Authors:Ernesto Panadero; Heidi Andrade; Susan Brookhart Pages: 13 - 31 Abstract: We have known for a long time that a relationship exists between how learning is assessed and the learning processes and strategies students employ when engaged in those assessments. Black and Wiliam pointed out in 1998 that self-regulated learning should be a primary goal of formative assessment (FA). Since then, a growing body of research on this relationship has been produced. The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss keystone publications that inform our current understandings of the relationship between FA and self-regulated learning. The result is a roadmap of the development of the field and directions for future research. PubDate: 2018-03-01 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-018-0258-y Issue No:Vol. 45, No. 1 (2018)
Authors:Roseanna Bourke; John O’Neill; Judith Loveridge Pages: 33 - 50 Abstract: Classroom assessment practices are greatly influenced by national and local policies on assessment. Typically, these include accountability requirements for schools to evidence and report their students’ learning in the form of specific learning outcomes, calibrated against national benchmark standards of achievement and progression. An implication for teachers is that their understanding of children’s learning is influenced by an official curriculum that is more likely to be weighted towards particular policy priorities, and desired learning outcomes. This means the knowledge, skills and understanding that children develop outside school are less likely to be included in classroom assessment measures or judgments about desirable progress and achievement. This article explores what happens to teachers’ thinking when they learn about their children’s informal learning outside school and begin to relate to learners in a different way. The findings reported here from a New Zealand three-year longitudinal study identified possibilities for teachers to assess expanded conceptions of children’s learning within the classroom, even though the pressures of assessment against National Standards were ever present. We argue that teachers engaging with knowledge of their students’ informal learning act as a catalyst to rethink and re-conceptualise learning more broadly. Incorporating a strong student voice component in assessment, together with a focus on ipsative assessment, enables teachers to mitigate some of the unintended educational consequences of assessment accountability policies and practices. PubDate: 2018-03-01 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-018-0259-x Issue No:Vol. 45, No. 1 (2018)
Authors:Heather Braund; Christopher DeLuca Pages: 65 - 85 Abstract: This study explored how elementary teachers leveraged and structured student-involved formative assessment to promote metacognition and self-regulation. Research has suggested a connection between formative assessment practices (e.g., self-assessment and peer-assessment) and metacognition. However, this connection has limited empirical support, especially within early elementary contexts (i.e. Grades K-4). In this study, 44 Ontario elementary teachers completed a survey reporting their teaching and assessment practices and beliefs about metacognition. Five participants were then purposefully selected for semi-structured interviews to describe their experiences developing students’ metacognition and self-regulatory capabilities through student-involved assessment processes. Data were inductively and thematically analysed. Participants emphasized the value of assessment as learning practices (e.g., self-assessment and reflective thinking) to develop students’ metacognition and discussed the need for ongoing student feedback regarding metacognitive strategies. However, despite purposefully implementing formative assessment to enhance metacognition and self-regulation, participants articulated the need for additional resources to support the cultural shift towards assessment for and as learning within their classrooms. PubDate: 2018-03-01 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-018-0265-z Issue No:Vol. 45, No. 1 (2018)
Authors:Carol Rodgers Pages: 87 - 102 Abstract: In this article, the author argues the imperative of critical dialogue between learners and teachers on learners’ experiences in the classroom. This dialogical process is called “descriptive feedback”—feedback given by students to teachers on their (students’) experiences as learners. Drawing on the literature on feedback, descriptive feedback, and student voice, the author contends that descriptive feedback dialogues are not only rich sources of understanding of learning, teaching, and school, but offer a creative counter to a relentless, often dehumanizing, atmosphere of test prep and “coverage.” The results of this study point to the creation of space where students become teachers, teachers become learners, learners become learners of teaching, and both collaborate on creating curriculum. Within this space students develop a heightened sense of their own agency, and acquire new language with which to talk about learning. Teachers develop a curiosity about students’ point of view and come to trust in their capacity to contribute to both curricular content and pedagogical process. PubDate: 2018-03-01 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-018-0263-1 Issue No:Vol. 45, No. 1 (2018)
Authors:Linda J. Graham; Haley Tancredi; Jill Willis; Kelli McGraw Pages: 103 - 124 Abstract: In an effort to support student agency in assessment, teachers seek to provide detailed instructions and advice in associated assessment task sheets. In this paper, we analyse a sample English assessment task to consider how such assessment design practices might inadvertently create barriers to access and participation. To make our case, we highlight the learning characteristics of students in two of the most prevalent disability groups: students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and students with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). The paper links student agency to the problem of equity by analysing the conditions and criteria of access that are built into assessment design. The article concludes with design recommendations to help improve access for all students, including students in these two highly prevalent disability groups. PubDate: 2018-03-01 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-018-0266-y Issue No:Vol. 45, No. 1 (2018)
