The role of an expansive workplace in the schoolwide adoption of a new assessment framework in English primary schools

ABSTRACT

Recent changes to English national assessment policy have resulted in primary school leaders adopting new frameworks to evaluate pupil progress. This study examines the role of expansive workplace characteristics and staff meetings to support teachers to change their assessment practice at a schoolwide level, following engagement with a new framework. One hundred in-service teachers who had used the framework rated their schools against expansive workplace criteria in an online survey. They also rated staff meetings to support their use of the framework against effective meeting criteria. Statistical analysis of these data demonstrated expansive workplace characteristics were more frequently linked to participants’ subsequent reports of schoolwide changes to assessment practice than the characteristics of meetings held to support them. It is argued that expansive workplace characteristics might better enable the social learning processes entailed in schoolwide changes to an aspect of practice, such as discussion between colleagues, than the staff meetings intended to support a resource’s use.

KEYWORDS:

• Expansive workplace
• teacher learning
• staff meetings

Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges the help of the journal’s reviewers, whose comments improved this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This study forms part of a doctoral research project funded by the Primary Science Teaching Trust.

Notes on contributors

Isabel Hopwood-Stephens

Dr Isabel Hopwood-Stephens is a Research Associate on the TESTA (Transforming the Experience of Students Through Assessment) programme at the University of Bristol. She also specialises in primary education and pedagogy.