Visibly learning: teachers’ assessment practices for students with high and very high needs

Abstract

This paper examines the assessment practices of teachers working with students with special educational needs in New Zealand primary and secondary regular and special schools. A national survey was used to identify current assessment practices used by teachers working with students designated, through a resourcing policy, as having high and very high needs. Specifically, the survey sought to determine the type of assessment practices used, reasons for using different approaches, the role of the person carrying out the assessment and levels of confidence in assessing students in relation to learning. The use of learning stories as a form of narrative assessment was further explored through the questionnaires and in a relatively small number of interviews. The results showed that teachers were largely responsible for assessment, and that the three main assessment methods used included collecting examples of work, observations and anecdotal records. Teachers reported confidence in assessing students for learning, but not for funding applications and assistive technology applications. Approaches such as narrative assessment and learning stories were used by some teachers in school‐based settings. Learning stories and narrative assessment are strategies where parents, teachers, teacher‐aides and students engage in meaningful dialogue around learning. Teachers reported that through narrative assessment they could demonstrate that learners with high and very high needs were visibly learning. Through a sociocultural conceptualisation of formative assessment, the role of teachers and learners in assessment is explored.

Keywords:

• assessment
• special education
• narrative assessment
• learning stories

Notes

1. Students with high and very high needs who receive ORRS constitute about 1% of the school population. The resource funds specialists to provide advice and programmes to meet a student’s special needs, additional teaching time and teacher‐aide time when learners need support with personal care and/or to engage in the curriculum (Ministry of Education 2009).

2. Group Special Education (GSE) is a group within the Ministry of Education that employs specialists to support learners with high needs, and their teachers, in early childhood centres and schools (e.g. educational psychologists, speech‐language therapists, special education advisers, advisers of the deaf and physiotherapists).