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(in) Accuracy in Algorithmic Profiling of the Unemployed – An Exploratory Review of Reporting Standards
- Patrick Gallagher, Ray Griffin
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- Journal:
- Social Policy and Society , First View
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 04 December 2023, pp. 1-14
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Public Employment Services (PES) increasingly use automated statistical profiling algorithms (ASPAs) to ration expensive active labour market policy (ALMP) interventions to those they predict at risk of becoming long-term unemployed (LTU). Strikingly, despite the critical role played by ASPAs in the operation of public policy, we know very little about how the technology works, particularly how accurate predictions from ASPAs are. As a vital first step in assessing the operational effectiveness and social impact of ASPAs, we review the method of reporting accuracy. We demonstrate that the current method of reporting a single measure for accuracy (usually a percentage) inflates the capabilities of the technology in a peculiar way. ASPAs tend towards high false positive rates, and so falsely identify those who prove to be frictionally unemployed as likely to be LTU. This has important implications for the effectiveness of spending on ALMPs.
7 - The British Atlantic on the Eve of American Independence
- from Part II - The British Colonies
- General editor Wim Klooster, Clark University, Massachusetts
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- Book:
- The Cambridge History of the Age of Atlantic Revolutions
- Published online:
- 20 October 2023
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- 09 November 2023, pp 207-227
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Summary
This chapter recasts America’s revolutionary origins as an imperial crisis brought on by changes in the Atlantic. It surveys Atlantic-wide developments over the course of the eighteenth century to suggest that the issues British Americans grappled with in the 1760s were not exceptional. The watery space was transformed by the movement of peoples, goods, and ideas for all. Slavery and the slave trade were the catalysts to systemic change. With these changes, the Atlantic became an entangled space. War heightened the stakes for domination of the oceanic system. Imperial reform was the result. All creoles throughout the Atlantic world experienced similar tensions over relations with their respective metropoles, and consolidation of the Atlantic created similar conflicts within all Atlantic societies. The chapter then explores how and why the British case diverged from the Atlantic-wide model and how a crisis over systemic consolidation became a civil war that fractured an empire. What we know as the American Revolution represented the fallout from these tangled dynamics.
David Fitzpatrick. The Americanisation of Ireland: Migration and Settlement, 1841–1925. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. 270. $39.99 (cloth).
- Patrick Griffin
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- Journal:
- Journal of British Studies / Volume 61 / Issue 2 / April 2022
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 04 May 2022, pp. 510-511
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- April 2022
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7 - Mobility and the Movement of Peoples
- from Part II - People
- Edited by Eliga Gould, University of New Hampshire, Paul Mapp, College of William and Mary, Virginia, Carla Gardina Pestana, University of California, Los Angeles
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- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- Published online:
- 12 November 2021
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- 03 March 2022, pp 161-178
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Summary
With good reason, the historian Bernard Bailyn – writing near the end of the twentieth century – described the “peopling of British North America” as “the most sweeping and striking development in this millennium of Western history.” The movement of people from one side of the ocean to the other “transformed at first half the globe, ultimately the whole of it, more fundamentally than any development except the Industrial Revolution.” He was not alone in believing this. Bismarck, as he reminded us, had called the migration of so many “the decisive fact in the modern world.” The movement of men and women from the Old World to the New, and this is fairly uncontestable, made British North America and then the United States distinctive, creating a diverse cultural landscape, just as the flow increased the productive capacity of the West in ways that no one could have anticipated. Migration produced untold wealth, expanded the territorial footprints of colonies and then states, remade the political economy and the social fabric of the broader Atlantic, and would make the United States one of the most powerful nations in the world. The story of migration is the story of America.