Authors:Lois R. Harris; Gavin T. L. Brown; Joanne Dargusch Pages: 125 - 140 Abstract: Within self-regulated learning, learners exercise agency by setting targets, formatively monitoring progress, and evaluating results in ways which inform their own goal attainment. However, in real-world classroom situations, assessment processes can elicit behaviours that are more ego-protective than growth-oriented. Resistance to teacher expectations in assessment can arise from the individual’s need to protect his or her own identity or ego within the psychosocial context of the classroom. In addition, resistance can arise from strategic choices learners make to cope with competing demands on their time and resources. Thus, students may exercise their agency by not following assessment expectations or protocols (e.g. lying, cheating, or failing to give their best effort). These choices seem to undermine assessment validity. This paper shares student voice data from the Measuring Teachers’ Assessment Practices (MTAP) project (n = 46 students in seven focus groups) in New Zealand and the Supporting Student-assessment Success (SSAS) Project (n = 108 first-year university students) in Australia. Both highlight the different ways students resist, subvert, or act in contention with assessment. These data show that students in both sectors do not always act in the growth-oriented ways that educators envision. Students reported exercising potentially maladaptive assessment agency via Assessment dishonesty, Purposeful underperformance, and Doing it alone. These categories were underpinned by three differing rationales: Protection, Strategic prioritisation, and Mini-max. Educators must be mindful of these potential student actions and motives, working to establish psychological safety within the learning environment, and making sure links between learning and assessment are clear. PubDate: 2018-03-01 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-018-0264-0 Issue No:Vol. 45, No. 1 (2018)
Authors:Margaret Heritage Abstract: Assessment for learning (AfL) is integral to teaching and learning, and has as its central foci (i) pedagogical intervention in the immediacy of student learning, and (ii) the students’ agency in the learning and assessment process. The role that students adopt in AfL is consistent with the idea of self-regulated learning, which involves students as metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviorally active agents in their own learning. Through an analysis of an extended sequence of classroom interaction for the purpose of obtaining evidence of learning, this paper demonstrates that self-regulation is supported through a temporary process of co-regulation between teacher and student in the context of AfL. Co-regulation is a construct derived from Vygotsky’s concept of socially mediated learning, and the neo-Vygotskian perspective on human learning as a culturally based communicative process, through which knowledge is shared and constructed. Specific features of co-regulation illustrated through the analyses presented in the paper are (i) goal orientation, a focus on the learning to be achieved; (ii) scaffolding, the assistance the teacher provides to achieve a goal that is currently beyond students’ unassisted efforts; (iii) intersubjectivity, a shared understanding based on a common focus of attention; (iv) the active construction of knowledge by students, rather than transference of knowledge from the teacher to the student; and (v) temporary support, provided through scaffolding and other external supports that students can ultimately appropriate as their own. PubDate: 2018-02-07 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-018-0261-3
Authors:Scott J. Peters; Jennifer L. Jolly Abstract: Gifted education teacher training, licensure, certification, and degrees are ubiquitous in the Australia and abroad, and yet whether or not such training results in changes to classroom instructional practices remains unknown. The purpose of this study was to better understand the relationship between professional development in gifted education and the practices used by educators in the classroom. Two hundred and seventy-nine respondents who had completed one of three levels of teacher professional development completed the Classroom Practice Survey (Revised). The preregistered prediction for this study, that higher levels of professional development would result in higher levels of self-reported teacher practices, was not supported by the data, thereby drawing attention to the need for more research in this area and potential revisions to gifted education teacher professional development opportunities. PubDate: 2018-02-07 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-018-0260-4
Authors:Sonal Nakar; Richard G. Bagnall; Steven Hodge Abstract: This paper reviews the nature and implementation of the Australian VET FEE-HELP (VFH) policy initiative: a scheme introduced in 2008 to extend income-contingent loans to the vocational education and training (VET) sector in Australia. We argue that the implementation of the scheme has been seriously flawed, leading to a range of counter-educational and unethical practices on the part of some VET providers. An ongoing research project into the impact of the changing contemporary cultural context of VET on the creation of moral dilemmas facing VET teachers in their work has identified four dilemmas that were seen by teachers to be significantly driven by the VFH scheme. Those dilemmas arose from (1) unethical student recruitment and enrolment practices, (2) overlooking traditional educational standards, (3) constraining teacher responsiveness and (4) manipulating learning assessment. The identifying teachers saw themselves as being professionally unprepared to handle such moral dilemmas, leading to discomfort and inappropriate handling of the dilemmas. PubDate: 2018-02-01 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-018-0257-z
