How teachers engage with Assessment for Learning: lessons from the classroom

Abstract

Using video recordings of lessons and interviews with teachers, this article explores the way in which teachers enact Assessment for Learning (AfL) practices in their classrooms. Starting with the hypothesis that AfL is built on an underlying pedagogic principle that foregrounds the promotion of pupil autonomy, we analyse the ways in which teachers instantiate this principle in practice. A distinction is drawn between lessons that embody the ‘spirit’ of AfL and those that conform only to the ‘letter’. The nature and sequence of tasks and especially ‘high organization based on ideas’ appears crucial to the former. This adds a dimension to more familiar formulations of AFL practices. We also ask whether the teachers’ beliefs about learning contribute to the different ways in which they interpret the procedures of AfL. Interviews with teachers indicated that those whose lessons captured the spirit of AfL were more likely to take responsibility for success and failure in the promotion of pupil autonomy. Thus they had a sense of their own agency and sought to use it to overcome barriers to learning.

Keywords:

• Agency
• Assessment for learning
• Beliefs about learning
• Autonomy
• Learning how to learn

Notes

1. By ‘activity’ we are not referring here to the ‘activity theory’ of more recent developments of Vygotsky’s work (for example, Engeström, 1999).

2. Other data will be reported elsewhere.

3. It should be noted that: (1) only the teacher was miked so picking up pupil contributions was more difficult; (2) the camera was at the back of the classroom so it was sometimes hard to see the facial expressions of the pupils; (3) as with any observations there is a degree of artificiality and videoing has a flattening effect on the atmosphere of a class; (4) there is no opportunity, when observing videos, to go and check either impressions or pupils’ work. In this way video data lacks some of the advantages of ethnographic approaches (Hammersley, 1999) but this demands a level of involvement that is difficult in large projects because of the nature of LHTL.

4. The outlines refer to ‘modelling’ criteria. In English lessons it is common practice to start a lesson with a ‘model’ or example of a piece of work which is used to illustrate what will subsequently be required of the pupil themselves at another point in the lesson. In other words, a model is used to elicit or communicate criteria.

5. A fuller account, through case study, of how teachers negotiate change in their practice by experimenting with new methods in class, reflecting on their beliefs about learning and iterating between these two, will be published elsewhere: James et al. (forthcoming).