Preliminary assessment of aneuploidy rates between the polar, mid and mural trophectoderm
- Tyl H. Taylor, Tiffany Stankewicz, Seth L. Katz, Jennifer L. Patrick, Lauren Johnson, Darren K. Griffin
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The objective of this study is to compare aneuploidy rates between three distinct areas of the human trophectoderm: mural, polar and a region in between these two locations termed the ‘mid’ trophectoderm. This is a cohort study on in vitro fertilization (IVF) patients undergoing comprehensive chromosome screening at the blastocyst stage at a private IVF clinic. All embryos underwent assisted hatching on day 3 with blastocyst biopsy and comprehensive chromosome screening. Biopsied blastocysts were divided into three groups depending on which area (polar, mid, or mural) of the trophectoderm was protruding from the zona pellucida and biopsied. Aneuploidy rates were significantly higher with cells from the polar region of the trophectoderm (56.2%) compared with cells removed from the mural region of the trophectoderm (30.0%; P = 0.0243). A comparison of all three areas combined also showed a decreasing trend, but this did not reach clinical significance, polar (56.2%), mid (47.4%) and mural trophectoderm (30.0%; P = 0.1859). The non-concordance demonstrated between polar and mural trophectoderm can be attributed to biological occurrences including chromosomal mosaicism or procedural differences between embryologists.
22 - ‘Irish’ Migration to America in the Eighteenth Century? Or the Strange Case for the ‘Scots/Irish’
- from Part V - The Irish Abroad
- Edited by James Kelly, Dublin City University
- General editor Thomas Bartlett, University of Aberdeen
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- Book:
- The Cambridge History of Ireland
- Published online:
- 20 April 2018
- Print publication:
- 26 April 2018, pp 593-616
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Chapter 7 - Self-regulated learning
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- By Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne, Narelle English, Research Fellow, lecturer in assessment and doctoral candidate at the Assessment Research Centre, University of Melbourne., Nives Nibali, teacher and researcher currently working on a PhD and on the ‘Realising the Potential of Australia's High Capacity Students’ Project., Susan-Marie Harding, Research Fellow at the Assessment Research Centre, University of Melbourne., Lorraine Graham, Professor of Learning Intervention at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne.
- Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne
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- Book:
- Assessment for Teaching
- Published online:
- 17 August 2019
- Print publication:
- 18 October 2017, pp 141-160
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Summary
Learning Objectives
In this chapter you will learn to:
• define self-regulated learning (SRL)
• understand the importance of self-regulation for both teacher and student
• use evidence of learning to assess and support SRL strategies.
This chapter introduces the concept of student self-regulated learning (SRL). It is included in this book about assessment for teaching because the student must be part-teacher and part-student. It is also included because the rubrics written using the approach in this book complement students’ SRL skills by articulating the competencies they need to assess, monitor and reflect on in their learning. The teacher also has to be part-student. The role of the teacher is less of a transmitter and more of a co-facilitator. The teacher, using the approach of this book and understanding the elements of SRL presented in this chapter, can help the student to take a more active role in SRL. The student becomes dependent on self-assessment and on assessing peers in collaborative arrangements. Now the teacher has two roles: one in facilitating learning and the other in helping students understand the self-assessments that will govern the development of their SRL competency.
Introduction
In earlier chapters of this book we described assessment as the search for evidence of learning. In normal circumstances the search tends to be conducted or managed by the teacher. Student self-assessment may also be defined as students’ search for evidence of their own learning. But is it a search? Do students understand how to produce evidence of what they are learning? How do teachers and students work together to identify learning outcomes, the strategies that lead to those outcomes, and the evidence of having reached or attained those outcomes? Increasingly the role of the teacher is changing, from transmitter to more a facilitator of knowledge.
In this book we emphasise the role of developmental teaching and learning and assessment as key in dealing with the phenomenon of SRL. Both the teacher and the student can follow the student's growth and development if the road map is clear. This is discussed extensively in Chapter 10. For now, we will focus on the ideas of developmental teaching and learning where both the teacher and the student need to understand the developmental pathway the student is following.
Chapter 1 - Assessment as the search for evidence of learning
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- By Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne
- Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne
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- Book:
- Assessment for Teaching
- Published online:
- 17 August 2019
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- 18 October 2017, pp 14-25
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Summary
Learning Objectives
In this chapter you will learn to:
• define assessment and its related activities
• understand the use of assessment data to inform teaching
• identify the principles of a developmental model of assessment, teaching and learning
• differentiate between evidence of learning and inferences made about learning
• understand the role of collaboration in teachers’ use of assessment data
• develop a sure approach to the language of assessment and its derivatives.