Authors:Lawrence Perry; Leanne Holt Abstract: The introduction of spaces that encouraged the participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in higher education became a reality in the early 1980s. Since then, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander educators and leaders have worked tirelessly to find their ‘fit’ within the Western academy, which continues to impose a colonial, Western educative framework onto Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. More recently, universities are attempting to move towards a ‘whole of university’ approach to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander higher education. To achieve such a major shift across the academy, Indigenous values, perspectives and knowledges need to be acknowledged as a strong contributor to the environments of universities in all core areas: student engagement, learning and teaching, research and workforce. In a move to achieving a ‘whole of university’ approach which revolves around Aboriginal culture and knowledges, the Wollotuka Institute at the University of Newcastle developed a set of cultural standards, as part of an international accreditation process, to guide a culturally affirming environment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and staff. This environment acknowledges the unique cultural values and perspectives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. In this paper, the authors explore, from an Indigenous Standpoint, the creation of a university environment that privileges Aboriginal values, principles, knowledges and perspectives. The paper exposes how traditional Aboriginal Songlines, particularly in Aboriginal education, were disrupted, and how the creation and emergence of a contemporary environment of Aboriginal educational and cultural affirmation works towards the re-emergence of Songlines within higher education. PubDate: 2018-01-11 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-017-0251-x
Authors:Taghreed Jamal Al-deen Abstract: In this paper, I draw on a qualitative study of Iraqi-born Muslim mothers in Australia exploring how they navigate choosing secondary schools for their daughters. While the mothers interviewed for this study agreed on the importance of education and its role in facilitating upward social mobility for all their children, they articulated a specific and more complex set of concerns in relation to selecting schools for their daughters. This article suggests that families’ positions in the Australian diasporic Iraqi community are tied to girls’ schooling and, therefore, school choices are heavily gendered and contribute to a gendered structuring of family and community life. By analysing the narratives of Iraqi-born mothers, a deeper understanding emerges of the complex and varied outlooks of migrant Muslim parents on education and gender in their everyday practices of raising and educating their daughters. PubDate: 2018-01-11 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-017-0255-6
Authors:Katharine Swain; Donna Pendergast; Joy Cumming Abstract: This paper provides insight into middle school students’ perceptions and reactions to their participation in the Australian National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). A case study was conducted over 10 months at two Queensland schools with different approaches to NAPLAN implementation. Student voice was elicited via focus groups and 35 students provided drawings and words describing their experience in four stages: preparing, sitting, completing and receiving their results. Thematic content analysis of the textual data and trait and holistic coding of the visual data revealed five themes and suggests that the approach adopted by the school may impact on students’ NAPLAN experiences. This study privileges student voice and enables access to student experiences as they participate in a testing regime which is now a feature of the Australian school assessment landscape. PubDate: 2018-01-10 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-017-0256-5
Authors:Tracey Muir; Sharyn Livy; Sandra Herbert; Rosemary Callingham Abstract: Since 2008, all Australian students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 have been assessed in literacy and numeracy through an annual National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) test. In 2015, a team of mathematics education researchers across Australia conducted a nationwide research project to identify school practices and policies that were consistent between schools that showed growth and/or improvement in their NAPLAN numeracy results. This paper reports findings from three case study schools, using a school improvement framework to interpret evidence gathered from the schools’ principals and school leaders. The study has particular implications for policy makers and school leaders who may be seeking ways to improve mathematical practices in their own jurisdictions and schools. PubDate: 2018-01-09 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-017-0252-9
Authors:Anna Filipi; Anne Keary Abstract: The International Student Program (ISP) in Australian secondary schools has in recent times drawn public attention. Despite this attention, there is a paucity of research about the challenges faced by schools in developing and sustaining these programs. The study reported in this paper explores the ISP in an independent metropolitan secondary school in Victoria with a high enrolment of international students. Using positioning theory, the study analysed the self- and other-positionings of an EAL teacher, a STEM teacher and two international students on a range of issues germane to the ISP and academic language. Findings confirmed past research that content teachers feel a lack of confidence in addressing these students’ language needs. In adding to the literature, the study found that content teachers feel a responsibility for these students and that the international students positioned themselves as successful language learners as well as students with gaps in their academic language. PubDate: 2018-01-09 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-017-0253-8
