explanation. The red goes on top when they have lost the thread.

This is a rather blunt method of reversing the normal fl ow of formative assessment because here the students are effectively assessing the teacher, but importantly this assessment gives the teacher information about the need or otherwise to change the pace of the lesson. Teachers who have used this system are enthusiastic and so are their students.

Phase two in practice – Teacher as coach

Phase two naturally morphs from phase one. It will not be obvious, even in hindsight, to determine exactly when the morphing occurred. That the shift had been made would be obvious when, in the scenario above, it is the student voice that initiates the action, perhaps with a comment like, “Perhaps I should drastically reduce the number of words here?” It is not only the voice that has changed here but also there is a shift from teacher direction to interdependent thinking between student and teacher. This is a key progression. Not only does it demonstrate that the teacher has moved from facilitator to coach but also the demands on the students increase as they move to the more sophisticated skills of analyzing, evaluating, and using the criteria so gathered to plan creative solutions.

Moreover, the student must do this consciously as a deliberate, purposeful and meaningful process. It won’t just happen. It has to be taught consciously as a deliberate and meaningful process. The student must be made aware and led to understand the progress that they are making. The relationship that is developed between teacher and student throughout this process is crucial. Feedback - which takes the students from where they are and moves them on in their own idiosyncratic style - requires empathetic listening and an appropriate response. Some may want support, while others want to be challenged. The teacher needs to be adept at playing the appropriate role. A delicate touch is needed.

Phase three in practice – Teacher as mentor

In phase three, the student’s self managing has shifted from getting the new knowledge on board to refl ection, to self analyse and make recommendations for the future. Thus his or her reflections are not just for the specifi cs of the current unit, but also more generally into the whole learning process.

The teacher’s role here is fi rst of all to affi rm and help celebrate the success. A further role is to extend the student’s knowledge of self management. The teacher needs to be adept at playing the appropriate role. Care is needed here not to take away from the affi rmation of success. This can be done by the teacher asking extension questions that are designed to deepen the student’s understanding. There are many ways of doing this. The “what if” question is a good example (“What would have happened if…..”) as is questioning (“Is there another way of…”).

This metacognition through dialogue between student and teacher requires, in most instances, a conversational voice to get maximum effect.

The default setting is to novice

Every time a new unit is started, or a new skill introduced, the default setting is always phase one with the instructor as facilitator and the student at the novice level. Prior or personal practical knowledge gained by both student and teacher from previous working through the process may mean that each time the process is worked it will be more productive but each new learning sequence still must start at the beginning.