In this chapter assessment is defined as the search for evidence of learning. Three important ideas are included in the definition. It is a search. It focuses on evidence. The rationale for assessment is to measure or promote learning. The importance of collaboration in teaching teams is emphasised together with the 10 principles of assessment on which this book is based. In part, the chapter attempts to stabilise the language of assessment and provide some ideas that help teachers understand why assessment is regarded as formative. The members of the writing team agree that assessment for students or assessment for learning is important but it is not what this book is about. We take a view that teachers are decision-makers; they make decisions about individual children; they make decisions based on evidence. Those decisions, and the evidence on which they are made, signal to the world teachers’ focus and good intentions. This chapter clarifies what we mean by searching for evidence and make a clear distinction between evidence and inference.
Introduction
In this chapter I have two goals. The first is to provide a rather simple but not simplistic definition of assessment. In doing so I am trying to avoid many of the polemics that emerge because of strongly felt views about the purpose of assessment, set procedures that many people favour, definitions of who might be involved and the reasons for assessment. It is difficult to avoid these kinds of arguments but I will do my best. The definition that I (as part of the larger writing team) offer describes assessment as a search for evidence of learning. This definition has three aspects that, hopefully, have neutral sense. The first is the idea of ‘search’ people may redefine the word in as many different ways as they wish in order to define the process of collecting assessment data.
Contributors
- Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne
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- Book:
- Assessment for Teaching
- Published online:
- 17 August 2019
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- 18 October 2017, pp vii-ix
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Chapter 5 - Judgement-based assessment
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- By Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne, Michael Francis, Coordinator of Assessment, Learning and Teaching (Secondary) at the University of Melbourne and a teaching specialist at the Assessment Research Centre., Pam Robertson, Research Fellow at the Assessment Research Centre, University of Melbourne.
- Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne
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- Book:
- Assessment for Teaching
- Published online:
- 17 August 2019
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- 18 October 2017, pp 90-112
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Summary
Learning Objectives
In this chapter you will learn to:
• identify the strengths and weaknesses of judgement-based assessment
• understand how adopting a developmental assessment framework can maximise the strengths of judgement-based assessment so it can be used to better inform teaching decisions
• build a developmental assessment framework that describes the domain, strands and capabilities to be learned and taught in a unit of work.
Many forms of assessment have predetermined right and wrong answers. Familiar examples are multiple-choice questions and matching activities; there are also mathematics exercises or short-answer tasks for which there is no room for judgement. When a teacher is marking these forms of assessment, there can be no doubt about whether a student has answered correctly or incorrectly. Other kinds of assessment, such as essays and art folios, require different assessment methods. For these, there is no predetermined answer and teachers must use their professional judgement to assess the quality of the work. These assessments are sometimes dismissed as subjective because they rely on the teacher's judgement, but there are ways for this kind of assessment to be formalised and codified to increase confidence in the subjective judgement. This chapter explains the process via which this can be achieved.
Introduction
The terms ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ in the context of assessment refer to the manner in which student work is judged and how records of the assessment are created and interpreted. Assessments are referred to as ‘objective’ if they can be routinely marked as correct or incorrect, regardless of who makes the judgement. This is generally applied to multiple-choice questions, or questions for which there is only one correct answer. Subjective assessments involve judgement in order to distinguish between responses of different quality. In general, they require an assessment in which the teacher weighs up or judges the value or quality of a performance or an answer and differentiates between higher- and lower-quality student work. This process of weighing up the quality of a performance is used in this chapter to develop a series of criteria that will help teachers improve these subjective judgements.
In fact, there are no purely objective assessments. All assessments can be classified as qualitatively subjective – it is a matter of where the judgement takes place in the process of planning, implementing, coding and scoring assessments.
Index
- Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne
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- Book:
- Assessment for Teaching
- Published online:
- 17 August 2019
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- 18 October 2017, pp 311-320
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Chapter 8 - Building a development progression
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- By Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne, Michael Francis, Coordinator of Assessment, Learning and Teaching (Secondary) at the University of Melbourne and a teaching specialist at the Assessment Research Centre.
- Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne
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- Book:
- Assessment for Teaching
- Published online:
- 17 August 2019
- Print publication:
- 18 October 2017, pp 161-197
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Summary
Learning Objectives
In this chapter you will learn to:
• link curriculum and resources to assessment and reporting
• understand the theoretical basis on which criterion-referenced frameworks are built
• understand the theoretical basis on which students are located to levels on a criterion-referenced framework
• conduct a pairwise comparison of criteria
• build a criterion-referenced framework through deconstruction of curriculum
• build a progression for units of work and detailed learning outcomes.
This chapter shows how criterion-referenced frameworks are derived. The first section describes the process of derivation using a list of ordered skills produced by item response theory (IRT). The second section shows how a similar list of ordered skills can be produced using Thurstone's (1927) method of pairwise comparison. Two remaining sections form the balance of the chapter. A major feature of this chapter is a case study from the national TAFE-delivered Vocational Education and Training (TVET) sector illustrating criterion-referenced frameworks and pairwise comparison in practice.
Introduction
Often curriculum refers to the academic content taught in a formal course or program. The term ‘curriculum’ typically refers to the knowledge and skills students are expected to acquire. It also refers to standards they are expected to meet, the lessons taught, the teaching materials used in a course and the assessments used to evaluate student learning. UNESCO describes the term thus:
Curriculum can be envisaged from different perspectives. What societies envisage as important teaching and learning constitutes the ‘intended’ curriculum. Since it is usually presented in official documents, it may be also called the ‘written’ and/or ‘official’ curriculum. However, at classroom level this intended curriculum may be altered through a range of complex classroom interactions, and what is delivered can be considered the ‘implemented’ curriculum. What learners really learn (i.e. what can be assessed and can be demonstrated as learning outcomes/learner competencies) constitutes the ‘achieved’ or ‘learned’ curriculum.
(UNESCO 2017)The achieved curriculum is a focus of this chapter. In addition to learning outcomes achieved, curriculum theory points to a ‘hidden’ curriculum: that is, the unintended development of personal values and beliefs of learners, teachers and communities; the unexpected impact of a curriculum; and unforeseen aspects of a learning process. Those who develop the intended curriculum should have all these different dimensions of the curriculum in mind.
Chapter 4 - Conducting assessments: Making sure the evidence of learning is interpretable
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- By Masa Pavlovic, has worked in the field of education assessment, test development, data management and analysis, neurosciences and software development for the past 10 years., Nafisa Awwal, holds a Bachelor of Computer Science and completed her Master of Information Management and Systems at Monash University., Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne, B. M. Monjurul Alom, computer programmer and platform developer in the Assessment Research Centre, University of Melbourne.
- Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne
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- Book:
- Assessment for Teaching
- Published online:
- 17 August 2019
- Print publication:
- 18 October 2017, pp 77-89
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Summary
Learning Objectives
In this chapter you will learn to:
• understand the role of developmental frameworks in developing and conducting assessment for teaching
• conduct assessments, looking at a specific example of an assessment in an online environment and controlling for distracting influences
• target assessments
• recognise the need to confirm assessment results with other sources of evidence.
This chapter introduces the administration and use of assessment for teaching. It emphasises the importance of correctly targeting assessment to maximise the information available for both teachers and students. The approach of using assessments within a developmental framework requires a significant shift in thinking for teachers and students. Assessment in this context demands a clear understanding of its purposes as the identification of a level of readiness to learn in all students and the use of this to make teaching decisions about appropriate interventions. This chapter expands on some of the ideas discussed in Chapter 1 on the use of ‘skills, not scores’ – ideas that contrast assessment for teaching with summative testing. The chapter provides practical examples of how to maximise each student's opportunity to demonstrate their skills and knowledge.
The classroom teacher doesn't always have the time or training to construct formal psychometric summative tests. This chapter reviews a range of assessment strategies teachers use in their search for evidence of learning and student growth.