Authors:Jacinta Maxwell; Kevin Lowe; Peta Salter Abstract: This paper focuses on the ‘problem’ of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education represented in the Australian Curriculum’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures cross-curriculum priority. Looking beyond particular curriculum content, we uncover the policy discourses that construct (and reconstruct) the cross-curriculum priority. In the years after the Australian Curriculum’s creation, curriculum authors have moulded the priority from an initiative without a clear purpose into a purported solution to the ‘Indigenous problem’ of educational underachievement, student resistance and disengagement. As the cross-curriculum priority was created and subsequently reframed, the ‘problem’ of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education has thereby been manifested in policy, strategised as curriculum content and precipitated in the cross-curriculum priority. These policy problematisations perpetuate contemporary racialisation and actively construct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, histories and knowledges as deficient. PubDate: 2018-01-09 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-017-0254-7
Authors:Tracy L. Durksen; Robert M. Klassen Abstract: Education authorities in Australia are calling for valid tools to help assess prospective teachers’ non-academic attributes, with a particular need for identifying those attributes necessary for effective teaching in specific contexts. With the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Education, we aimed to develop a scenario-based tool to help assess the non-academic attributes necessary for beginning teachers working in rural and remote settings. Using a situational judgement test (SJT) methodology, we worked with experienced teachers (n = 19) to develop scenario-based items, which were then reviewed by school principals (n = 13). The teachers also adapted items previously developed and piloted in the UK. Next, prospective NSW teachers (n = 99) tried 32 new and adapted items targeting four clusters of attributes: empathy and communication, resilience and adaptability, organisation and planning, and culture and context. Item quality analyses revealed 22 acceptable items. We conclude by suggesting SJTs for promoting non-academic growth of prospective and beginning teachers. PubDate: 2017-12-09 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-017-0248-5
Authors:Helen Flavell; Lynne Roberts; Georgina Fyfe; Michelle Broughton Abstract: This qualitative study reports on findings from interviews with ten academics in an Australian university six to twelve months following academic workforce reshaping and the widespread introduction of teaching academic roles. The research aimed to determine how the workforce reshaping impacted on the capacity of academics with teaching responsibilities to engage in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Findings indicate that whilst academics were willing to undertake SoTL, participants’ capacity to engage was hampered by the workload model, middle academic leaders’ capacity to define and lead SoTL, and a perceived lack of SoTL value. A major concern for participants was that shifting goal posts (in relation to roles and expectations) would make it difficult to successfully apply for future academic work. The research indicates the need for the sector to consider the selection criteria for middle leadership roles, as well as ongoing academic leadership development to support adaptability and change agility. PubDate: 2017-12-05 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-017-0247-6
Authors:Chris Hickey; Amanda Mooney Abstract: There is a rich, albeit chequered, history around single-sex schooling providing an educational option for nurturing the particular educational interests and needs of boys. While all-boys’ schools continue to position themselves at the forefront of contemporary masculine endeavour, they are simultaneously forced to fend off accusations that they are proverbial hot beds for the reproduction of gendered hegemony. Whereas some boys’ schools appear content with their ‘masculine’ profile, others appear more eager to present themselves as projecting tolerant and inclusive environments wherein respectful gender relations are actively encouraged. Situated within a wider case study, this paper examines how one all-boys’ school sought to foster gender inclusivity through a strategic initiative to increase the number of female teaching staff and the appointment of a female deputy principal. The data presented here focus on qualitative research interviews undertaken with key members of staff around 5 years after the initiative was introduced to the school. Our interpretation of the data draws largely on selected works of Michel Foucault to explore the discourse-power relations that sustain enduring hypermasculine and heteronormative values within the school. This lens provides a framework to interrogate how gendered constructions of professional identity are framed within such a context, and the spaces that exist for them to be challenged. PubDate: 2017-12-01 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-017-0249-4
Authors:Helen Egeberg; Andrew McConney Abstract: Students’ views about teaching, learning, and school experiences are important considerations in education. The purpose of this study was to examine students’ perceptions of teachers who create and maintain safe and supportive learning environments. To achieve this, a survey was conducted with 360 students to capture students’ views on their classroom experiences. Follow-up focus group discussions were used to further elaborate and clarify students’ perceptions. Despite varying school contexts, students provided consistent reports that effective classroom managers meet students’ needs by developing caring relationships and controlling the classroom environment while developing student responsibility and engaging students in their learning. PubDate: 2017-12-01 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-017-0250-y
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