 
Week 3 - Outcomes and Standards
|  | Student-Centred Learning and Assessment: The Way Ahead |
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MR CLIFF DOWNEY
Victoria, Australia
THE WORLD OF HOME, school, work and community is a complicated place for students growing up today. We can make this experience a more rich and meaningful one by linking the threads of experience with appropriate learning contexts. In our drive to better measure the progress of learning, there is a tendency to compartmentalise knowledge and skills. We can trivialise the way these come together, and in how the individual applies them to life and future employment. Integrating these abilities, I believe, must involve the individual more in the nature and direction of the learning. This can make complex tasks more relevant. It can also make assessment of progress more accessible to students, parents and teachers.
The Problem with General Achievement Measures
The problem with very general achievement measurement approaches is that they can oversimplify the task. They can also influence and structure the learning, as well as measure it. A present example in Victorian schools is measuring reading competence in the early years. Students are assigned a level of development based on the complexity of text they can read aloud. The problem is that the curriculum at this level includes a great variety of text types, multimedia, and reading for understanding. The learning at this level includes ability to interpret and retell, to understand the purposes and audiences for texts, the links with the writing process, and comparing the information and ideas in the text with experience. Teaching needs to be 'data driven' but assessment must be broad ranging and match the complexity of the learning.
Students can play a vital role in learning and assessment if they 'have a say'. I have seen a lot of value in applying the ideas of 'Edwards Deming' to student learning (from 'TQM': 'eliminate work standards', 'put everyone to work to improve the process', etc.). In my own school, students are involved in documenting their present skills (e.g., in a portfolio, or 'competency matrix'); setting goals with their teacher and class for where they want to improve; going about the learning process, and then reviewing their progress. This review is aided by giving the students the responsibility of tracking their own progress. The student then has 'hard data' to examine with their teacher and parent, and the onus is on them to be involved in making improvement plans. The student then leads the parent-teacher interview right down to prep level.
A number of teaching strategies are also helped by including the student. Examples include:
- acknowledging that, in many areas, there is a lot of information to be learnt before the student can apply it;
- providing all the information at the beginning of a unit of work, which puts the student in control.
- allowing students to record their own progress and keep run charts. This is not competitive, as the student's results are only for themselves and the teacher. Additionally, a chart is kept of the student's assessment of a project, along with the teacher's assessment.
- having students track their own 'enthusiasm levels' and giving the teacher feedback on improvements in the classroom learning environment.
- creating a 'rubric' of shared expectations. This could be in the requirements of content and presentation in project work. The students then have a much better understanding of what is required.
- making an error analysis: students keep a record of the types of errors they make. The class also keeps track of common errors. This feeds back to discussion about areas to improve and how to do it.
The tension between the need for improved performance standards and the student's individual learning needs is resolved when the student plays a central role in the learning and the assessment process.
The New Components of Learning
At a recent forum of school system leaders from the some of the most educationally advanced nations (e.g., Singapore, UK), important components of learning for the twenty-first century were outlined. Interestingly, they bore little resemblance to the standard features of schooling today. Skills given high status included applying new technologies; initiative and intuition in the innovation process; creativity and invention, and skills such interviewing, and imagining the point of view of another person.
Much is made of school learning addressing the needs of the work place. However, the competencies required are changing and advancing at a staggering rate. My school, Mooroopna Park Primary, is situated in the Goulburn Valley food producing and processing region. A large business, close to Mooroopna, manufactures fruit and vegetable harvesting machinery, which is exported around the world. Most marketing and customer relationships are developed and maintained through an interactive web site. The machinery is designed and built with ever-reducing turnaround time, involving innovation and responsiveness at every turn. Many of the machinery components are purpose-built with very little labour, utilising computer and laser technologies. One of the most valuable skills for all employees is the ability to communicate and co-operate with competitive businesses on a global scale in sharing knowledge to create partnership projects. Developing the school curriculum environment where these attitudes and learning abilities can be developed is a daunting prospect.
Systematic Rotation
Over the last thirty years, a number of approaches have been successfully tried, which integrate learning tasks. In my own school, the linking of Science, Studies of Society and Environment, and Technology into a rotation of learning topics and experiences, has meant a 'bringing together' of learning areas, and a way of applying the development of most competencies to interdisciplinary project work. A systematic rotation guarantees that there is coverage of the required learning strands, but retains the flexibility for the teacher in designing learning experiences. It also provides opportunities for students to negotiate elements of the curriculum. This might be at the level of suggesting a topic idea. It could also be taken to the extent of the northern Italian Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education.
In the Reggio Emilia approach, there is a great deal of autonomy for the student, yet everything is developed within a strong project-centred and highly structured learning experience. Learning projects (the 'project' is a very important concept in the organisation of learning) have a number of integrated 'subjects' and modes. A project moves through the structure of clearly defined stages, but the direction of the topic results from the children's interests and suggestions.
Learning by Project: The Pond
Following is my description of one such 'project' and the flowing structure of the learning that took place (the students were aged four to seven).