Introduction
The focus of this chapter is the use of developmental assessment and issues related to administration of assessments and interpretation of data, to support the planning of targeted teaching strategies for classroom use. It builds on ideas introduced in Chapter 3 where we discussed developmental learning. Teachers need to know about the use and interpretation of assessment data if they are to use data to inform teaching.
Planning administration: Why do we recommend testing twice a year?
Testing is typically undertaken at the beginning of a school year to establish a benchmark level of achievement for the students. It also enables the teachers, at the beginning of the year, to identify the levels for intervention for each student and for the team leaders to bring this information to a team leaders’ workshop a few weeks after the first test.
Chapter 9 - Guttman Analysis
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- By Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne, Michael Francis, Coordinator of Assessment, Learning and Teaching (Secondary) at the University of Melbourne and a teaching specialist at the Assessment Research Centre., Pam Robertson, Research Fellow at the Assessment Research Centre, University of Melbourne.
- Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne
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- Book:
- Assessment for Teaching
- Published online:
- 17 August 2019
- Print publication:
- 18 October 2017, pp 198-225
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Summary
Learning Objectives
In this chapter you will learn to:
• generate, analyse and link a Guttman Analysis to the zone of proximal development (ZPD)
• use both objective and judgement-based assessment data to identify ZPDs
• explore for anomalies in the data
• use Guttman table data to target teaching
• examine the implications of assessment data analysis for classroom organisation to enhance targeted teaching.
This chapter introduces the Guttman Analysis, an effective tool for grouping students based on demonstrated skills. The chapter provides a step-by-step process through which teachers can organise data from either objective or judgement based assessment tasks into a readily interpretable and visual form. The chapter shows teachers how to interpret data to evaluate the reliability of an assessment task, both at a general and item level. The implications for this sort of analysis are considered, including the scenario where an assessment task does not capture skills within a student's ZPD. Finally, teachers are introduced to the process of using data to target teaching through the formation of instructional groups based on students’ ZPDs.
Introduction
The developmental model of learning was introduced in Chapter 3. A core feature of this model is the process of interpreting students’ zones of proximal development (ZPDs) in relation to a progression of increasing complexity. Teachers can locate students’ ZPDs using externally generated data, such as standardised test assessments, or they can use their own classroom data to generate a Guttman Analysis. Either way, teachers are equipped with information that can be used to target teaching and maximise student learning.
Analysing externally generated student data
In Chapter 3 we illustrated an externally generated student report based on the ARCOTS test data. The learning readiness report is generated by the ARCOTS system in real time and locates a student at a level on a developmental progression represented by the black bar that it links to a very brief (nutshell) description of the skills a student is ‘ready to learn’ (see Figure 9.1). It is not an achievement level but rather an estimation of the ZPD. The student's achievement level is below this point – it represents what they have already learned. As explained in Chapter 3, the ZPD is where teaching needs to be targeted to maximise student progress.
Chapter 2 - Collaborative teaching teams
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- By Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne, Michael Francis, Coordinator of Assessment, Learning and Teaching (Secondary) at the University of Melbourne and a teaching specialist at the Assessment Research Centre., Pam Robertson, Research Fellow at the Assessment Research Centre, University of Melbourne.
- Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne
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- Book:
- Assessment for Teaching
- Published online:
- 17 August 2019
- Print publication:
- 18 October 2017, pp 26-42
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Summary
Learning Objectives
In this chapter you will learn to:
• understand the roles and processes of collaborative teaching teams (CTTs)
• identify the process from measurement to policy development in which CTTs may participate
• understand the CTT cycle
• identify the skills necessary for successful CTTs.
This chapter introduces the elements of the successful CTT: collaboration, challenge, check and celebrate. It explores how the CTT supports and enhances assessment for learning and contributes to school policy. The chapter outlines what is meant by collaboration and explains its four characteristics: group members realising a shared goal; members each making a unique contribution; members learning to accept their dependence on other members of the group; and members recognising the benefit of having colleagues contributing in areas that they cannot. We also explore how members of the CTT need to develop their own personal social skills in resolving issues affecting the teaching team.
Introduction
Strong and skillful collaborative teaching team (CTT) leadership is needed to embed the practices discussed in this book. New teachers, especially, need support from experienced team leaders. New teachers need to understand the leadership framework in which they are working. It is the team leader who will model the desired behaviours and help scaffold the learning of individual teaching team members so they can become more effective members of the team and, as a result, more effective teachers. The team leader is often the link between the team and the school's leadership and is therefore in the position to lobby for the interests of the team. It may be necessary for the leader to negotiate more time for meetings, access to particular resources, or specific professional development opportunities. As a champion for the team, the leader must also ensure that the team structure has a place in policy formation within the school. Without adept team leadership, it is impossible to develop a team whose synergy makes a substantial difference to the learning of all of its students.
The successful collaborative teaching team
Behind the approach of successful collaborative teams is an ongoing willingness to question and challenge the impacts of practice. Members of CTTs can best serve each other by questioning their own teaching practices and those of their fellow team members but the challenge must be in terms of change in student learning–related behaviour.
Annex 1 - School leadership and assessment
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- By Michael Francis, Coordinator of Assessment, Learning and Teaching (Secondary) at the University of Melbourne and a teaching specialist at the Assessment Research Centre., Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne
- Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne
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- Book:
- Assessment for Teaching
- Published online:
- 17 August 2019
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- 18 October 2017, pp 281-299
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Summary
This annex has been written explicitly for busy school leaders who would like to get an overview of the Assessment for Teaching approach before tackling the level of detail provided in the book as a whole. It summarises the theoretical basis and the practical application of the program described in the book, spelling out the nature of the support needed and the responsibilities to be exercised if the program is to succeed.
Introduction
The primary reason for teaching is to facilitate learning. The primary reason for schools to exist is to maximise that learning. The primary role of the school leader is to ensure that this maximisation occurs.
In a study on evidence-based teaching of literacy – the Literacy Assessment Project – conducted by the Assessment Research Centre (ARC) in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne in partnership with the Catholic Education Office Melbourne over a 10-year period, outstanding early results were observed in some schools. The study was designed to test the effectiveness of using evidence to identify the point on a developmental progression at which students were most ready to learn, so that reading comprehension teaching could be targeted to that point. The purpose of the project was to build teachers’ assessment knowledge and skill so they could use assessment data to inform the teaching of literacy. Students were tested at the beginning of the school year to identify their position on a developmental progression and then taught the necessary skills to move along the progression to the next level. This approach represents a reversal of standard teaching practice in which assessment occurs only after instruction is complete. In the standard approach, assessment is for, or of, learning. In this approach, assessment is for teaching.
In the Literacy Assessment Project, a second testing period later in the school year showed that all students could improve. However, the rate of improvement among students at some schools was higher than at others. At schools where the greatest gains were made, teaching strategies were shared and discussed by teams of teachers who challenged each other to support their teaching practices with evidence. The teachers in these teams brought a range of observations and experiences to their discussions, but they also ensured that their colleagues did not persist with comfortable or familiar practices that were proving to be ineffective.
Preface
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- By Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne, Field Rickards, Dean of the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, since 2004.
- Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne
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- Book:
- Assessment for Teaching
- Published online:
- 17 August 2019
- Print publication:
- 18 October 2017, pp xvii-xxii
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Summary
About this book
This is the second edition of the text on assessment for teaching. Like the first edition the content is based on a mixture of teaching and research – it is informed by practice, theory and research in the classroom. It gives teachers what they have requested to improve teaching and learning. Like the first edition, it is not just another book on assessment. Many of you will have read generalised books on assessment, and some of you will even have written them. Patrick Griffin published one in the 1990s. This book is different. It is a clinical approach to assessment and the use of data in the classroom. It is about changing the culture of schools based on the use of assessment data and developing skills among teachers so they can use assessment information to make decisions about targeted teaching intervention. The book introduces a new kind of thinking, though some of the content is not new – note the case study written in 1970 that commences the Introduction.