What is water? Let's investigate by washing things, floating things. Making water marks. Look at water in the garden; children run to investigate; why doesn't it sink into the earth? What is a lake? Why is the water still?
Children document their ideas and hypotheses in drawings. Teacher proposes that the children draw what their own pond would look like. Let's make a pond! The teacher and children describe their project to other classes.
A problem! How can we build a pond without destroying the homes of insects and worms? Children discuss finding a suitable place in the garden. Detailed plans are made into a large format book.
The place is chosen and a large hole dug by the children (the teacher notices the children's interest in 'the edge' and builds learning activities around; circumference, boundaries, perimeter, etc.). The children enact boundaries (e.g., join hands in a circle) and make generalisations and rules about how to create the 'edge'.
Now the teacher organises a visit to a real lake. The children prepare for the trip with lists of clothes and equipment (e.g., binoculars; they also create some 'play binoculars' out of cardboard). A great time is spent by the teacher in stimulating comparisons between the real lake and the children's original hypotheses (e.g., from a simple theory of 'roundness' to understanding that lakes can have many shapes).
More questions: how does the water get into the pond? Why doesn't it dry out?
The teacher and children create an experiment to show that the ground is 'water proof' with a large sheet of plastic. Back at school, the class try out some of their naive ideas about paths and other things observed such as houses, footprints, and large mice. They make paths out of various media and explore ideas through symbolic play.
The 'pond environment' is recreated in incredible detail through large environmental paintings which form a backdrop to the room during the project's life (the three dimensions is extremely important). The children reconstruct the sounds of the pond visit: the bus, wind, teachers voices, birds songs, the sense of fear of the fish!
The children use musical instruments to recreate the sounds and write a 'pond soundscape'. Parents participate in the experience by writing a diary about what the children say at home and the parents' own ideas.
Finally, a great deal of time is taken in groups and with each child in reflecting on the sequence of learning, and how ideas were formed on the way.
The bases for learning are all inter-related: interest, observation, ideas, elaboration, generalisation, and the dynamic nature of the developmental paths determine the conceptual networks.
As the Crow Flies
I have been involved in developing a program called 'As the Crow Flies'. This program involves groups of students, aged ten to fifteen, sharing their solutions to 'future problems ' via the Internet (many of the rural secondary and primary schools are isolated, and the number involved in this program has grown from ten to twenty-five over the last five years). The projects are tightly constructed, and the skills of using multimedia, working and co-operating in a group, collecting and analysing information, and experimenting with modes of presentation provide a range of assessment opportunities. The group brainstorms 'questions' to address the 'future problem scenario' (e.g., implications of genetically modified food). This is followed by a 'scavenger hunt' for relevant information, a collation of 'solutions' and approaches to the presentation of the solutions.
A highly successful project for groups of students towards the end of secondary schooling is 'E Teams'. (co-ordinated in Northern Victoria by the 'Goulburn Murray Quality Network'). A team undertakes training in analysing a real workplace problem and goes about collecting data in the workplace. Solutions are then presented to the business after a week of study and deliberation. The results are often astounding in their sophistication and insight. There are many other successful examples of integrated learning approaches, such as the USA's 'Foxfire Project', where students interview members of the community and document the development of real competencies.
A Positive Future
While many are concerned about the lack of attention to social outcomes in schooling, I am optimistic about the way schools are moving. I think that wherever attention is paid to involving the student in the learning process, and providing ownership and responsibility, social learning is occurring. These days, schools are paying more attention to student leadership, civics and citizenship, and peer mediation and support programs.
In my own school, a lot of attention is paid to discussing and documenting values at the classroom level. This pertains to what the class believes is important about how students conduct themselves in the learning environment: their 'class system'. What will it look like if I am 'trustworthy', or 'co-operative'? Class discussions or 'class meetings' give students a chance to talk about what matters to them about personal behaviour. This is not separate to the formal learning because it relates to how students behave when they are learning. Student leadership includes presentations and guided tours for visitors to the school, leading school assemblies, and assisting others in roles in the classroom and around the school.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mr Clifford Milton Downey has been Principal of Mooroopna Park Primary School for the last seven years, and a principal in three different schools. Mooroopna Park services a community with a high percentage of low socio economic background families, and moderate numbers of Aboriginal students and 'English as a Second Language Learners'. The school is one of the Victorian Education Department's 'exemplary schools in the education of gifted and talented' for visiting teachers from other schools. The emphasis is on developing the 'gifts and talents' of all students. The program is greatly influenced by the work of Edward DeBono and Howard Gardiner, and more recently, the 'Total Quality in Education' movement. The school had input into, and piloted elements of the DEET 'Quality Schools Project' material. Cliff Downey has been involved in many Principal Class development projects, such as mentor programs, and providing School Management Workshops. In 1999 Cliff was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to investigate 'Quality Schooling' approaches in the USA, the UK and Italy.
Cliff can be contacted by email at:
cliffd@mcmedia.com.au
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