The approach propounded here is simple, but it is not simplistic. It is one that demands conceptual reasoning and higher order thinking. In the eight years that the Master of Teaching program has been taught at the University of Melbourne it has developed and matured. We now know that pre-service teachers can cope with this form of assessment and that in-service teachers can also change their practices in the light of it. Over 1500 teachers have participated in the program through online and face-to-face delivery. Over 3000 student teachers have studied the program and many have told us that they secured employment because of their knowledge of this approach to assessment. Many of the 1500 practising teachers who have participated in the online program have testified that it has changed their thinking about the use of assessment data and the way in which it can help teachers to organise classrooms. Of course, some did not change.
There is no point in adding to the assessment literature based on translating psychometric theory and multiple-choice test design. This is not a book that regurgitates the old ideas about assessment wrapped up in the language of psychometrics. It takes a new approach.
Chapter 3 - Competence assessment: A clinical approach
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- By Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne, Field Rickards, Dean of the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, since 2004., Michael Francis, Coordinator of Assessment, Learning and Teaching (Secondary) at the University of Melbourne and a teaching specialist at the Assessment Research Centre.
- Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne
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- Book:
- Assessment for Teaching
- Published online:
- 17 August 2019
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- 18 October 2017, pp 43-76
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Summary
Learning Objectives
In this chapter you will learn to:
• understand the developmental model of learning
• understand developmental frameworks, including taxonomies, hypothetical
progressions, curriculum progressions and derived progressions
• identify the zone of actual development (ZAD) and the zone of proximal development (ZPD) using examples of student work against the Assessment Research Centre's Progression of Reading Comprehension, Progression of Numeracy or Progression of Problem Solving
This chapter promotes the understanding of developmental learning, introducing hierarchies and taxonomies developed by Bloom and Krathwohl. Because almost everyone working in this mode will be beginners, we will concentrate on the most basic, those relating to cognitive and affective domains. Other taxonomies, including those by Biggs and Collis (SOLO) and by Dreyfus (Skills), are useful and important; the reader can expand their knowledge of these as they become more proficient in assessment. The chapter makes a distinction between the deficit and developmental approaches to teaching and addresses the implications of data use in these two models. The chapter shows teachers how to identify the ‘zone of proximal development’ (ZPD) following Vygotsky, and uses examples of student work to illustrate this concept. The implications of correct identification and the importance of differentiated instruction are also introduced in this chapter. The establishment of a strong link between teaching and assessment data provides the reader with a framework within which to operate as a teacher.
Introduction
Students accumulate skills and knowledge through a process of maturation and through engagement in learning activities. But the skills and knowledge accumulated by each student in the class or the year level almost certainly will not be the same. A teacher's role is to identify how best to facilitate this growth in each student. It is common to hear the description of the teacher's role linked to diagnosis in the context of teaching being a clinical practice profession. Although the word diagnosis has typically and traditionally been used to indicate that something is wrong and needs to be fixed, increasingly it is being used to identify individual needs in the educational context. The latter is exactly what teachers need to do, but it is important that we do not confuse student needs with student weaknesses or inadequacies. Students do not go to school to be fixed; they are not sick or in need of prescribed remedies; they go to school to grow socially and cognitively and perhaps morally.
Assessment for Teaching
- 2nd edition
- Patrick Griffin
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- Published online:
- 17 August 2019
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- 18 October 2017
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Grounded in contemporary, evidence-based research, the second edition of Assessment for Teaching provides a comprehensive introduction to assessment and teaching in primary and secondary school settings. Taking a practical approach to assessment and the collaborative use of data in the classroom, this text advances a developmental model of assessment which aims to improve student outcomes through targeted teaching interventions. Thoroughly revised and updated to include the latest research, this edition features expanded content on collaborative teaching, competence assessment, learning and assessment and self-regulated teaching and learning. Each chapter features learning objectives, reflective questions, an extended exercise to link course content with classroom practice, and end-of-chapter rubrics which help readers assess their own understanding and learning. Written by a team of experts from the Assessment Research Centre at the University of Melbourne, Assessment for Teaching is an essential resource for both preservice teachers and inservice teachers.
Acknowledgements
- Patrick Griffin, University of Melbourne
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- Book:
- Assessment for Teaching
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- 17 August 2019
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- 18 October 2017, pp xvi-xvi
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